What is the proper noun for the time AM & PM daily cycle time period indicator?

[Arlen Holder]

What is the proper noun for the time AM & PM daily cycle time period
indicator?

Googling, a noun that seem to come up when describing these periods is:
o meridiem indicator

Is that then the proper noun to use to refer to these two abbreviations?
o AM === ante meridiem
o PM === post meridiem

The reason I ask is simply that I'd like to use the correct words in a
freeware based tutorial I wrote today to help people set their clocks.
o *Tutorial for duplicating a Windows taskbar clock in any desired timezone*
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.comp.freeware/LmfYs2a4o0Q>
--
Usenet is a place for adults to gather to politely discuss technical stuff.

[Eric Walker]

On Thu, 09 Apr 2020 01:13:14 +0530, Arlen Holder wrote:

[...]

> Is that then the proper noun to use to refer to these two abbreviations?
> o AM === ante meridiem o PM === post meridiem

Yes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock


--
Cordially,
Eric Walker

[J. J. Lodder]

Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 09 Apr 2020 01:13:14 +0530, Arlen Holder wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > Is that then the proper noun to use to refer to these two abbreviations?
> > o AM === ante meridiem o PM === post meridiem
>
> Yes:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock

and in particular
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock#Confusion_at_noon_and_midnight>

Using AM and PM is just evil,

Jan

[Dingbat]

Why was a day divided into two halves anyway? In India, a day was
divided into 30 muhurtas each subdivided into two nadikas.

When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd. I
 was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn. fFr Brahmins, the
 day started at Brahma Muhurtam (4:24 AM if I remember correctly which
 would be 5 1/2 muhurtas, or 11 nadikas, after midnight).

Be that as it may, I find the Jewish day starting at dusk even more odd
than a day starting at midnight.

FWIW, Europe historically had a day starting at dawn; noon originally
meant the 9th hour of a day starting at dawn and was equivalent to
what we now call 3PM or 15:00. I don't know when Europe switched to a
day starting at midnight.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2020-04-09 13:06:33 +0000, Dingbat said:

> On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 1:56:39 PM UTC+5:30, J. J. Lodder wrote:

> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd. I
> was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn. fFr Brahmins, the
> day started at Brahma Muhurtam (4:24 AM if I remember correctly which
> would be 5 1/2 muhurtas, or 11 nadikas, after midnight).
>
> Be that as it may, I find the Jewish day starting at dusk even more
> odd than a day starting at midnight.

When I visited Mount Athos many years ago I was puzzled that in most of
the monasteries they had clocks in apparently working order that
displayed the wrong time. One of them, very modernistic and
forward-looking, followed normal Greek time, but most of the others
started the day with 12 o'clock at sunset. There was also one that
started the day with 12 o'clock at sunrise. This last would be closest
to your Brahmin time, but I've never encountered it anywhere else.

When I was lecturing in Bangalore in 2001 all the clocks I saw showed
normal time. The lectures began at 09.00 sharp, and when I say "sharp"
I mean sharp: when the electronic clock showed 08.59.59 the chairman
stood up and I was expected to start at 09.00.00. He was not a Brahmin
-- a Sudra, I think.

--
athel

[bebe...@aol.com]

Le jeudi 9 avril 2020 15:17:42 UTC+2, Dingbat a écrit :
> On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 1:56:39 PM UTC+5:30, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> > Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On Thu, 09 Apr 2020 01:13:14 +0530, Arlen Holder wrote:
> > >
> > > [...]
> > >
> > > > Is that then the proper noun to use to refer to these two abbreviations?
> > > > o AM === ante meridiem o PM === post meridiem
> > >
> > > Yes:
> > >
> > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock
> >
> > and in particular
> > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock#Confusion_at_noon_and_midnight>
> >
> > Using AM and PM is just evil,
> >
> > Jan
>
> Why was a day divided into two halves anyway? In India, a day was
> divided into 30 muhurtas each subdivided into two nadikas.
>
> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd. I
>  was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn. fFr Brahmins, the
>  day started at Brahma Muhurtam (4:24 AM if I remember correctly which
>  would be 5 1/2 muhurtas, or 11 nadikas, after midnight).
>
> Be that as it may, I find the Jewish day starting at dusk even more odd
> than a day starting at midnight.

No, it just reflects this passage of Genesis, in the Torah:

|"And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.
|And there was evening and there was morning, one day."

Whereby darkness precedes light in a day.

[Jerry Friedman]

...
Or does the passage in Genesis reflect the Jewish custom at the time the
passage originated?

--
Jerry Friedman

[J. J. Lodder]

I remember reading somwhere that this is Byzantine time.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_time>
Days start with 0:00:00 at sunset.
Since Byzantine clocks lacked pendulums
they might be off by an hour a day anyway,
so a daily reset wasn't a problem.

I have seen one hand medieval tower clocks.
According to the explanation provided
they were adjustable to unequal hours.
That is, always twelve hours between sunrise and sunset,
with 6 AM at sunrise, 12 at midday and 6PM at sunset.
They kept time by means of a swinging beam, with adjustable weights.
The best were accurate to a few minutes/day.

> When I was lecturing in Bangalore in 2001 all the clocks I saw showed
> normal time. The lectures began at 09.00 sharp, and when I say "sharp"
> I mean sharp: when the electronic clock showed 08.59.59 the chairman
> stood up and I was expected to start at 09.00.00. He was not a Brahmin
> -- a Sudra, I think.

They must have inherited their precise habits from 19th century England.
The English themselves have become more lax in the meantime.

Jan

[J. J. Lodder]

Dingbat <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 1:56:39 PM UTC+5:30, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> > Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On Thu, 09 Apr 2020 01:13:14 +0530, Arlen Holder wrote:
> > >
> > > [...]
> > >
> > > > Is that then the proper noun to use to refer to these two abbreviations?
> > > > o AM === ante meridiem o PM === post meridiem
> > >
> > > Yes:
> > >
> > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock
> >
> > and in particular
> > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock#Confusion_at_noon_and_midnight>
> >
> > Using AM and PM is just evil,
> >
> > Jan
>
> Why was a day divided into two halves anyway? In India, a day was
> divided into 30 muhurtas each subdivided into two nadikas.
>
> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd. I
> was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn. fFr Brahmins, the
> day started at Brahma Muhurtam (4:24 AM if I remember correctly which
> would be 5 1/2 muhurtas, or 11 nadikas, after midnight).

Trust them to make a mess of it.

> Be that as it may, I find the Jewish day starting at dusk even more odd
> than a day starting at midnight.
> FWIW, Europe historically had a day starting at dawn; noon originally
> meant the 9th hour of a day starting at dawn and was equivalent to
> what we now call 3PM or 15:00. I don't know when Europe switched to a
> day starting at midnight.

In the 19th century.
The original Julian Day count started at noon,
in agreement with the custom at the time.
Sometime mid 19th people introduced a Modified Julan Day
with a new origin, and starting at midmight.
Wikip will no doubt have a lot more than you want to know,

Jan

[bebe...@aol.com]

Didn't the Torah predate Judaism (which is precisely based on it), and
therefore all Jewish customs?

>
> --
> Jerry Friedman

[Peter Young]

On 9 Apr 2020 Dingbat <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 1:56:39 PM UTC+5:30, J. J. Lodder wrote:

> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd. I
> was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn. fFr Brahmins, the
> day started at Brahma Muhurtam (4:24 AM if I remember correctly which
> would be 5 1/2 muhurtas, or 11 nadikas, after midnight).

> Be that as it may, I find the Jewish day starting at dusk even more
> odd than a day starting at midnight.

What about the Ethiopian day starting at 06:00?

Peter.

--
Peter Young, (BrE, RP), Consultant Anaesthetist, 1975-2004.
(US equivalent: Certified Anesthesiologist) (AUE Hg)
Cheltenham and Gloucester, UK. Now happily retired.
http://pnyoung.orpheusweb.co.uk

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 10:03:22 AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

> When I was lecturing in Bangalore in 2001 all the clocks I saw showed
> normal time. The lectures began at 09.00 sharp, and when I say "sharp"
> I mean sharp: when the electronic clock showed 08.59.59 the chairman
> stood up and I was expected to start at 09.00.00. He was not a Brahmin
> -- a Sudra, I think.

They're a half-hour off the world to start with.

[Ken Blake]

On 4/9/2020 6:17 AM, Dingbat wrote:

> Why was a day divided into two halves anyway? In India, a day was
> divided into 30 muhurtas each subdivided into two nadikas.

It will never get changed, but I wish time was decimal: divide a day
into 10 hours, an hour into 100 minutes, and a minute into 100 seconds.

--
Ken

[Dingbat]

The Sun traverses 360 degrees in a day each divided into 60 minutes.
So, how about ...

... a clock divided into 360 degrees each divided into 60 minutes?

Its degree would be 4 minutes and its minute would be 4 seconds,
on current clocks.

[Ken Blake]

It was very long ago. Does anyone know for sure? I'm far from an expert
on this, but I always thought it was the other way around--that the
torah was a codification of the Judaism that already existed.

>(which is precisely based on it), and
> therefore all Jewish customs?

Surely there are many Jewish customs that aren't based on the torah.
Many came from Maimonedes and others like him around the 13th century.



--
Ken

[J. J. Lodder]

Of course. They were yokels, shepards from the hills at best.
They never had he refined astronomical capability of the Babylonians,
or the court culture that made it possible.

And sunset is much easier to observe than sun at highest,
and corrections apply to that too, [1]

Jan

[1] Yes, the Babylonians already knew about the equation of time.

[Jerry Friedman]

On 4/9/20 9:21 AM, bebe...@aol.com wrote:
> Le jeudi 9 avril 2020 16:42:59 UTC+2, Jerry Friedman a écrit :
>> On 4/9/20 8:38 AM, bebe...@aol.com wrote:
>>> Le jeudi 9 avril 2020 15:17:42 UTC+2, Dingbat a écrit :

...

>>>> Be that as it may, I find the Jewish day starting at dusk even more odd
>>>> than a day starting at midnight.
>>>
>>> No, it just reflects this passage of Genesis, in the Torah:
>>>
>>> |"And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.
>>> |And there was evening and there was morning, one day."
>>>
>>> Whereby darkness precedes light in a day.
>> ...
>> Or does the passage in Genesis reflect the Jewish custom at the time the
>> passage originated?
>
> Didn't the Torah predate Judaism (which is precisely based on it), and
> therefore all Jewish customs?

I thought about that, and I think it partly depends on what you mean by
Jewish and what you mean by the Torah. But unless you believe the Torah
was handed down on Mount Sinai, it seems likely that much of it was
based on existing stories and customs. I suspect that "It [or "There"]
was evening and it was morning, the first day" was based on the custom
among the people who first said or wrote it, whether you want to call
them Jews or not.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Jerry Friedman]

On 4/9/20 10:15 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
> On 4/9/2020 8:21 AM, bebe...@aol.com wrote:
>> Le jeudi 9 avril 2020 16:42:59 UTC+2, Jerry Friedman a écrit :
>>> On 4/9/20 8:38 AM, bebe...@aol.com wrote:
>>> > Le jeudi 9 avril 2020 15:17:42 UTC+2, Dingbat a écrit :

...

>>> >> Be that as it may, I find the Jewish day starting at dusk even
>>> more odd
>>> >>   than a day starting at midnight.
>>> > > No, it just reflects this passage of Genesis, in the Torah:
>>> > > |"And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.
>>> > |And there was evening and there was morning, one day."
>>> > > Whereby darkness precedes light in a day.
>>> ...
>>> Or does the passage in Genesis reflect the Jewish custom at the time
>>> the passage originated?
>>
>> Didn't the Torah predate Judaism
>
>
> It was very long ago. Does anyone know for sure? I'm far from an expert
> on this, but I always thought it was the other way around--that the
> torah was a codification of the Judaism that already existed.
>
>
>> (which is precisely based on it), and
>> therefore all Jewish customs?
>
>
> Surely there are many Jewish customs that aren't based on the torah.
> Many came from Maimonedes and others like him around the 13th century.

Supposedly such things are based on the Torah in a sense including the
Oral Law. But many Jewish customs, notably foods and mathematical
things such as gematria and the calendar, were borrowed from non-Jewish
neighbors.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Dingbat]

On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 8:42:11 PM UTC+5:30, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> Dingbat <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 1:56:39 PM UTC+5:30, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> > > Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Thu, 09 Apr 2020 01:13:14 +0530, Arlen Holder wrote:
> > > >
> > > > [...]
> > > >
> > > > > Is that then the proper noun to use to refer to these two abbreviations?
> > > > > o AM === ante meridiem o PM === post meridiem
> > > >
> > > > Yes:
> > > >
> > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock
> > >
> > > and in particular
> > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock#Confusion_at_noon_and_midnight>
> > >
> > > Using AM and PM is just evil,
> > >
> > > Jan
> >
> > Why was a day divided into two halves anyway? In India, a day was
> > divided into 30 muhurtas each subdivided into two nadikas.
> >
> > When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd. I

> > was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn. For Brahmins, the

> > day started at Brahma Muhurtam (4:24 AM if I remember correctly which
> > would be 5 1/2 muhurtas, or 11 nadikas, after midnight).
>
> Trust them to make a mess of it.
>

What's messy about a day starting just before dawn? It's an ideal time to
start a day, I should think. FWIW, I didn't read that it was 4:24 AM;
I calculated that from something I read, and never verified that my
calculation was correct.

[Jerry Friedman]

On 4/9/20 10:40 AM, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> On 4/9/20 8:38 AM, bebe...@aol.com wrote:
>>> Le jeudi 9 avril 2020 15:17:42 UTC+2, Dingbat a écrit :

...

>>>> Why was a day divided into two halves anyway? In India, a day was
>>>> divided into 30 muhurtas each subdivided into two nadikas.
>>>>
>>>> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd. I
>>>> was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn. fFr Brahmins, the
>>>> day started at Brahma Muhurtam (4:24 AM if I remember correctly which
>>>> would be 5 1/2 muhurtas, or 11 nadikas, after midnight).
>>>>
>>>> Be that as it may, I find the Jewish day starting at dusk even more odd
>>>> than a day starting at midnight.
>>>
>>> No, it just reflects this passage of Genesis, in the Torah:
>>>
>>> |"And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.
>>> |And there was evening and there was morning, one day."
>>>
>>> Whereby darkness precedes light in a day.
>> ...
>> Or does the passage in Genesis reflect the Jewish custom at the time the
>> passage originated?
>
> Of course. They were yokels, shepards from the hills at best.
> They never had he refined astronomical capability of the Babylonians,
> or the court culture that made it possible.

"Shepherds", though "Shepard" exists as a name.

For the yokels from the hills, see a passage from /The King Must Die/.
We could talk for a while about whether it's antisemitic.

> They never had he refined astronomical capability of the Babylonians,
> or the court culture that made it possible.
>
> And sunset is much easier to observe than sun at highest,
> and corrections apply to that too, [1]
>
> Jan
>
> [1] Yes, the Babylonians already knew about the equation of time.

Not speaking for Ranjit, but the part I find odd is starting with sunset
rather than sunrise.

--
Jerry Friedman

[J. J. Lodder]

What else can a codification be?

Jan

[J. J. Lodder]

Off to the guillotine with you!

Jan

[J. J. Lodder]

Dingbat <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 9:33:36 PM UTC+5:30, Ken Blake wrote:
> > On 4/9/2020 6:17 AM, Dingbat wrote:
> >
> > > Why was a day divided into two halves anyway? In India, a day was
> > > divided into 30 muhurtas each subdivided into two nadikas.
> >
> > It will never get changed, but I wish time was decimal: divide a day
> > into 10 hours, an hour into 100 minutes, and a minute into 100 seconds.
> >
>
> The Sun traverses 360 degrees in a day each divided into 60 minutes.
> So, how about ...

Eh? 400 grads, you said?

Jan

[J. J. Lodder]

Yes, of course.

> For the yokels from the hills, see a passage from /The King Must Die/.
> We could talk for a while about whether it's antisemitic.

And well, yes, sorry about that.
The right word just wouldn't come up.
An ignorant nobody from the middle of nowhere,
bereft of civilization. Not even peasants.
Even their legends, such as the flood, were stolen from their betters.
Complete incompetents in the state of the astronomical arts
of their time. What would you call them?

> > They never had he refined astronomical capability of the Babylonians,
> > or the court culture that made it possible.
> >
> > And sunset is much easier to observe than sun at highest,
> > and corrections apply to that too, [1]
> >
> > Jan
> >
> > [1] Yes, the Babylonians already knew about the equation of time.
>
> Not speaking for Ranjit, but the part I find odd is starting with sunset
> rather than sunrise.

Seems somewhat logcal to me, sunset -> day over, start new one,
but of course you can also say that for sunrise,

Jan

[J. J. Lodder]

To me having 5 1/2 muhurtas, or 11 nadikas for starters
seems much worse than having foot/mile, or fluid ounces/gallon,
or wharever,

Jan

[Mark Brader]

Ken Blake:

> It will never get changed, but I wish time was decimal: divide a day
> into 10 hours, an hour into 100 minutes, and a minute into 100 seconds.

It's been tried; it just didn't catch on.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/32127/anykey

--
Mark Brader, Toronto But that's what all the other
m...@vex.net individualists are doing!

[Jerry Friedman]

I wasn't criticizing you. (I'm less sure about the passage from TKMD.)

> The right word just wouldn't come up.
> An ignorant nobody from the middle of nowhere,
> bereft of civilization.

At least in early times, and less civilized than their neighbors for a
long time.

> Not even peasants.

I don't know what you mean by that.

> Even their legends, such as the flood, were stolen from their betters.

Some of the legends, and it's not clear to me whether the flood and
snake-and-fruit legends were stolen from Mesopotamian legends or derived
by oral transmission from the same source.

> Complete incompetents in the state of the astronomical arts
> of their time. What would you call them?

"Indigenous" is the popular word these days, though I think it might be
nice to reclaim "primitive".

>>> They never had he refined astronomical capability of the Babylonians,
>>> or the court culture that made it possible.
>>>
>>> And sunset is much easier to observe than sun at highest,
>>> and corrections apply to that too, [1]
>>>
>>> Jan
>>>
>>> [1] Yes, the Babylonians already knew about the equation of time.
>>
>> Not speaking for Ranjit, but the part I find odd is starting with sunset
>> rather than sunrise.
>
> Seems somewhat logcal to me, sunset -> day over, start new one,
> but of course you can also say that for sunrise,

I think of sunrise as more of a beginning that of sunset as an end, but
maybe that's my modern point of view and people back then were woken up
by roosters or by animals wanting to be milked.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Ken Blake]

Yes, but it's that "supposedly" that I don't believe.

> Oral Law. But many Jewish customs, notably foods and mathematical
> things such as gematria and the calendar, were borrowed from non-Jewish
> neighbors.
>


--

Ken

[Ken Blake]

On 4/9/2020 11:10 AM, Mark Brader wrote:
> Ken Blake:
>> It will never get changed, but I wish time was decimal: divide a day
>> into 10 hours, an hour into 100 minutes, and a minute into 100 seconds.
>
> It's been tried; it just didn't catch on.
>
> http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/32127/anykey

Thanks. I didn't know that.


--
Ken

[J. J. Lodder]

Mark Brader <m...@vex.net> wrote:

> Ken Blake:
> > It will never get changed, but I wish time was decimal: divide a day
> > into 10 hours, an hour into 100 minutes, and a minute into 100 seconds.
>
> It's been tried; it just didn't catch on.
>
> http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/32127/anykey

I have seen a very rare mantelpiece clock from the period,
with decimal time on one side, and standard time on the other.
Depending on which visitors you expected you could turn it
to appear to be a conservative or a true revolutionary.
You could lose your head over it.

Way way way over my budget,
and probably in some museum by now,

Jan

[J. J. Lodder]

The whole metric system was geared to the needs of navigation.
The meridian was put into it by Borda, a former sea captain.

Would have been nice, 400 grads to the circle,
40 000 km to the cicumference, so 100 km/grad latitude,
and idem grad longitude at the equator.
And 400 meter/decimal second, 4 000 km/decimal hour.
(rotational speed at the equator)

It never worked out, but the meridian remained,
and the French used grads in their maps
until GPS came along,

Jan

[Quinn C]

* Dingbat:

> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd. I
>  was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn.

For everyday purposes, we often consider the day starting when we get
up. So I may have watched TV yesterday until 1 am, and I may have had a
dream yesterday - but formally at 8 am today.

--
The wrong body ... now comes not to claim rightness but to
dismantle the system that metes out rightness and wrongness
according to the dictates of various social orders.
-- Jack Halberstam, Unbuilding Gender

[RH Draney]

On 4/9/2020 2:25 PM, Quinn C wrote:
> * Dingbat:
>
>> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd. I
>>  was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn.
>
> For everyday purposes, we often consider the day starting when we get
> up. So I may have watched TV yesterday until 1 am, and I may have had a
> dream yesterday - but formally at 8 am today.

WIWAL, I learned that while calendars say the week starts on Sunday, and
most people say the day starts at midnight, TV Guide had different
ideas...their day started at 6am, and the week started with Saturday....r

[John Varela]

On Thu, 9 Apr 2020 18:21:17 UTC, Jerry Friedman

"Day's end" means sunset, and "a new day dawns" means sunrise. It's
useless to try to sort this out. You must all be bored out of your
skulls with this quarantine, spending your time arguing about this
sort of thing.

--
John Varela

[John Varela]

On Thu, 9 Apr 2020 16:03:33 UTC, Ken Blake <k...@invalidemail.com>
wrote:

Didn't revolutionary France try to introduce something of the sort
and failed?

--
John Varela

[John Varela]

Forget it. I shoulda read ahead.

--
John Varela

[Dingbat]

How about if you take Indian time as the standard? Then would you say
European time is messy, having a day starting 4 4/10 hours earlier
for starters?

> seems much worse than having foot/mile, or fluid ounces/gallon,
> or wharever

The Babylonians used base 60. Who uses 24 for anything? Dividing
the day into 60 nadigas seems cleaner than dividing it into 24
periods or worse, dividing into 2 halves each divided into 12
periods.

[Katy Jennison]

On the BBC website, the weather forecast for a given day starts at 6am.

--
Katy Jennison

[Dingbat]

On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 1:56:39 PM UTC+5:30, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 09 Apr 2020 01:13:14 +0530, Arlen Holder wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > Is that then the proper noun to use to refer to these two abbreviations?
> > > o AM === ante meridiem o PM === post meridiem
> >
> > Yes:
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock
>
> and in particular
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock#Confusion_at_noon_and_midnight>
>
> Using AM and PM is just evil,
>

WRT 12 o'clock, you can avoid using AM or PM by saying
"12 midnight" and "12 noon". End of confusion!

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Yes. It survived until Napoleon moved back to the usual system. They
also got rid of AD and BC, and started counting years from the
establishment of the Republic. Back in 1974 I needed to refer to

Laplace, P. S. (1798) Mécanique Celeste, book 3, chapter 5, section 40,
Capelet, Paris (Œuvres Complètes de Laplace, vol. 2, pp. 143-147,
Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1878)

and found the book in the university library. I was interested to see
that the year on the title page was given as VII. I wondered if the
journal would allow me to cite the year as VII or 7, but decided not to
put it to the test.


--
athel

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

For obvious reasons we can't buy magazines, and we are checking a
television website for the day's programmes more than we used to do. It
offers a choice between "Hier", "En ce moment", "Ce soir" and "Demain".
The first of these seems a bit odd for people without time machines.


--
athel

[J. J. Lodder]

Yes, and back to where we were before,
the 'winter of 1981' is part of 1981,
by meteorological usage,

Jan

[Kerr-Mudd,John]

On Thu, 09 Apr 2020 21:25:55 GMT, Quinn C
<lispa...@crommatograph.info> wrote:

> * Dingbat:
>
>> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd. I
>>  was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn.
>
> For everyday purposes, we often consider the day starting when we get
> up. So I may have watched TV yesterday until 1 am, and I may have had a
> dream yesterday - but formally at 8 am today.
>

I pedantically change my greeting from "Good Morning" to "Good
Afternoon" at 12a^Cpm erm noon. Others use it pre- and post-lunch, AIUI.

"Evening" is vaguely 6pm onward, I haven't settled on a cutoff point yet!


--
Bah, and indeed, Humbug.

[Kerr-Mudd,John]

On Thu, 09 Apr 2020 22:54:54 GMT, "John Varela"
<jv919a...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 9 Apr 2020 18:21:17 UTC, Jerry Friedman
> <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> On 4/9/20 11:26 AM, J. J. Lodder wrote:
>> > Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> On 4/9/20 10:40 AM, J. J. Lodder wrote:
>> >>> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>> On 4/9/20 8:38 AM, bebe...@aol.com wrote:
>> >>>>> Le jeudi 9 avril 2020 15:17:42 UTC+2, Dingbat a écrit :
>> >> ...
>> >>
>> >>>>>> Why was a day divided into two halves anyway? In India, a day

[]

>
> "Day's end" means sunset, and "a new day dawns" means sunrise. It's
> useless to try to sort this out. You must all be bored out of your
> skulls with this quarantine, spending your time arguing about this
> sort of thing.
>

Time does seem to pass slowly, now.

[J. J. Lodder]

Athel Cornish-Bowden <acor...@imm.cnrs.fr> wrote:

> On 2020-04-09 22:56:00 +0000, John Varela said:
>
> > On Thu, 9 Apr 2020 16:03:33 UTC, Ken Blake <k...@invalidemail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> On 4/9/2020 6:17 AM, Dingbat wrote:
> >>
> >>> Why was a day divided into two halves anyway? In India, a day was
> >>> divided into 30 muhurtas each subdivided into two nadikas.
> >>
> >>
> >> It will never get changed, but I wish time was decimal: divide a day
> >> into 10 hours, an hour into 100 minutes, and a minute into 100 seconds.
> >
> > Didn't revolutionary France try to introduce something of the sort
> > and failed?
>
> Yes. It survived until Napoleon moved back to the usual system. They
> also got rid of AD and BC, and started counting years from the
> establishment of the Republic.

AFAIK revolutionary time was already quite dead by then.
What Napoleon did was to abolish the revolutionary calendar.
Not just the years, but also the months and days.
He had to, because he wanted the pope at his imperial coronation,
and the pope insisted on getting all those saint's days back.
But Napoleon did manage to keep his Saint Fete Nationale.

And the rich among us still have Homard Thermidor,

Jan

[J. J. Lodder]

You need to ask Miss Bright to accompany you.
She may know of other interesting things to do as well,

Jan

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2020-04-10 09:04:34 +0000, Kerr-Mudd,John said:

> On Thu, 09 Apr 2020 21:25:55 GMT, Quinn C
> <lispa...@crommatograph.info> wrote:
>
>> * Dingbat:
>>
>>> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd. I
>>>  was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn.
>>
>> For everyday purposes, we often consider the day starting when we get
>> up. So I may have watched TV yesterday until 1 am, and I may have had a
>> dream yesterday - but formally at 8 am today.
>>
> I pedantically change my greeting from "Good Morning" to "Good
> Afternoon" at 12a^Cpm erm noon.

Mexicans do that. One day we arrived at a toll booth at 11.59, and the
woman who collected the money said "Buenos días". By the time we had
paid it was 12.01, and she said "Buenas tardes". I asked the people who
were driving us if that was systematic in Mexico, and they said it was.

> Others use it pre- and post-lunch, AIUI.
>
> "Evening" is vaguely 6pm onward, I haven't settled on a cutoff point yet!


--

athel

[HVS]

On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 00:25:08 -0700 (PDT), Dingbat
<ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 1:56:39 PM UTC+5:30, J. J. Lodder
wrote:

-snip -

> > Using AM and PM is just evil,

> WRT 12 o'clock, you can avoid using AM or PM by saying
> "12 midnight" and "12 noon". End of confusion!

The "12" in those is redundant - "noon" and "midnight" have zero
ambiguity.

Cheers, Harvey

[Madhu]

* "John Varela" <51W5y0sPNk52-pn2-wk1Tb6blqgKs@localhost> :
Wrote on 9 Apr 2020 22:54:54 GMT:

> "Day's end" means sunset, and "a new day dawns" means sunrise.

Unfortunately the use of those phrases in the bible isn't decisive in
settling the matter. The instructions for passover "evening" and the
"14th day" are troublesome

> It's useless to try to sort this out. You must all be bored out of
> your skulls with this quarantine, spending your time arguing about
> this sort of thing.

JJ's fight is on behalf of civilization

"No civilized person ever goes to bed the same day he gets up."

"The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up
until 5 or 6 PM."

[Madhu]

* Dingbat <3ff61da2-8278-40ef...@googlegroups.com> :
Wrote on Thu, 9 Apr 2020 09:53:31 -0700 (PDT):
> On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 8:42:11 PM UTC+5:30, J. J. Lodder wrote:

>> Dingbat <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Why was a day divided into two halves anyway? In India, a day was
>> divided into 30 muhurtas each subdivided into two nadikas.
>> >

>> > When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it
>> > odd. I was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn. For

>> > Brahmins, the day started at Brahma Muhurtam (4:24 AM if I remember
>> > correctly which would be 5 1/2 muhurtas, or 11 nadikas, after
>> > midnight).
>>
>> Trust them to make a mess of it.
>>
> What's messy about a day starting just before dawn? It's an ideal time to
> start a day, I should think. FWIW, I didn't read that it was 4:24 AM;
> I calculated that from something I read, and never verified that my
> calculation was correct.

From what I can make out from the a tamil calendar (which is published
and printed in kerala) -

A 24 hour period is divided into 60 nazi-s 30 alloted to day and 30
night . I thought that the day can be reckoned to start at 6AM and end
at 6PM, but this calendar seems to compute sunrise with respect to some
location.

In the calendar I'm looking at the durations are given according to
nazi-s. For example today Thritiya runs for 50.41 nazi-s So it runs for
( 50.41 * 24) = 1209.84 minutes from sunrise. This is printed as 2:22
AM (on the following day) - showing sunrise is reckoned at around 6:12
AM at the calenderists location.

So a nazi is exactly 24 minutes. A muhurta would be 2 nazi-s - 48
minutes

The muhurta before dawn is sandhya. brahma muhurta would be the muhurta
before that - so 96 minutes before sunrise. sunrise reckoned at 6AM it
would be 4:24 AM as you computed.

The puranic reckoning is from nimisha (time it takes to blink)
15 nimishas -> 1 kashtha
30 kashthas -> 1 kala
30 kala -> 1 muhurta
30 muhurta-s -> 1 day.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2020-04-10 10:57:20 +0000, Madhu said:

>
> [ … ]

>
> So a nazi is exactly 24 minutes.

Not a sentence to be quoted out of context (as I'm doing here).

--
athel

[RH Draney]

On 4/10/2020 2:23 AM, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> On 2020-04-10 09:04:34 +0000, Kerr-Mudd,John said:
>
>> I pedantically change my greeting from "Good Morning" to "Good
>> Afternoon" at 12a^Cpm erm noon.
>
> Mexicans do that. One day we arrived at a toll booth at 11.59, and the
> woman who collected the money said "Buenos días". By the time we had
> paid it was 12.01, and she said "Buenas tardes". I asked the people who
> were driving us if that was systematic in Mexico, and they said it was.

She muttered "¡Buenos Dios!" to herself as you rode off....r

[Dingbat]

Thank you so much. I've completely forgotten what I read; I remember only
the result of the calculations I made based on what I read. I'm most
gratified to see it verified that my calculated result is correct.
Be that as it may, what I said was the start of a day for the Brahmin
was supposed to be Brahma Muhurta. I don't know what the start of the
day was supposed to be for everyone else.

>
> The puranic reckoning is from nimisha (time it takes to blink)
> 15 nimishas -> 1 kashtha
> 30 kashthas -> 1 kala
> 30 kala -> 1 muhurta
> 30 muhurta-s -> 1 day.

A kala is 96 seconds. The units smaller than that are not round numbers
when expressed in seconds or milliseconds. A nimisha is about 1/5 of a
second. Do eyes blink every 1/5 of a second? If not, it's a figure of
speech that a nimisha is an eyeblink in duration.

[Jerry Friedman]

On 4/10/20 3:23 AM, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> On 2020-04-10 09:04:34 +0000, Kerr-Mudd,John said:
>
>> On Thu, 09 Apr 2020 21:25:55 GMT, Quinn C
>> <lispa...@crommatograph.info> wrote:
>>
>>> * Dingbat:
>>>
>>>> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd. I
>>>>  was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn.
>>>
>>> For everyday purposes, we often consider the day starting when we get
>>> up. So I may have watched TV yesterday until 1 am, and I may have had a
>>> dream yesterday - but formally at 8 am today.
>>>
>> I pedantically change my greeting from "Good Morning" to "Good
>> Afternoon" at 12a^Cpm erm noon.
>
> Mexicans do that. One day we arrived at a toll booth at 11.59, and the
> woman who collected the money said "Buenos días". By the time we had
> paid it was 12.01, and she said "Buenas tardes". I asked the people who
> were driving us if that was systematic in Mexico, and they said it was.

...

I do that too, and I've heard other people do the same. For instance,
around noon, "Good morning--is it still morning?" On occasion I've
jocularly said "Good noon."

--
Jerry Friedman

[Jerry Friedman]

On 4/9/20 4:54 PM, John Varela wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Apr 2020 18:21:17 UTC, Jerry Friedman
> <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> On 4/9/20 11:26 AM, J. J. Lodder wrote:
>>> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:

[Jewish Standard Time]

>>>> Not speaking for Ranjit, but the part I find odd is starting with sunset
>>>> rather than sunrise.
>>>
>>> Seems somewhat logcal to me, sunset -> day over, start new one,
>>> but of course you can also say that for sunrise,
>>
>> I think of sunrise as more of a beginning that of sunset as an end, but
>> maybe that's my modern point of view and people back then were woken up
>> by roosters or by animals wanting to be milked.
>
> "Day's end" means sunset, and "a new day dawns" means sunrise.

Golly.

> It's
> useless to try to sort this out. You must all be bored out of your
> skulls with this quarantine, spending your time arguing about this
> sort of thing.

Maybe we should argue about whether it's worth arguing about.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Dingbat]

<z> transliterates a continuant like the Pinyin <r>, not a fricative.

[nɑːɻɪ].

[Ken Blake]

On 4/10/2020 2:07 AM, Kerr-Mudd,John wrote:

> Time does seem to pass slowly, now.

The older I get, the faster it seems to pass. I'm now 82, so it passes
very fast.


--
Ken

[Ken Blake]

I assume that "buenos dias" is plural and literally means "good days."
"Buena dia," the singular, always seemed to make more sense, and lately
I've heard a number of people saying it that way. Is it said that way
only in particular Spanish-speaking parts of the world?


--
Ken

[Ken Blake]

"Noon" has no ambiguity. If you say "Noon on April 10" I know exactly
what you mean (leaving aside the difference in time zones). But to me,
"midnight" is ambiguous. Is "midnight on April 10" a little over 15
hours from now or a little less than nine hours before now?




--
Ken

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 1:26:45 PM UTC-4, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> > Not speaking for Ranjit, but the part I find odd is starting with sunset
> > rather than sunrise.
>
> Seems somewhat logcal to me, sunset -> day over, start new one,
> but of course you can also say that for sunrise,

The very first topic in the Mishnah (the Hebrew core of the Talmud)
is, At what time in the evening and at what time in the morning does
one recite the Shema? and the rabbis discuss how to determine when
day has begun.

"From what time may one recite the Shema in the evening?
From the time that the priests enter [their houses] in order to eat
their terumah until the end of the first watch, the words of Rabbi
Eliezer. The sages say: until midnight."

(That's not too helpful. They go on to say that "until midnight"
means 'until dawn', so as not to admit transgression.)

"From what time may one recite the Shema in the morning?
From the time that one can distinguish between blue and white. Rabbi
Eliezer says: between blue and green. And he must finish it by sunrise.
Rabbi Joshua says: until the third hour of the day, for such is the
custom of the children of kings, to rise at the third hour. If one
recites the Shema later he loses nothing, like one who reads in the
Torah."

https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Berakhot.1.1?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en

[Peter T. Daniels]

The Chicago Manual of Style tells you how to list books published
according to the French Revolutionary Era.

[Ken Blake]

On 4/10/2020 2:04 AM, Kerr-Mudd,John wrote:
> On Thu, 09 Apr 2020 21:25:55 GMT, Quinn C
> <lispa...@crommatograph.info> wrote:
>
>> * Dingbat:
>>
>>> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd. I
>>> �was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn.
>>
>> For everyday purposes, we often consider the day starting when we get
>> up. So I may have watched TV yesterday until 1 am, and I may have had a
>> dream yesterday - but formally at 8 am today.
>>
> I pedantically change my greeting from "Good Morning" to "Good
> Afternoon" at 12a^Cpm erm noon.

You have a much better sense of what time it is than I do. Unless I look
at my watch, I often don't know whether it's before or after noon.

> Others use it pre- and post-lunch, AIUI.

That's the Italian way (almost). Almost all Italians never say "buon
pomerrigio" ("good afternoon"). They say "buon giorno" ("good morning"
or "good day") until lunch, which is typically at a fairly late time.
It's also the time when most store close for lunch.

After lunch, when the stores reopen, around 3pm, they good "buona sera"
("good evening," not "good afternoon")

> "Evening" is vaguely 6pm onward, I haven't settled on a cutoff point yet!
>
>


--

Ken

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 3:45:45 AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

> For obvious reasons we can't buy magazines, and we are checking a
> television website for the day's programmes more than we used to do. It
> offers a choice between "Hier", "En ce moment", "Ce soir" and "Demain".
> The first of these seems a bit odd for people without time machines.

The one I use (titantv.com) lists two weeks ahead plus yesterday.

[HVS]

On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 08:44:34 -0700, Ken Blake <k...@invalidemail.com>
wrote:

Fair 'nuff - but "12 midnight" doesn't clarify anything.

"12 midnight" would be useful only if there was, say, an "11
midnight" that it could be confused with.

Cheers, Harvey






> --
> Ken

[charles]

In article <hfbhol...@mid.individual.net>,

I have a theory that it's tied to percentage of time past. When you are 10.
a year is 10% of your life, at 82 its 0.012%.

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

[CDB]

On 4/9/2020 10:03 AM, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> Dingbat said:
>> J. J. Lodder wrote:
>>> Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>>>> Arlen Holder wrote:

>>>> [...]

>>>>> Is that then the proper noun to use to refer to these two
>>>>> abbreviations? o AM === ante meridiem o PM === post meridiem

>>>> Yes:

>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock

>>> and in particular
>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock#Confusion_at_noon_and_midnight>

>>> Using AM and PM is just evil,

>> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd.

>> I was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn. fFr Brahmins,

>> the day started at Brahma Muhurtam (4:24 AM if I remember correctly
>> which would be 5 1/2 muhurtas, or 11 nadikas, after midnight).

>> Be that as it may, I find the Jewish day starting at dusk even
>> more odd than a day starting at midnight.

> When I visited Mount Athos many years ago I was puzzled that in most
> of the monasteries they had clocks in apparently working order that
> displayed the wrong time. One of them, very modernistic and
> forward-looking, followed normal Greek time, but most of the others
> started the day with 12 o'clock at sunset.

There's precedent. The biblical "eleventh hour" was not long before sunset.

> There was also one that started the day with 12 o'clock at sunrise.
> This last would be closest to your Brahmin time, but I've never
> encountered it anywhere else.

The night was divided into "watches" in the old days. If they had been
hours instead, the last one would have come about then.

A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.

I remember the second line as "are but a moment gone", but WP is
probably right.

I checked it against the (KJV) version of Psalm 90, but that only says
"but as yesterday when it is past" and "as a watch in the night", so I
went no farther.

> When I was lecturing in Bangalore in 2001 all the clocks I saw showed
> normal time. The lectures began at 09.00 sharp, and when I say
> "sharp" I mean sharp: when the electronic clock showed 08.59.59 the
> chairman stood up and I was expected to start at 09.00.00. He was not
> a Brahmin -- a Sudra, I think.

[CDB]

On 4/9/2020 12:41 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> bebe...@aol.com wrote:
>> Jerry Friedman a écrit :
>>> bebe...@aol.com wrote:
>>>> Dingbat a écrit :
> ...

>>>>> Be that as it may, I find the Jewish day starting at dusk
>>>>> even more odd than a day starting at midnight.

>>>> No, it just reflects this passage of Genesis, in the Torah:

>>>> |"And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called
>>>> Night. |And there was evening and there was morning, one day."

>>>> Whereby darkness precedes light in a day.
>>> ... Or does the passage in Genesis reflect the Jewish custom at
>>> the time the passage originated?

>> Didn't the Torah predate Judaism (which is precisely based on it),
>> and therefore all Jewish customs?

> I thought about that, and I think it partly depends on what you mean
> by Jewish and what you mean by the Torah. But unless you believe the
> Torah was handed down on Mount Sinai, it seems likely that much of it
> was based on existing stories and customs. I suspect that "It [or
> "There"] was evening and it was morning, the first day" was based on
> the custom among the people who first said or wrote it, whether you
> want to call them Jews or not.

In "vayyehiy erev vayyehiy boker", the "imperfective" verbs seem to be
written with the vav-conversive, and if so should be read as having
perfective aspect: "evening happened".

So I think "it was evening" is a better translation, unless you want
"there was" to literally mean "was there".

[CDB]

On 4/9/2020 12:56 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> J. J. Lodder wrote:
>> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>>> bebe...@aol.com wrote:
>>>> Dingbat a écrit :
> ...

>>>>> Why was a day divided into two halves anyway? In India, a
>>>>> day was divided into 30 muhurtas each subdivided into two
>>>>> nadikas.

>>>>> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found
>>>>> it odd. I was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn.
>>>>> fFr Brahmins, the day started at Brahma Muhurtam (4:24 AM if
>>>>> I remember correctly which would be 5 1/2 muhurtas, or 11
>>>>> nadikas, after midnight).

>>>>> Be that as it may, I find the Jewish day starting at dusk
>>>>> even more odd than a day starting at midnight.

>>>> No, it just reflects this passage of Genesis, in the Torah:

>>>> |"And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called
>>>> Night. |And there was evening and there was morning, one day."

>>>> Whereby darkness precedes light in a day.
>>> ... Or does the passage in Genesis reflect the Jewish custom at
>>> the time the passage originated?

>> Of course. They were yokels, shepards from the hills at best. They
>> never had he refined astronomical capability of the Babylonians,
>> or the court culture that made it possible.

> "Shepherds", though "Shepard" exists as a name.

> For the yokels from the hills, see a passage from /The King Must
> Die/. We could talk for a while about whether it's antisemitic.

I don't recall the passage. Could you give a short account of it?

Was the attitude expressed toward Jews that of a character? Xenophobia
was the general rule then, I suppose.

>> They never had he refined astronomical capability of the
>> Babylonians, or the court culture that made it possible.

>> And sunset is much easier to observe than sun at highest, and
>> corrections apply to that too, [1]

>> [1] Yes, the Babylonians already knew about the equation of time.

> Not speaking for Ranjit, but the part I find odd is starting with
> sunset rather than sunrise.

The darkness came first.

"In the beginning, there was NUTHIN'. And the Lord said "let there be
light" <grand gesture>.

And there was still nuthin'.

But <hic> youse could see it."

Maybe my favourite Irish bull of all time.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2020-04-10 16:04:17 +0000, charles said:

> In article <hfbhol...@mid.individual.net>,
> Ken Blake <k...@invalidemail.com> wrote:
>> On 4/10/2020 2:07 AM, Kerr-Mudd,John wrote:
>
>>> Time does seem to pass slowly, now.
>
>
>> The older I get, the faster it seems to pass. I'm now 82, so it passes
>> very fast.
>
> I have a theory that it's tied to percentage of time past. When you are 10.
> a year is 10% of your life, at 82 its 0.012%.

Plagiarist! That's _my_ theory©.
--
athel

[Ken Blake]

On 4/10/2020 8:53 AM, HVS wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 08:44:34 -0700, Ken Blake <k...@invalidemail.com>
> wrote:
>> On 4/10/2020 2:26 AM, HVS wrote:
>> > On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 00:25:08 -0700 (PDT), Dingbat
>> > <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> >> On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 1:56:39 PM UTC+5:30, J. J. Lodder
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > -snip -
>> >
>> >> > Using AM and PM is just evil,
>> >
>> >> WRT 12 o'clock, you can avoid using AM or PM by saying
>> >> "12 midnight" and "12 noon". End of confusion!
>> >
>> > The "12" in those is redundant - "noon" and "midnight" have zero
>> > ambiguity.
>
>> "Noon" has no ambiguity. If you say "Noon on April 10" I know
> exactly
>> what you mean (leaving aside the difference in time zones). But to
> me,
>> "midnight" is ambiguous. Is "midnight on April 10" a little over 15
>> hours from now or a little less than nine hours before now?
>
> Fair 'nuff - but "12 midnight" doesn't clarify anything.

Agreed. I didn't mean to suggest that it did.

>
> "12 midnight" would be useful only if there was, say, an "11
> midnight" that it could be confused with.
>
> Cheers, Harvey
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> --
>> Ken
>

--
Ken

[Mack A. Damia]

On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 08:36:28 -0700, Ken Blake <k...@invalidemail.com>
wrote:

"Buen dia" is very popular. Alma just told me that "buena" is
incorrect.

[Ken Blake]

Thanks. Perhaps I misheard "buen" as "buena."


--
Ken

[HVS]

On 10 Apr 2020, Ken Blake wrote

> On 4/10/2020 8:53 AM, HVS wrote:
>> On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 08:44:34 -0700, Ken Blake
>> <k...@invalidemail.com> wrote:
>>> On 4/10/2020 2:26 AM, HVS wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 00:25:08 -0700 (PDT), Dingbat
>>>> <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>> On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 1:56:39 PM UTC+5:30, J. J.
>>>>> Lodder
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> -snip -
>>>>
>>>>>> Using AM and PM is just evil,
>>>>
>>>>> WRT 12 o'clock, you can avoid using AM or PM by saying
>>>>> "12 midnight" and "12 noon". End of confusion!
>>>>
>>>> The "12" in those is redundant - "noon" and "midnight" have
>>>> zero ambiguity.
>>
>>> "Noon" has no ambiguity. If you say "Noon on April 10" I know
>> exactly
>>> what you mean (leaving aside the difference in time zones). But
>>> to
>> me,
>>> "midnight" is ambiguous. Is "midnight on April 10" a little over
>>> 15 hours from now or a little less than nine hours before now?
>>
>> Fair 'nuff - but "12 midnight" doesn't clarify anything.
>
> Agreed. I didn't mean to suggest that it did.

Apologies; my comprehension filter's a bit wonky at the moment....

--
Cheers, Harvey
CanEng (30 yrs) and BrEng (36 yrs),
indiscriminately mixed

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Alma is right. It's one of the few words that look feminine but are
masculine. The name of the family around which One Hundred Years of
Solitude is written is Buendía.


--
athel

[charles]

In article <hfbkkb...@mid.individual.net>,

Great minds .....
> -

[Quinn C]

* RH Draney:

> On 4/9/2020 2:25 PM, Quinn C wrote:
>> * Dingbat:

>>
>>> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd. I
>>>  was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn.
>>

>> For everyday purposes, we often consider the day starting when we get
>> up. So I may have watched TV yesterday until 1 am, and I may have had a
>> dream yesterday - but formally at 8 am today.
>

> WIWAL, I learned that while calendars say the week starts on Sunday, and
> most people say the day starts at midnight, TV Guide had different
> ideas...their day started at 6am, and the week started with Saturday....r

Categorizing TV Guide as an authority on when the week begins says
something about you, meseems.

--
In the old days, the complaints about the passing of the
golden age were much more sophisticated.
-- James Hogg in alt.usage.english

[Quinn C]

* charles:

> In article <hfbkkb...@mid.individual.net>,
> Athel Cornish-Bowden <acor...@imm.cnrs.fr> wrote:
>> On 2020-04-10 16:04:17 +0000, charles said:
>
>>> In article <hfbhol...@mid.individual.net>,
>>> Ken Blake <k...@invalidemail.com> wrote:
>>>> On 4/10/2020 2:07 AM, Kerr-Mudd,John wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Time does seem to pass slowly, now.
>>>
>>>> The older I get, the faster it seems to pass. I'm now 82, so it passes
>>>> very fast.
>>>
>>> I have a theory that it's tied to percentage of time past. When you are
>>> 10. a year is 10% of your life, at 82 its 0.012%.
>
>> Plagiarist! That's _my_ theory©.
>
> Great minds .....

Yes? Where? Where?

The German idiom is "two fools, one thought". What does that say about
our respective cultures?

--
What Phrenzy in my Bosom rag'd,
And by what Care to be asswag'd?
-- Sappho, transl. Addison (1711)
What was it that my distracted heart most wanted?
-- transl. Barnard (1958)

[Rich Ulrich]

On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 08:15:41 +0100, Katy Jennison
<ka...@spamtrap.kjennison.com> wrote:

>On 09/04/2020 23:29, RH Draney wrote:
>> On 4/9/2020 2:25 PM, Quinn C wrote:
>>> * Dingbat:
>>>
>>>> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd. I
>>>>   was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn.
>>>
>>> For everyday purposes, we often consider the day starting when we get
>>> up. So I may have watched TV yesterday until 1 am, and I may have had a
>>> dream yesterday - but formally at 8 am today.
>>
>> WIWAL, I learned that while calendars say the week starts on Sunday, and
>> most people say the day starts at midnight, TV Guide had different
>> ideas...their day started at 6am, and the week started with Saturday....r
>>
>

>On the BBC website, the weather forecast for a given day starts at 6am.

A couple of years ago, I tried to figure the basis for
newspaper and TV predictions of daily high's and low's

I never saw a reference, but after a week or so of
watching the numbers, I concluded that they must be
using 5 or 6 a.m. That was true both for the local people
and for the local statements of a couple of national
weather services. (U.S.)

--
Rich Ulrich

[Mack A. Damia]

Isn't plagiarism a group norm?

[Quinn C]

* Rich Ulrich:

The predictions I get from Canada's national service explicitly talk
about "today's high" and "tonight's low" etc. That makes it clear that
the cutoffs should be somwhere around sunrise and sunset.

To see the exact cutoff, I'd have to wait for a day when the temperature
exceptionally falls or rises regardless of day or night; it's not
exactly rare here.

--
Quinn C
My pronouns are they/them
(or other gender-neutral ones)

[musika]

On 10/04/2020 17:58, Quinn C wrote:
> * charles:
>
>> In article <hfbkkb...@mid.individual.net>,
>> Athel Cornish-Bowden <acor...@imm.cnrs.fr> wrote:
>>> On 2020-04-10 16:04:17 +0000, charles said:
>>
>>>> In article <hfbhol...@mid.individual.net>,
>>>> Ken Blake <k...@invalidemail.com> wrote:
>>>>> On 4/10/2020 2:07 AM, Kerr-Mudd,John wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> Time does seem to pass slowly, now.
>>>>
>>>>> The older I get, the faster it seems to pass. I'm now 82, so it passes
>>>>> very fast.
>>>>
>>>> I have a theory that it's tied to percentage of time past. When you are
>>>> 10. a year is 10% of your life, at 82 its 0.012%.
>>
>>> Plagiarist! That's _my_ theory©.
>>
>> Great minds .....
>
> Yes? Where? Where?
>
> The German idiom is "two fools, one thought". What does that say about
> our respective cultures?
>

The full quotation is:
"Great minds think alike - fools seldom differ".
--
Ray
UK

[John Varela]

I had it before you did.

--
John Varela

[Kerr-Mudd,John]

On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 15:52:37 GMT, Ken Blake <k...@invalidemail.com>
wrote:

> On 4/10/2020 2:04 AM, Kerr-Mudd,John wrote:
>> On Thu, 09 Apr 2020 21:25:55 GMT, Quinn C
>> <lispa...@crommatograph.info> wrote:
>>
>>> * Dingbat:
>>>
>>>> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd.
>>>> I �was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn.
>>>
>>> For everyday purposes, we often consider the day starting when we
>>> get up. So I may have watched TV yesterday until 1 am, and I may
>>> have had a dream yesterday - but formally at 8 am today.
>>>
>> I pedantically change my greeting from "Good Morning" to "Good
>> Afternoon" at 12a^Cpm erm noon.
>
>
> You have a much better sense of what time it is than I do. Unless I
> look at my watch, I often don't know whether it's before or after
> noon.
>

I'm an avid watch watcher.

>
>> Others use it pre- and post-lunch, AIUI.
>
>
> That's the Italian way (almost). Almost all Italians never say "buon
> pomerrigio" ("good afternoon"). They say "buon giorno" ("good morning"
> or "good day") until lunch, which is typically at a fairly late time.
> It's also the time when most store close for lunch.
>
> After lunch, when the stores reopen, around 3pm, they good "buona
> sera" ("good evening," not "good afternoon")
>

Morning lunch evening! it's all about the meals, I'm guessing.

>
>> "Evening" is vaguely 6pm onward, I haven't settled on a cutoff point
>> yet!
>>
>>
>
>



--

Bah, and indeed, Humbug.

[Tak To]

On 4/9/2020 9:06 AM, Dingbat wrote:
> On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 1:56:39 PM UTC+5:30, J. J. Lodder wrote:

>> Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:

>>
>>> On Thu, 09 Apr 2020 01:13:14 +0530, Arlen Holder wrote:
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>>> Is that then the proper noun to use to refer to these two abbreviations?
>>>> o AM === ante meridiem o PM === post meridiem
>>>
>>> Yes:
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock
>>
>> and in particular
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock#Confusion_at_noon_and_midnight>
>>

>> Using AM and PM is just evil,
>>

> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd.

This is natural for an *astronomical* day. If one considers sun-at-
highest-point to be the middle of the day, then the day starts
at midnight.

This is entirely analogous to those calendrical systems in which
the (lunar) month starts at the new moon and full moon is at the
middle of the month.

> I

> was accustomed to a day starting just before dawn. fFr Brahmins, the
> day started at Brahma Muhurtam (4:24 AM if I remember correctly which
> would be 5 1/2 muhurtas, or 11 nadikas, after midnight).
>
> Be that as it may, I find the Jewish day starting at dusk even more
> odd than a day starting at midnight.

Day as a marking period for recording human activities is somewhat
at odds with the astronomical day. Different cultures handle the
mismatch differently.

The Chinese calendar considers midnight to be the beginning of
the day. The day is divided into twelve periods named after the
twelve "Earthly Branches"[1]. However, the periods are arranged
in such a way that midnight is in the *middle* of the canonically
"first" period (<zi3> 子).

FWIW the vernal equinox is considered to be the *middle* of the
season of spring.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthly_Branches

--
Tak
----------------------------------------------------------------+-----
Tak To ta...@alum.mit.eduxx
--------------------------------------------------------------------^^
[taode takto ~{LU5B~}] NB: trim the xx to get my real email addr

[CDB]

On 4/10/2020 11:36 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
> RH Draney wrote:
>> Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

>>> Kerr-Mudd,John said:

>>>> I pedantically change my greeting from "Good Morning" to "Good
>>>> Afternoon" at 12a^Cpm erm noon.

>>> Mexicans do that. One day we arrived at a toll booth at 11.59,
>>> and the woman who collected the money said "Buenos días". By the
>>> time we had paid it was 12.01, and she said "Buenas tardes". I
>>> asked the people who were driving us if that was systematic in
>>> Mexico, and they said it was.

>> She a"¡Buenos Dios!" to herself as you rode off....r

> I assume that "buenos dias" is plural and literally means "good
> days." "Buena dia," the singular, always seemed to make more sense,
> and lately I've heard a number of people saying it that way. Is it
> said that way only in particular Spanish-speaking parts of the
> world?

"Buen día" was common in the Buenos Aires area in the early '60s when I
was there. I don't recall ever hearing "buena tarde" or "buena noche"
used the same way, though.

"Día" is masculine.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 12:07:44 PM UTC-4, CDB wrote:
> On 4/9/2020 12:41 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> > bebe...@aol.com wrote:
> >> Jerry Friedman a écrit :
> >>> bebe...@aol.com wrote:
> >>>> Dingbat a écrit :

> >>>>> Be that as it may, I find the Jewish day starting at dusk
> >>>>> even more odd than a day starting at midnight.
> >>>> No, it just reflects this passage of Genesis, in the Torah:
> >>>> |"And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called
> >>>> Night. |And there was evening and there was morning, one day."
> >>>> Whereby darkness precedes light in a day.
> >>> ... Or does the passage in Genesis reflect the Jewish custom at
> >>> the time the passage originated?
> >> Didn't the Torah predate Judaism (which is precisely based on it),
> >> and therefore all Jewish customs?
> > I thought about that, and I think it partly depends on what you mean
> > by Jewish and what you mean by the Torah. But unless you believe the
> > Torah was handed down on Mount Sinai, it seems likely that much of it
> > was based on existing stories and customs. I suspect that "It [or
> > "There"] was evening and it was morning, the first day" was based on
> > the custom among the people who first said or wrote it, whether you
> > want to call them Jews or not.
>
> In "vayyehiy erev vayyehiy boker", the "imperfective" verbs seem to be
> written with the vav-conversive, and if so should be read as having
> perfective aspect: "evening happened".

The 19th-century term "waw conversive" is misleading and has not been
used seriously since S. R. Driver's 1892 treatise on the Hebrew tenses.
It doesn't "reverse" the tenses. It's known as the "waw consecutive"
and it is the preservation of the Pre-Hebrew "yiqtol" preterite.

[Mark Brader]

Ranjit Mathews:

>> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd.

Tak To:

> This is natural for an *astronomical* day. If one considers sun-at-
> highest-point to be the middle of the day, then the day starts
> at midnight.

If you go back a couple of hundred years, you will find that the
astronomical day started at *noon*, 12 hours behind civil time --
and the nautical day also started at noon, but 12 hours *ahead*
of civil time.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto "Just because it's correct doesn't
m...@vex.net make it right!" -- Jonas Schlein

[Sam Plusnet]

"Let there be light."

And you could see for flippin' miles!"

--
Sam Plusnet

[Sam Plusnet]

On 10-Apr-20 10:04, Kerr-Mudd,John wrote:
> I pedantically change my greeting from "Good Morning" to "Good

> Afternoon" at 12a^Cpm erm noon. Others use it pre- and post-lunch, AIUI.

>
> "Evening" is vaguely 6pm onward, I haven't settled on a cutoff point yet!

In winter that might be true, but not now.
I came in from the garden at around 8pm, and at 6pm I was still up a
tree with a saw in my hand, so I can't really think of that as "evening".

--
Sam Plusnet

[Peter Young]

On 10 Apr 2020 charles <cha...@candehope.me.uk> wrote:

> In article <hfbhol...@mid.individual.net>,
> Ken Blake <k...@invalidemail.com> wrote:
>> On 4/10/2020 2:07 AM, Kerr-Mudd,John wrote:

>>> Time does seem to pass slowly, now.


>> The older I get, the faster it seems to pass. I'm now 82, so it passes
>> very fast.

> I have a theory that it's tied to percentage of time past. When you are 10.
> a year is 10% of your life, at 82 its 0.012%.

I'm sure that's the explanation.

Peter.

--
Peter Young, (BrE, RP), Consultant Anaesthetist, 1975-2004.
(US equivalent: Certified Anesthesiologist) (AUE Hg)
Cheltenham and Gloucester, UK. Now happily retired.
http://pnyoung.orpheusweb.co.uk

[Jerry Friedman]

On 4/10/20 9:36 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
> On 4/10/2020 5:02 AM, RH Draney wrote:
>> On 4/10/2020 2:23 AM, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>>> On 2020-04-10 09:04:34 +0000, Kerr-Mudd,John said:
>>>

>>>> I pedantically change my greeting from "Good Morning" to "Good
>>>> Afternoon" at 12a^Cpm erm noon.
>>>

>>> Mexicans do that. One day we arrived at a toll booth at 11.59, and
>>> the woman who collected the money said "Buenos días". By the time we
>>> had paid it was 12.01, and she said "Buenas tardes". I asked the
>>> people who were driving us if that was systematic in Mexico, and they
>>> said it was.
>>

>> She muttered "¡Buenos Dios!" to herself as you rode off....r

>
>
>
> I assume that "buenos dias" is plural and literally means "good days."
> "Buena dia," the singular, always seemed to make more sense,

"Buenos días" is a wish for more than just one good day, so it's more
"generous". Maybe it's like the way you never get just one gracia, one
grazia, or one thank.

--
Jerry Friedman

[RH Draney]

On 4/10/2020 2:12 PM, Mark Brader wrote:
> Ranjit Mathews:
>>> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd.
>
> Tak To:
>> This is natural for an *astronomical* day. If one considers sun-at-
>> highest-point to be the middle of the day, then the day starts
>> at midnight.
>
> If you go back a couple of hundred years, you will find that the
> astronomical day started at *noon*, 12 hours behind civil time --
> and the nautical day also started at noon, but 12 hours *ahead*
> of civil time.

Astronomical days start at noon to avoid the problem of astronomers, who
work mostly at night, having a period of observation start on one day
and end on another....r

[Paul Wolff]

On Fri, 10 Apr 2020, at 22:16:33, Peter Young <pny...@ormail.co.uk>
posted:

>On 10 Apr 2020 charles <cha...@candehope.me.uk> wrote:
>
>> In article <hfbhol...@mid.individual.net>,
>> Ken Blake <k...@invalidemail.com> wrote:
>>> On 4/10/2020 2:07 AM, Kerr-Mudd,John wrote:
>
>>>> Time does seem to pass slowly, now.
>
>
>>> The older I get, the faster it seems to pass. I'm now 82, so it passes
>>> very fast.
>
>> I have a theory that it's tied to percentage of time past. When you are 10.
>> a year is 10% of your life, at 82 its 0.012%.
>
>I'm sure that's the explanation.
>

But you're all wrong, by a factor of one hundred. I know your slide
rules don't tell you the position of the decimal point, but still,
you're supposed to do a sanity check before handing in your exam papers.
--
Paul

[Quinn C]

* Mark Brader:

> Ranjit Mathews:
>>> When I first learned that a day starts at midnight, I found it odd.
>
> Tak To:
>> This is natural for an *astronomical* day. If one considers sun-at-
>> highest-point to be the middle of the day, then the day starts
>> at midnight.
>
> If you go back a couple of hundred years, you will find that the
> astronomical day started at *noon*

The astronomers' day still does. Cf. Julian date.

--
We shall never believe in things (even if this belief is based
in a so-called eternity), which can become a means of oppression.
-- Hedwig Dohm (1876), my translation

[Quinn C]

* Paul Wolff:

Percentages shrink the older you get.

--
- It's the title search for the Rachel property.
Guess who owns it?
- Tell me it's not that bastard Donald Trump.
-- Gilmore Girls, S02E08 (2001)

[Quinn C]

* Jerry Friedman:

Merci!

In my youth, it was fashionable among young Germans to say things like
"I thank you two to three times."

--
It gets hot in Raleigh, but Texas! I don't know why anybody
lives here, honestly.
-- Robert C. Wilson, Vortex (novel), p.220

[Dingbat]

The original is from Greek and its translation is just:
Great minds think alike.
https://mystudentvoices.com/4-quotes-that-you-have-been-terribly-misquoting-6b2233d3212d

[bebe...@aol.com]

Le vendredi 10 avril 2020 23:21:50 UTC+2, Peter Young a écrit :
> On 10 Apr 2020 charles <cha...@candehope.me.uk> wrote:
>
> > In article <hfbhol...@mid.individual.net>,
> > Ken Blake <k...@invalidemail.com> wrote:
> >> On 4/10/2020 2:07 AM, Kerr-Mudd,John wrote:
>
> >>> Time does seem to pass slowly, now.
>
>
> >> The older I get, the faster it seems to pass. I'm now 82, so it passes
> >> very fast.
>
> > I have a theory that it's tied to percentage of time past. When you are 10.
> > a year is 10% of your life, at 82 its 0.012%.
>
> I'm sure that's the explanation.

It could also be that many more new experiences happen in one's young
time, with all those landmarks making the years look retrospectively
longer than in one's old age, where monotony creeps in, giving the
impression that nothing has happened and the years have gone by very
fast. Actually, memory seems to create some sort of reversed parallax
effect.

[bebe...@aol.com]

You can even get one thousand in Italian, but then must return the
double:

"Grazie mille"

"Prego duemila"

>
> --
> Jerry Friedman