User talk:Joe Kress/Archive 2004/03/23–2006/10/08

Welcome

Hi, and welcome to Wikipedia! You'll find we're always happy to see more good contributors; if you have any questions, you'll find lots of helpful links on the Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers page.

Anyway, thanks for your historical work on Chinese calendar. I just wanted to let you know that according to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style for China-related articles, "if a term is Wikified and has an article, do not provide characters or romanization again." I've made the appropriate changes in the article.

--Lowellian 23:45, Mar 23, 2004 (UTC)

Time Zone

Thanks for the excellent update to Time zone. I hope it clues some people into the fact that "Central Standard Time Zone" (for example) is a US designation, although it just happens to pass through several countries. Mackerm 02:37, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

I have subscribed

I would enjoy reading and participating as I can in the mailling list, and have subscribed. I would like to learn more about the history of calendars (and google is not exactly the most helpful in that regard), and why they were constructed. Far from being a historian as yourself, I am always looking for new applications of past methods. In the instance of my own work, I was a bit disappointed actually to learn about 6 months ago that the Yi had beat me to the basic concept, but I've since found that taking the historical works of the Greeks and other mathematical figures of the past (and still looking) and that of the Yis' basic concept that I share has produced something that I find rather interesting and encouraging. I have no doubt that discussing the history of Calendars will give me no end of the same. Thank you. --DeWayne Lehman 19:15, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Good Call

Kudos on the Appomattox Court House edit - I completely missed that. --Nick 17:30, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Transliteration on Ethiopian calendar

Hi Joe,

I've been looking into the history of the Ethiopian calendar page, and I was wondering what motivation you had for changing the transliteration of the month names? (Meskerem -> Maskaram, etc) Is there a standardized transliteration from the Ethiopic script on Wikipedia?

By the way, all your calendar stuff is really interesting. :)

Cheers, --babbage 05:52, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I doubt that there is any standard Ethiopian transliteration method, either within or outside Wikipedia. My changes were made to conform to the spelling used by Otto Neugebauer in Ethiopic astronomy and computus, which is the best discussion of the Ethiopic computus (Easter calculation) and the associated calendar I have found. Unfortunately this book is organized alphabetically, not topically, so the reader has to read virtually the entire book to find nuggests of information. Nevertheless, Neugebauer was the recognized expert on the Ethiopic calendar and computus until his recent death. I doubt that few even within Ethiopia could equal his knowledge, since he was fluent in Amharic. — Joe Kress 19:12, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

French Republican Calendar

Hi Joe. Thanks, for your wording and your corrections. --Peter 2005 08:45, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hipparchus

Joe, in the edit under your name from 9 April of the article on Hipparchus, under Precession, apparently you added some old text. Among other things it mentions some unspecified Egyptian temple from 2000 BC that would in some unspecified way demonstrate precession. This is totally unfounded and a heap of apis excrements as far as I'm concerned. More old stuff is re-appearing in this article, for instance all the excursions about precession up to relativistic geodetic precession are totally out of place in a biographic article. Two years ago I had a flamewar on these things, and I spent quite some time on the article, cleaning up the broken English and nonsense and add valid info from literary sources. I'm sad that people are compromising the quality of the article. Please re-consider and re-edit. --Tom Peters 08:59, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I never added anything about any Egyptian temple. If you check the status of the article just before mine you will find it already present. The main thing I did with that paragraph was to merge a single sentence immediately before it into it, making it appear that I might have added the whole paragraph. You'll have to deal with it yourself. I did correct some precession info, which also was already present in some detail, but only because it was wrong. At the time I did wonder what it was doing in the article, but felt that someone else had a reason for including it. Nevertheless, your objection tips the balance and I'll be happy to remove it in its entirety. However, I will not remove the preceding paragraph outlining the development of modern precession theory because it is not mine. Again, you'll have to deal with it. I am not that interested in the article, and indeed have not even read most of it. — Joe Kress 17:40, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I misread the re-formatting for an insertion. Sigh, the article still needs alot of work especially in the last part on precession and star catalogue.

--Tom Peters

Sphaera Mundi

You should also be aware that User:Www.wikinerds.org is engaging in a campaign to add similar links to other articles. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 04:11, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

All my links are relevant. I added a link "How to run a freeciv server" in Freeciv. What's wrong with that? You are only bullying me. Www.wikinerds.org 04:14, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Citing Sources

Hello, User:UninvitedCompany keeps reverting my edits where I cite the sources. I don't want to revert him again. Can you please help me to properly cite the source, as per Wikipedia's policy? Here are the articles in question: Erhard Ratdolt, Vodafone (where I contributed a CCL-licensed image and the copyright terms require prominent attribution), and Sphaera Mundi (which you already reverted - thanks). In my opinion this user is bullying me, and I am not going to revert more than 3 times, and if I cannot resolve this issue through dialogue I'll have to request mediation. Www.wikinerds.org 04:13, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I will not be drawn into your edit war, expecially when your version of Sphaera Mundi is mostly wrong as my criticism states. — Joe Kress 20:05, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your intelligent analysis. I've rewritten the article, which hopefully ends the silliness over attribution, and it's now located at De sphaera mundi. I noted your comment about the title, but in my quick research (limited to easily available sources on the internet) I couldn't really determine definitively whether to use the "mundi" in the title of the article or not. It can be moved later if we decide that's more appropriate. Incidentally, you gave the date the book was written as 1232, when all the sources I saw seem to say c. 1230. Although I'm skeptical of such precise dates in the medieval period, if you do know of sources to support that specific year, it would be a useful addition to the article. --Michael Snow 06:03, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

The reason for c. 1230 is that the first printed edition says it was originally written in 1235 whereas the earliest available manuscript version explicitly states 1232. However, it could have been the other way around. In either case, I'm sure 1232 and 1235 were involved. — Joe Kress 20:07, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Japanese Dates

Your edits to the Japanese emperor articles are incorrect. The dates that are given in the article are not Julian dates, they are dates according to the Japanese lunisolar calendar. I provided Gregorian equivalents of those dates in the footnotes. I knew that the Gregorian calendar wasn't adopted until 1583, but I wasn't aware of the Wiki rule about providing only Julian dates before 1583. In any event, what you should have done is converted the Gregorian equivalent dates that I provided in my footnote to Julian. I'll go back and fix them but please do not change any more articles. -Jefu 22:39, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

There appears to be a translation problem. Discussion continued at User talk:Jefu and at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles). — Joe Kress 18:44, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Sidereal time

Please see my comments on the talk page of User:Garglebutt and the talk page for Sidereal time. I am trying to keep orbit-related and earth-rotation-related times somewhat compartmentalized, connected via Time, so innocents will not mix up orbit-related and rotation-related timescales. As you probably know, ET runs extremely smoothly, as it is related to the orbits of all the planets and satellites, which change slowly, while sidereal time has fluctuation on the scales of hours, days, weeks and years (due to atmospheric, short-term tidal, and earth-core effects), plus long-term slowing down due to slowing earth rotation (cumulative effect of lunar tidal torque), as can be seen from TAI-UTC. Unfortunately the word "sidereal" enters in two places - orbit (sidereal year) and rotation (sidereal time) because it means "related to the stars" (nowadays - maybe originally read "heavens"). Sidereal year is about as unrelated to sidereal time as electric eels are related to electric guitars. Thanks Pdn 04:52, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Your deletion on Hebrew calendar

You deleted a link and gave the summary: "rv - dead link because it lacks a file type like .html"

Firstly, the link may have been dead when you tried, but it isn't now. Secondly, as far as I can make out there is no Wikipedia policy against including URLs that don't end in a filename extension. The only reasons to remove a dead link are:

• because it's dead, and with sufficient evidence that it isn't just a temporary server problem
• because the page it linked to was inappropriate anyway.

Moreover, this is the third time you've removed it claiming it's a dead link. If it really was dead each time, it would appear that either:

• the server has intermittent glitches - in which case being down at the moment isn't sufficient reason to delete it
• there's a problem with your Internet connection.

-- Smjg 18:23, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

I still don't know why my computer cannot access your site, but I tried a another computer which easily accessed it. My computer cannot even access the company website which has the cited page! — Joe Kress 16:59, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

Coligny calendar

Thanks for your corrections on Coligny calendar. I must have been having a poor day for finger coordination - sorry about the typos. It looks as if you have a good understanding of calendars, could you check this part about extra corrections needed beyond the five-year cycle for accuracy? I didn't write it, and I am not sure it is correct. There is evidence from the literature of marking a sequence of 30 years, which would be six rounds of a five-year calendar.

the sequence of intercalary months is completed every thirty years, after five cycles of 62 lunations with two intercalary months each, and one cycle of 61 lunations, with a single intercalary month, or after a total of 11 intercalary months. This assumes that there are exactly 371 lunations in 30 years, or 29.534 days to a month, which is accurate to 0.01%, or a shift of one day every 21 years on average (this is less accurate than the Julian calendar, which shifts less than a day in 100 years, but which ignores the lunar months). It may be assumed that the "30 years cycle" was not prescriptive, and that an extra month would have been omitted as the need arose (i.e. some 300 years after the calendar's inception).

--Nantonos 09:24, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I am an expert on many of the world's calendars, but I have not really studied the Coligny calendar, although I have been aware of it for many years. Another expert is Karl Palmen who has questioned the 30 year cycle on Talk:Coligny calendar. I note on Month that you have run afoul of Tom Peters, another calendar expert. All of us are members of CALNDR-L, an email discussion list, where the members discuss all calendars, historical, invented, or current. The Coligny calendar has been mentioned sporadically on the list. — Joe Kress 18:09, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers. I see that the list is actually about calendar reform, i.e. what calendars should be; such a focus helps explain the antipathy to what calendars actually are or actualty were. However, history is not well served by such revisionism; its better to state what we actually know and what was actually done. That they might have done it differently had we had a time machine to go and advise them differently is interesting, but somewhat Quixotic.

However, I actually dropped by to mention that I am about to edit the table of month names, which you wikified into a real table. This was nicely done, but the information in the table is sparse and inaccurate. I plan to reduce it to a plain list of month names and a detaled, referenced etymology for each. I hope that you are not put out by the removal of the table you inserted. --Nantonos 17:06, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I admit there is a lot of calendar reform discussion on CALNDR-L. I simply ignore it. However, its discussion of historical calendars does produce very useful information.

By all means, if your edits make better sense in a list rather than a table, go right ahead. — Joe Kress 02:39, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Ethiopian calendar, again

Hi Joe, I noticed that you changed the date style (e.g., "1 August" -> "August 1") from how it has historically appeared in the article. What was your reason? -- llywrch 18:00, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I just wanted to be consistent. I'm not sure if there ever was a consistent historical method. The article prior to the my latest change used both methods in fairly equal amounts. When the article was created, only the tabular dates were linked, which made them appear according to the date preference of the user. I would not object to changing all dates to day-month; indeed, I would prefer it. The big change is unlinking dates, which I don't believe should be linked if the date does not refer to a historical event. The Manual of Style does not require that dates be linked, only that some users welcome them. See its talk page for an extensive discussion on this topic. Indeed, I was hesitant to unlink the tabular dates, but decided to be "bold". One big problem with linking dates in an article like this is the havoc it does to phrases such as "29/30 August", which could become 29/August 30" for some users. The last straw was the recent change which linked "September 1" and "December 29" which were not even Julian/Gregorian dates! The same user even tried to change similar Japanese calendar dates specified as pseudo-Julian dates! Both myself and a Japanese editor immediately objected. — Joe Kress 18:49, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Just a belated note to say that I read your response & acquiesed to your decision, in case you were curious. (I don't feel that silence doesn't accurately permit me to convey this.) -- llywrch 23:31, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I am considering reverting most of my own changes, even though that would produce an inconsistent article. I now think that user preferences sometimes trumps no history if no harm is done, at least until Wikipedia software can be changed to separate user preferences from "what happened on this date". However, I would still not link any date that (1) disrupted the wording of the article if a user chose a date preference that would, for example, change "29 or 30 August" to "29 or August 30"; (2) was within quotes "...", which should always be in the form used by the quoted author regardless of user preference; or (3) was a date in a pseudo-Julian or pseudo-Gregorian calendar, because then the linked events would not have happened on that 'date' and would have no relationship to it. Although all three could be ameliorated by piping (|)—the first two for the date format required by the article and the third to the actual Julian/Gregorian date if known—that would still link dates to historical events, which is what I am trying to avoid when the date has no historical nature. — Joe Kress 03:10, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Maya calendar

Hi Joe. Thanks for picking up on my error re calculation of equivalent length of Baktun count. I overlooked that step in the conversion formula. Cheers!--cjllw | TALK 06:54, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Your "7890 solar years" may have had no relationship to the Julian Period, but was the approximate number of years in 20 baktuns. — Joe Kress 03:10, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Time Zone program link

Hi Joe,

My name is Todd W, I wrote a web based time zone program that is free to use and does not require the user to sign up.

I added the link to the time zone page but you removed it in revision http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Time_zone&oldid=25811466 stating that it was spam.

I am a hobby IT developer and my way of contributing is participating in beginners groups on usenet and writing web applications that are free to use.

Given the other external links on the time zone page I feel my link is also appropriate.

Thank you,

Todd W.

Future pages

Just a note. All future pages have their astronimcal predictions before any others, including Science Fiction. I reverted the edits. -- Chupon 16:35, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

1 BC

I just looked at this to see what I had done... and... and... well, what I had done was only add [[Category:1 BC]]. There must have been some cache error or something... (I had a similar problem trying to add r from misspelling to Musharaff). I was looking at this date's revision or something... thanks for pointing it out... surely not intentional though. gren グレン 02:10, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree there was probably some such error, since Category:1 BC had already been added over a year ago on 5 September 2004. — Joe Kress 06:27, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Redirects from misspellings...

...are a good idea, and help prevent duplicate articles, so good work. There is a template for placing them into a category so we can check if any links need to be edited to point to the correct page. See this for an example. — FREAK OF NUR_xTURE (TALK) 06:40, Jan. 17, 2006

Anno Domini

Could you please help and take a look at Anno Domini? I think the article has been worsened in the last week, and I'm feeling increasingly powerless to do anything about it since the changes had already been removed previously by both of us, while our arguments simply get buried deeply inside a barrage of text and ignored. I'm inclined to give up hope and unwatch that article; it seems to have an irressistible pull on a type of editor (from either side) who are continuously trying to transform the article into a battlefield. squell 12:36, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Since you oppose only including the conclusion that Dyonysius Exiguus placed the Annunciation in AD 1, without also including the possibility that he also placed it in 1 BC, in the article Ante Christum Natum, you might wish to know that a similar mention of only 1 AD occurs in the Anno Domini article. Within the article, search on "Annunciation or Incarnation of Jesus". --Gerry Ashton 03:18, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Almagest and equation of time

Did Ptolemaois really know about the equation of time? See discussion page. --Tauʻolunga 20:24, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Airy Transit Circle

Not to be picky but the Airy Transit circle is still in place and the meridian still passes through the cross hairs of the eye piece. It is no longer how the meridian is defined but the transit circle still does lie on the meridian (unless it's moved since I was last there a couple of months ago). I used to work there and demonstrate it to the public so I'm quite fond of it - I'm looking up stuff to add about the 28" refractor and the "onion" dome as that is a very interesting instrument. Pansy Brandybuck AKA Sophia^TalkTCF 14:13, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

You are right about the time ball. It drops at 12 noon GMT in the summer but that is only because BST wasn't invented when the time ball was used to set clocks. I always thought noon was the true time but apparently 1pm was picked as the astronomers were busy at noon and as it's just a tourist attraction now they don't change the time to reflect BST. Just shows what a fascinating place the ROG is and that there is always more to learn - thanks for correcting it. Gilraen of Dorthonion AKA Sophia^TalkTCF 13:40, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

NATO phonetic alphabet

I have reverted your change to NATO_phonetic_alphabet. Latin alphabet is correct (as opposed to Cyrillic), you may have thought that it refers to the Latin language. Titanium 22:40, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I reverted your reversion because the NATO phonetic alphabet does not have words for the European diacritics that are included in the modern Latin alphabet. All European languages specify that any letter that has a diacritic is distinct from its bare English form, and some even include them separately in their alphabet—the article indicates that Danish does this. As the article already indicates, German, Danish, and Norwegian have felt the need for words representing diacritized letters by using more than 26 words in their own national phonetic alphabets. Of course, the old Latin alphabet did not have J, U, or W, but that is a minor point compared to the modern inclusive Latin alphabet I just discussed. You apparently agree that all Western European languages use the Latin alphabet because you contrast it with the Cyrillic alphabet, which is derived from the Greek alphabet. — Joe Kress 02:07, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, you are correct. I thought that the national diacriticized letters are also part of the NATO phonetic alphabet, but now I see that even the article contradicts this. This should remind me not to make any quick edits at 3am. — Titanium 07:40, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Jefferson Pier

FYI, I remember in the past you have taken an interest in Washington meridan markers. I just put together a short article on Jefferson Pier. If you have ideas on improving it, please do so. — Eoghanacht ^talk 17:59, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the facts-checking. — Eoghanacht ^talk 15:55, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

your reversion of Coordinated Universal Time

I reverted your reversion because you reverted to a much older version lacking a lot of material that I added/rewrote in the past few days. It looks like you were only attempting to revert my move of the section on the reason for leaps from leap second, under the impression that this was the full merge of the two articles that I proposed earlier. It wasn't; I moved that section because it was downright in the wrong article. I also rewrote it considerably along the way. If you're convinced that that section belongs in leap second then please move the rewritten version to leap second and leave the rest of Coordinated Universal Time alone. 195.224.75.71 10:28, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Maya Calendar Revisions

What was self-referential and erronious in the material you removed from the Maya Calendar Article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.54.110.21 (talk • contribs)

Self-referential was the statement "To see the calculations involved look here." because it refers to a Wikipedia Template (Maya date), which is outside the Wikipedia article namespace. A hyperlink to a Wikipedia location outside the article namespace is self-referential and is not normally allowed. The erroneous info was the statement "3111 BC (historical) is the same as -3113 (astronomical)". Actually, -3113 is 3114 BC. I also removed ISO, because the Julian/Gregorian calendar is not the ISO calendar. The latter is solely the Gregorian calendar (and the proleptic Gregorian calendar). I also felt that 'astronomical' should also be removed because the argument referred to Julian vs Gregorian dates, not to astronomical year numbering per se, hence the warning about no year zero became superfluous. — Joe Kress 06:54, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

equinox & solstice

And thank you too to change my wordings into real English. --Tauʻolunga 05:58, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

iceland

...well done. while adding countries to UTC+0 I totally forgot about this false trivia. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 01:13, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

0 (number) image removal

I see you removed the image from the 0 (number) article because it did not show shell glyph. You are correct that it did not show the shell glyph, but it does:

• Show an actual Long Count calendar entry
• Allow the reader to better understand the Long Count
• Demonstrate why the Long Count made it necessary to have a "zero" placeholder.

More than that, this article is very dry in places and an image, particularly an image that highlights matters discussed in the article, can not only aid comprehension, but enliven the article visually.

Your thoughts? Madman 03:39, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

multiplication symbols

Joe, I saw that you replaced multiplication symbols in the Computus page. That's fine for '*'s (calculator habit), but why replace proper HTML entities like − and × by ambiguous ASCII chars? I know other people who make the edits the other way around. That way articles keep oscillating. Tom Peters 02:50, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in answering, but you added your note at the begining of this talk page where I don't expect new edits. Those characters are not supposed to be ambiguous ASCII characters, but unambiguous Unicode characters that were finally allowed in a recent spring 2006 release of new Wikipedia software. Several bots are now going around all Wikipedia articles and making the same changes from HTML entities to hardcoded Unicode characters. I got my characters from the list immediately below the edit window that is opened when you edit any Wikipedia article, hence are recommended by Wikipedia developers. Obviously, the software designers feel that Unicode characters are preferable to HTML entities, especially those beyond ASCII or EBCDIC characters like Chinese characters that formerly had to be coded via decimal or hexadecimal numbers. — Joe Kress 18:10, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

hindu calender request

can we keep both the dates. There can be a future policy wherein all dates before 1st century will have to be defined in proleptic gregorian calender. Moreover we have precedence too, like in case of shakespeare and george washington, we have defined both the dates. Also, most of the time in India, the date is reported in proleptic Gregorian calender as 23rd Jan. Thanks.nids(♂) 08:04, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Moved to Talk:Hindu calendar and answered there. — Joe Kress 17:54, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

When did January 1 become the beginning of the year?

Hi Joe,

I had a question about this section of January 1 from this [1] edit:

"January 1 was adopted as the first day of the Julian year by all Western European countries except England between about 1450 and 1600."

My understanding was that January 1 was established as the first day of the year as part of the Gregorian reform. Were there countries that established the first day of the year as January 1 prior to converting to the Gregorian calendar? (Feel free to reply in Talk:January 1 if that's a more appropriate place for this topic.) Jim Douglas 02:44, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I discuss this fully at Gregorian calendar#Beginning of the year. However, I note that some modification of the January 1 discussion is in order, now that a more complete table of countries has been developed that lists their adoption of January 1 as New Year's Day in contrast with their adoption of the Gregorian calendar. The two events happened close enough in time to each other that they are now often regarded as occuring at the same time. — Joe Kress 17:37, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Joe; I didn't realize countries were already switching New Year's Day to January 1 prior to 1582. The part that jumped out at me was "about 1450...". Do we have references to countries that changed to January 1 as early as 1450? This page [2] indicates that Venice was first, in 1522. Jim Douglas 18:49, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

The limits of the period of time when January 1 was being selected as New Year's Day is the part I was referring to when I mentioned "some modification". Either my memory was faulty when I wrote that or there are other countries not mentioned in the table that adopted it earlier. Another possibility is that I was confusing the even earlier related event of the switch by the Iberian countries (Portugal, Spain and their subdivisions) from the Spanish era whose year one was 38 BC to the Anno Domini era. Portugal switched in 1422 and Navarre at the end of the fifteenth century. — Joe Kress 00:42, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

CALNDR-L

Done, and thanks for the invite. I also have zero interest in discussions about proposed calendars, but I find the history of calendars fascinating. -- Jim Douglas 23:42, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Days of the week

Why did you change the days of the week article? You mention in your note that you changed it because ISO is for computers. Absolute nonsense. ISO is used by computers but it's not for computers. ISO is the International Organisation for Standardisation. The International Standard for the days of the week places Monday as the first day of the week. While it may be correct to note for historical reasons some countries choose to start their week with Sunday, it is not true to place American values and standards on the factual integrity of the article. Monday has been agreed internationally as the first day of the week and if Wikipedia is for everyone in the world then this is how the article should be written. By changing it you are re-enforcing the American view of the week days sequence and creating a view that Wikipedia is only for Americans. It is also not true to say "In English...." when the UK, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and others places Monday as the first day according to ISO standards.

I would like to change this article to correct this but if you are going to change it again each time I do then perhaps we should work on a common draft. Sir Marky 17:03, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Byzantine calendar

Thank you for adding more information and an expert revision to my article on the Byzantine calendar. I was hoping that someone with more expert knowledge would add information. I only wonder why it took so long for someone to write an article about the Byzantine calendar--so I had to do it because no one else had. Keraunos 10:56, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I was not sure if it was necessary, since the Byzantine calendar is just the Julian calendar in Greek (I do not regard the designation of the year as part of the calendar). Its historical development could have been included in the Julian calendar article (if it had occurred to me to include it) and indeed it should be included there. Finally, I never got around to it. — Joe Kress 06:32, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Were Mayans Aware of the Precession of the Equinoxes?

Since each Mayan world cycle lasts about 5,125 years (approximately; I forget the exact figure) and there are five of them, wouldn't this be evidence that the Mayans knew about the precession of the equinoxes since five cycles add up to about that length of time (25,868 years)? Keraunos 11:09, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

It requires more evidence than a numerical coincidence to show that they had some knowledge. In none of their writings do the Maya exhibit any knowledge that the stars shift their positions relative to the solstices and equinoxes. — Joe Kress 06:32, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

ISO 8601

Thanks for restoring the sloppy glitches in my edit of the ISO 8601 article. I should have been more careful. −Woodstone 12:36, 8 October 2006 (UTC)