There are 2 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Attic months
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 15:58:59 +0000
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Attic months
staving Mark J Reed:
>On 1/4/06, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > Perhaps, but the new-style calendar has a 400-year cycle, so I'd
> > > expect 76 to be manageable.
> >
> > Yes, but in the new-style calendar it's only a matter of intercalating a
> > single day every so often, and the rule is pretty simple: "A year is a
> > leap year if it is evenly divisible by 4 and is not evenly divisible by
> > 100, or is evenly divisible by 400."
>
>True. The Gregorian rule is designed to be easy to remember
>(relatively!) rather than mathematically optimal. To distribute the
>leap years as evenly as possible, since there are 97 leap years in 400
>years, a leap year would happen every time the year number hit the
>first integer >= an even multiple of 400/97 =~ 4.1237. So the leap
>years would normally be 4 years apart but every once in a while they'd
>be 5 years apart instead. In the current system, thanks to the
>non-leap centennial years, there are occasional 8-year gaps between
>leap years.
I've been doing some experimentation, and I've come up with a 128 year
cycle that I might use for a conculture.
The 128-year cycle is divided into three 33-year blocks and one 29-year block.
Each 33-year block contains seven 4-year blocks and one 5-year block, while
the 29-year block contains six 4-year blocks and one 5-year block. Each of
the 4 or 5-year blocks contains 1 leap year, thus making 31 leap years in
128 years. Should be accurate to about 1 day in 80000 years. I'm also
working on a 5000 year calendar, with a mean year length of 365.2422 days.
Pete
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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 16:20:37 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
--- In [email protected], R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>When I was a youngster, a "couple" invariably meant 'two, a group of
>two'. But in contemporary usage it now more often means 'a few' -
>seems to me a needless loss of precision.
Agreed. Americans I talk to want to make "few" equal three. I'm
insisting that couple = 2, but resisting few = 3!
I'm trying to find the names of the various categories of numbers:
ordinal, cardinal, multiplicative, distributive, etc., but I can't
find the right combination of words to google effectively. Can anyone
help me?
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
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