[NTLUG:Discuss] Millinneum rant

[Richard Cobbe]

Christopher Browne wrote on 12-17-1999:

> Add to this that the calendar that we use, the Gregorian Calendar, was
> only established in the 18th century, and involved some season-oriented
> reconciling adjustments, and it is not tough to come to the conclusion
> that any connection between our calendar and anybody's birth/death is
> fairly arbitrary.

Actually, the Gregorian calendar was developed in the *16th* century.  It
just took the English a couple of hundred years to catch up.  (The
discontinuity, throughout much of Europe, was a jump from October 4 to
October 15, 1582.)

If you think the British are bad, consider the fact that it took the
Russians until the Communist Revolution -- yeah, the one in 1917 -- to
shift over!

Another little known fact: before then, New Year's Day was (of course)
March 25.  You can still see this in some of the month names: SEPTEMber,
OCTOber, NOVEMber, DECEMber -- count to 10 in the Romance languages,
especially Latin, and it'll be obvious where those come from.  The shift to
Jan 1st was made at the same time we moved to the Gregorian calendar.

(Continuing the trend, July & August used to continue the pattern back
further, but a couple of early Roman emperors decided that they wanted to
have months named after them....)

The conclusion that I draw from all of this: the names we give to various
units of time are, basically, purely arbitrary.  Their primary function is
to give us a convenient handle to measure and discuss time.  So, I'm not
going to lose sleep over whether the millennium ends in 14 or 380 days.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled discussion of Linux-related
stuff,

Richard