From: Alex Ferguson (abf@cs.ucc.ie)
Date: Sun 23 Jan 2000 - 22:42:11 EET
Peter Metcalfe:
> I thought it was the Passing On of Vashanti that was so glorious, not
> the ascension of Yanoor.
Err... maybe. Maybe both, I'm out of superlatives for comparing
their relative degrees of ineffability, for the moment. (cop-out,
cop-out...)
> Godunya's own ascension, it must be said,
> cause nary a ripple in the outside world.
Insert random anti-outside-world rhetoric, to taste. (The precursor
events were pretty showy, though...)
[pre-Darkness length of Year]
> Alas even the Orlanthi myths talk about the Emperor, his Ten
> Nobles and the 294 commoners.
Well yes, but one is forced to recall that old Nickism about not
writing down myths so they can change, with reality...
> Plentonic Calendar implies that an improvement must have
> taken place circa 1220 ST...
Well, a convenient week-clock is an 'improvement' of sorts, no?
(OK, OK, she wasn't in the sky until 27 years later, pickypickypicky.)
> >The calendar
> >operating between "the Dawn" (OST or 111,221 YS, takeyerpick) and
> >the Sunstop I presume had 'leap weeks', with some years having 29 weeks
> >and some 28, or some such device to that effect.
> Surely 29 weeks and 30 weeks?
Oops, surely so, indeed.
> Works out to one leap week every five years.
2 out of 5, if my arithmetic is improving any. My guess at the scheme
would some sort of ten-year repating pattern, either four years in
a row with 30 weeks, or with the leap-weeks 'quartering' the ten-year
period, just to be anally Dara Happan about it.
The idea of assorted (indeed, most) years 'missing out' a perfectly
decent week of the year strikes me as likely to entirely enrage DHns
of the day. This fact alone leads me to conclude that there exists
a myth about how that week was 'broken', at some point in mythic
history. Of course, this myth may or may not be very 'true', in the
sense of being magically powerful, etc, but it seems to me to have
an obvious explantory value, though not so great that the Nyslorean
scheme wouldn't seem a vast improvement, regardless...
Cheers,
Alex.
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