The perpetual calendar
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From: jmfbahciv on 24 Feb 2010 08:11 Andrew Usher wrote: > Ant�nio Marques wrote: > >>>> Well, I'm astounded. Indexing from 0 is so obviously the Right Way >>>> that I can't imagine why anyone would do it the other way. >>>> >>> You always count items starting with 0? >> It's a matter of stupid perspective. Since the array's position is the >> 'first', the 'first' element's position is the array's ('first') plus 0. >> First plus 0 = first! > > Indeed, indexing is not the same thing as counting. If I were creating > a non-computer _indexing_ system, I would start from 0 as well. > So what would you put in the zeroeth slot? /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 24 Feb 2010 08:13 Robert Bannister wrote: > Brian M. Scott wrote: >> On Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:37:43 +0800, Robert Bannister >> <robban1(a)bigpond.com> wrote in >> <news:7ugpr7Fll6U1(a)mid.individual.net> in >> sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.lang,alt.usage.english: >> >>> Brian M. Scott wrote: >> >>>> R H Draney wrote: >> >>>> [...] >> >>>>> If you want a crank, find the person who came up with >>>>> Daylight Saving Time.... >> >>>>> Then find his successor who decided that DST should apply >>>>> for more of the year than "Standard" time....r >> >>>> I like DST; my only objection is that we don't have it all >>>> year round. >> >>> I think you should go and live in Inverness until you >>> change your mind. >> >> I can't imagine why you think that I'd change my mind. As >> far as I'm concerned, DST has no disadvantages at any time >> of year in any climate at any latitude. In winter at higher >> latitudes its advantages are minimal, but it still has no >> disadvantages. I couldn't care less how dark it is in the >> morning; it's in the afternoon and evening that I want the >> benefit of as much daylight as possible. > > The eternal rift between morning and evening people. I get very ratty > when politicians force me to get up in the dark more often than need be, > whereas I think dinner is best eaten when it is dark outside. > Yea. I'd rather the sun rise and set earlier. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 24 Feb 2010 08:14 Robert Bannister wrote: > J. Clarke wrote: > >> Dunno about the rest of the world, but in the US court-ordered busing >> has most kids riding the bus to school anyway, so what difference does >> it make? > > They have to walk to and from the place where the bus stops and often > have to wait. They still have to do that in the dark no matter which leaps we make the clocks go. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 24 Feb 2010 08:23 Transfer Principle wrote: > On Feb 23, 5:33 pm, Robert Bannister <robb...(a)bigpond.com> wrote: >> Brian M. Scott wrote: >>> I did. So? 'Morning' covers rather a lot, and the fact >>> remains that at the time of day that kids are going to >>> school, DST doesn't necessarily make a great deal of >>> difference in the amount of daylight. >> It depends where you live and what time school starts and finishes in >> your area. To get to school by 8 or 8:15 am, some country kids need to >> be on the school bus by 7. Now, when daylight saving was first >> introduced, it only covered the summer months, but then they had to >> tamper with it, so that by the end of the period now, 7 am is before >> sunrise. > > Somehow, the original thread, which was about a proposed > calendar reform, has branched off into several discussions, > including this one on Daylight Saving Time. > > Here's the original purpose of DST. In certain higher > latitudes (including most of the UK), the length of the > daylight at the summer solstice was around 16 hours. With > the period of daylight centered at noon GMT, this would make > the sun rise at around 4AM, before most people awake. And > so we set the clock forward in the spring. The reason we set > it back in autumn is because if we didn't, the sun wouldn't > rise at the winter solstice until around 9AM, after most > people need to be at work or school. > > In other words, the only way to avoid _both_ objectionable > sunrise times (4AM and 9AM) is to have a biannual clock shift. > > Some people oppose the biannual clock shift. Obviously, such > people (who live in higher latitudes) don't mind having a > four-hour swing in sunrise times. This group can be divided > into those who prefer that the clock be set back all year > (Year Round Standard Time) and those who prefer that the > clock be set forward all year (Year Round DST). In general, > those who have young children prefer Year Round Standard > Time in order to avoid the 9AM winter sunrises that would > affect schoolchildren the most. Those who don't have children > often prefer Year Round DST because such adults seldom have > reason to wake up as early as 4AM. > > In other words, a biannual clock shift might have been > unnecessary if we didn't have two different age groups with > differing waketimes and bedtimes. > > As for myself, I'm of two minds on this issue. On one hand, > what's wrong with having a biannual clock shift so that the > hours of daylight actually match the hours I'm awake? On the <snip> What is wrong is forcing the entire populace to go through a jetlag twice a year. Their driving is more dangerous and productivity falls until each person has adjusted his/her internal time clock. Congress has been passing laws about truckers getting enough sleep. OTOH, they pass clock resetting laws which causes everybody to not get enough sleep. What's wrong is that it's dangerous and unhealthy. /BAH
From: CDB on 24 Feb 2010 08:10
Andrew Usher wrote: > Robert Bannister wrote: [>> Andrew Usher:] > >>> 'One' is not, grammatically, a pronoun. It is a nominalised >>> adjective (the number one) that is used in place of a pronoun. >> >> Are you positive it isn't related to French "on" (as opposed to >> French "un")? > > Well, it certainly could be, and that is the usual derivation given, > although I don't think there's any direct proof. > > Anglo-French 'on' and Middle English 'one' would be very close in > pronunciation, both being some variant of [On]. But still, I think > if that was the origin it was assimilated into English as if it > were the number one. > That's a point, actually. The idiosyncratic pronunciation of "one" / wVn/ is supposed to be a dialectal intrusion, isn't it? I remember a passage in _Tom Brown's School Days_ about the name of a local feature called "the Blowing Stone" being pronounced the "blawing stwun"*. The pronoun would presumably not share that pronunciation if many people had not assimilated it to the number. > *Yes, here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowing_Stone |