From: Brian M. Scott on
Cheryl wrote:

> jmfbahciv wrote:

>> <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.

> What's stopping people from going to bed an hour earlier
> that night?

What's the point? For many of us that would be a wasted
hour: we'd neither sleep nor get anything done.

Brian
From: Peter T. Daniels on
On Feb 24, 9:19 am, Cheryl <cperk...(a)mun.ca> wrote:
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Feb 24, 6:40 am, Cheryl <cperk...(a)mun.ca> wrote:
> >> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>> On Feb 23, 8:12 pm, Robert Bannister <robb...(a)bigpond.com> wrote:
> >>>> Adam Funk wrote:
> >>>>> On 2010-02-23, Ant nio Marques wrote:
> >>>>>> "Roman Catholic" ISN'T AN OFFICIAL SELF-DESIGNATION. ANYWHERE.
> >>>>> Are you going to write to all the churches in the UK with "St ____'s
> >>>>> Roman Catholic Church" or "St ____'s R. C. Church" on their signs,
> >>>>> newsletters, websites, etc., to tell them that they are wrong?  (I
> >>>>> think this is common in much of the USA too.)
> >>>> I won't try to claim such signs don't exist, but I don't remember ever
> >>>> seeing one. The only way I can tell a church is RC is by the
> >>>> architecture and usually by the name (saint I've never heard of or
> >>>> long-winded way of saying Mary).
> >>> Do you only visit villages so small that they have only one church, or
> >>> so homogeneous that they only have a sprinkling of Protestant churches?
> >> I think that's probably the key - the size and/or homogeneity of the
> >> location. I associate signs saying "St. So-and-So's Roman Catholic
> >> Church" with Toronto, which is a big enough and heterogeneous enough
> >> that it's a pretty good bet a good proportion of the population doesn't
> >> know which church is which. On the other hand, even in quite small
> >> towns, I've seen signs like "TownName United Church" or "St. So-and-So's
> >> Anglican Church", so that can't be the entire explanation.
>
> > Do these "small towns" even _have_ a popish parish?
>
> Sometimes, yes, although more commonly if they're THAT small, they'd
> have one or the other - some version of Protestant or Roman Catholic. My
> home province has close to 40% of the population reporting themselves in
> surveys as Roman Catholics, so even thought they're not entirely evenly
> sprinkled over the entire area, there are lots of small towns that are
> or are part of a Roman Catholic parish. Nowadays, they usually have to
> share a priest with several other small towns, but they still have their
> church.
>
> > "United" means exactly that -- it's not a denomination, but a bunch of
> > congregations that got together in order to survive at all despite the
> > organization of their individual hierarchies. Baptists and
> > Presbyterians are probably the easiest to assimilate to each other (no
> > clerical hierarchy), then Methodists (whose "bishops" don't claim the
> > apostolic succession of the Episcopalians and Catholics). So in a
> > really big and socially stratified small village, you might find a
> > Protestant church, an Episcopal one (that's the US term for the
> > Anglican Communion, which more and more seems as though it soon won't
> > be one), and a Catholic one.
>
> Ummm - in Canada, 'United Church' is a separate denomination, founded by
>   Methodists, Presbyterians, and two other groups I tend to forget.
>
> http://www.united-church.ca/
>
> Congregationalists. I thought there was a fourth (Church of Christ), but
> apparently not. Some Presbyterians remained independent - there are two
> Presbyterian churches in my city - but the United Church must be the
> largest and most mainstream of the Protestant churches in Canada.
>
> I was thoroughly confused for a time when I first encountered 'Unitarian
> ', as in 'Unitarian Universalism' and assumed that it was the same as
> the United Church.
>
> > When we went on vacation during the school year I had to bring
> > evidence of "church attendance" in order not to get penalized for
> > missing Sunday School. The one I most remember was the Church of the
> > Presidents, an Episcopal church very close to both the White House and
> > our hotel (which was still the one presidents would occasionally turn
> > up at, although that practice has recently become quite a burden on
> > whichever church would be involved). Thus a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian
> > congregation wasn't particularly particular in the 1950s/60s.
>
> Particular enough to require proof of attendance, though! The only
> person who insisted I attend Sunday School at all was my mother, and I
> became so bored with it that I did a deal with her - I didn't have to go
> to Sunday School, and I wouldn't complain at all about attending the
> regular services, which at that time were in traditional language with
> no special children's talk or any other accommodation for children. I
> still think I got by far the better part of that deal, although it did
> leave me with a fondness for Victorian hymns.

There were awards at the end of the year based on attendance.
From: Peter T. Daniels on
On Feb 24, 11:59 am, Tak To <ta...(a)alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Feb 23, 8:07 pm, Andrew Usher <k_over_hb...(a)yahoo.com> 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.
>
> > What would you be indexing? Books, for instance, don't have a p. 0.
>
> OTOH, indexing years starting with Year 0 makes a lot of sense.

But there was no Year 0. 1 BCE was immediately followed by 1 CE.

Which is why astronomers don't use BCE dates.
From: Cheryl on
Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>
> There were awards at the end of the year based on attendance.

I don't think I attended Sunday School long enough to get one.

--
Cheryl
From: Peter T. Daniels on
On Feb 24, 10:04 am, Evan Kirshenbaum <kirshenb...(a)hpl.hp.com> wrote:
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...(a)verizon.net> writes:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Feb 24, 3:13 am, Evan Kirshenbaum <kirshenb...(a)hpl.hp.com> wrote:
> >> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...(a)verizon.net> writes:
>
> >> > On Feb 23, 11:01 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...(a)csuohio.edu> wrote:
> >> >> On Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:48:34 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"
> >> >> <gramma...(a)verizon.net> wrote in
> >> >> <news:b635eda9-c279-4467-91f7-041a0adef830(a)g23g2000vbl.googlegroups..com>
> >> >> in
> >> >> sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.lang,alt.usage.english:
>
> >> >> > On Feb 23, 12:27 pm, Hatunen <hatu...(a)cox.net> wrote:
>
> >> >> [...]
>
> >> >> >> I've hear it commented that daylight time was invented by an
> >> >> >> Amrican Indian who, finding his blanket too short to reach
> >> >> >> his chin, cut off the lower end of the blanket and sewed it
> >> >> >> onto the upper end.
>
> >> >> [...]
>
> >> >> > Is there a reason for attaching that story to a particular
> >> >> > ethnicity? [...]
>
> >> >> Quite possibly accuracy in reporting.
>
> >> > So if it were told about "Ol' Uncle Tom," that would be "accuracy
> >> > in reporting" too?
>
> >> If that's the way he heard it, sure.
>
> > But since we know it's a tall tale, we know that it is not "true" or
> > "reportage." What the story tells us is that the most recent teller
> > has a low opinion of American Indians, Irishmen, or (in my
> > hypothetical), African Americans.
>
> What's "reportage" is the "I've heard it commented".  If Dave, living
> in Arizona, has heard it told about Indians, then that's the tale he's
> reporting having heard.  And the choice of ethnicity is an interesting
> part of the tale, giving insight into the attitudes of those who tell
> it (as distinct from those who merely report having heard it).

So ... that Dave has a prejudice concerning American Indians is
something he thought we all should know?