Posted on 08/29/2004 5:12:51 PM PDT by Salvation
I've seen 1" = exactly 25.4mm some places (I use that one at work since it's easy to guesstimate and we design in inches anyway.) I think it's one of the official versions of the inch.
The prime reason.
According to the NIST cite, http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP811/appenB.html (Scroll down to section B.6):
"The U. S. Metric Law of 1866 gave the relationship 1 m = 39.37 in (in is the unit symbol for the inch). From 1893 until 1959, the yard was defined as being exactly equal to (3600/3937) m, and thus the foot was defined as being exactly equal to (1200/3937) m.
"In 1959 the definition of the yard was changed to bring the U.S. yard and the yard used in other countries into agreement. Since then the yard has been defined as exactly equal to 0.9144 m, and thus the foot has been defined as exactly equal to 0.3048 m. At the same time it was decided that any data expressed in feet derived from geodetic surveys within the United States would continue to bear the relationship as defined in 1893, namely, 1 ft = (1200/ 3937) m (ft is the unit symbol for the foot). The name of this foot is "U.S. survey foot," while the name of the new foot defined in 1959 is "international foot." The two are related to each other through the expression 1 international foot = 0.999 998 U.S. survey foot exactly. "
BTW, 0.3048/12 x 1000 = 25.4 (eggzactly), so yer right!
The UN apparently think they are the Q Continnum. Next thing you know, they'll be trying to change the gravitational constant of the Universe.
Besides, a thirteen-month year would really screw up my Druid ceremonies.
How do you calculate the Chinese New Year? Twentieth day of the Twelveth Moon? What about intercalary years? How do you determine when an intercalary year occurs? Are moon dates (lunations) counted from New Moon (almost the Judeo-Islamic style) or Full Moon? Who decides the age of the moon? Is any particular meridan preferred? In any strict solar/lunar calendar assignment of dates to events (lunations, solstices or equinox) is dependent on the choice of meridan and defintion of the start of a day. Who decides these things for the Chinese calendar and how?
Thanks!
Okay. So? The Jewish calendar is lunar.
They didn't miss it. There are a number of Lunar calendars in existence, including that used by the Jews.
I wasn't aware of that.
Ancient lunar calendars would add an extra ("intercalary") month every second or third year, but it was hard to discover a formula to know in advance when to add the extra months, so it was a bit haphazard. There were typically harvest festivals which needed to be celebrated at the right time, so they wanted to keep the lunar calendar approximately in line with the solar year.
Muslims still use a lunar calendar, but do not insert intercalary months, so their festivals rotate through our year (the start of Ramadan is about 11 days earlier every year).
So will they change how they count the years? And if so, how would they number them? Would it be retroactive? If it were, what would happen to "I Love the '80's"?
That's what I said.
That's because Julius and Augustus insisted on having their own months, complete with 31 days. That's also why February is short.
Here's your ping!
I apologize that I'm no scholar in this field (my area is more electrical engineering and history), but my personal observations run like this:
1) Each month starts with the new moon: full moon is always 15th of the month.
2) The most important special day is the winter solstice: it always falls on either 21 or 22 December on the Western (Gregorian) calendar. It is very important that it is often marked with a special dinner, and there is a saying in traditional Chinese culture that "Winter solstice is more important than the New Year". From the period between 1850 and 1945 when Christianity was regarded as purely Western culture, Christmas was often called "Western winter solstice" by the Chinese people.
I have found the following pages that discuss chinese calendar to more detail and fluently in English:
http://webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-chinese.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_calendar
http://www.friesian.com/chinacal.htm
Actually, until the seventeenth century or so, the new year started with March, not January, so the naming system made sense up until then.
Thirteen Moon Natural Time Peace Calendar
"a more "natural" 13-month year that more closely parallels the lunar and biological cycles."
It must be out of step with either the moon or the year.
But spring, birthdays etc, will shift around meaninglessly. If your birthday is on the 28th of the 13th month, where will it be next year, will you wait for 13 months and 1 day, the 1st of the 1st month which is 365 days?
When it comes to your legal age, will you be 20 on the 28th of the 13th month, or do you have to calculate the error in the year you were born and the error in the present year, and perhaps wait several more days to become 20?
Who really cares about the moon cycles, apart from tidal effects, which are well documented already?
How does this help peace, will evil people stop their murdering? Reminding them that there is a God to account to is much more effective.
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