calendar lameness!

[Steve Holden]

"James J. Besemer" <jb at cascade-sys.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.1027735971.17108.python-list at python.org...
>
> Tim Peters wrote:
>
> > [James J. Besemer]
> > > ...
> > > And don't get me started on when Easter is.
> >
> > That's easy!  Sunday.
>
> Yeah, but which Sunday?
>
> Hint: the Catholic church went to great lengths attempting to define
Easter in
> such a manner that (among other things) it could never occur on the same
day
> as Passover.
>

The Catholic church also went to great lengths to get Galilleo Galilei to
recant, which he eventually, albeit grudgingly, did. Since I don't know how
the Jewish religion decides when Passover is, your statement doesn't convey
that much.

It's the astronomers and the astrologers I feel sorry for in all this, since
all the calendar really represents is an agreement to label particular
moments. Since one second follows another with remorseless inevitability
(absent Guido's time machine), the real problem is correct labelling.

Even an apparently simple problem such as keeping track daylight savings
time eventually burgeoned (as it did in the case of SunOS) into a whole
subsystem, so ${deity}help me if I have to keep track of ten-day gaps.

Couldn't we just all agree to call the big bang zero, and count from there?
[Answer: no -- even those who agree there *was* a big bang don't agree-on
when].

256-bit-integers-might-do-it-ly y'rs  - steve
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Steve Holden                                 http://www.holdenweb.com/
Python Web Programming                http://pydish.holdenweb.com/pwp/
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