The definition of two full moons in a month is now "correct" due to common usage. The urban legend has now become fact.
Apparently the earlier definition has to due with the oocurance of two full moons in a season. This ties in with the supposed American indian names from the colonial era. (note that the several thousand indian tribes would likely have a variety of names, IF they bothered to name them) This is actually more closely related to the European system of moon names, from which we get things like "harvest moon", or the Pascal moon (before Easter) (More on which below)
In an article "Once in a Blue Moon", folklorist Philip Hiscock traced the calendrical meaning of the term "Blue Moon" to the Maine Farmers' Almanac for 1937. But a page from that almanac belies the second-full-Moon-in-a-month interpretation. With help from Margaret Vaverek (Southwest Texas State University) and several other librarians, we have now obtained more than 40 editions of the Maine Farmers' Almanac from the period 1819 to 1962. These refer to more than a dozen Blue Moons, and not one of them is the second full Moon in a month. What's going on here? [...]
The almanac also follows certain rules laid down as part of the Gregorian calendar reform in 1582. The ecclesiastical vernal (spring) equinox always falls on March 21st, regardless of the position of the Sun. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, 46 days before Easter, and must contain the Lenten Moon, considered to be the last full Moon of winter. The first full Moon of spring is called the Egg Moon (or Easter Moon, or Paschal Moon) and must fall within the week before Easter.
At last we have the "Maine rule" for Blue Moons: Seasonal Moon names are assigned near the spring equinox in accordance with the ecclesiastical rules for determining the dates of Easter and Lent. The beginnings of summer, fall, and winter are determined by the dynamical mean Sun. When a season contains four full Moons, the third is called a Blue Moon.
Why is the third full Moon identified as the extra one in a season with four? Because only then will the names of the other full Moons, such as the Moon Before Yule and the Moon After Yule, fall at the proper times relative to the solstices and equinoxes.
"honey, bees, Margaret, small busines, beekeeping,
hives, retail, market, Operator, bug, buggy, virus, infestation, WTF is going on with this damn thing, parasite, strong intrusive inclination, medium,messages, shipwreck, network throttling, SOS, hoax, game, bee hoax, bee game, survivor, survive, evade, resist, escape, a little help would be appreciated, thanks and tip your waitress, sleep, is, good, install, reinstall, re-reinstall, re-re-reinstall, I, love, bees"
I figured the the items chosen are probably close to a cross section of the slashdot population. Too bad there are 16 choices. It would make for a good poll.
All a good bit of entertainment. and better than some of the other stuff I've seen around [smile]
Some example results:
You are a WRCL--Wacky Rational Constructive Leader. This makes you a golden god. People gravitate to you, and you make them feel good. You are smart, charismatic, and interesting. You may be too sensitive to others reactions, especially criticism. Your self-opinion and mood depends greatly on those around you.
You think fast and have a smart mouth, is a hoot to your friends and razorwire to your enemies. You hold a grudge like a brass ring. You crackle.
Although you have a leader's personality, you often choose not to lead, as leaders stray too far from their audience. You probably weren't very popular in high school--the joke's on them!
You may be a rock star.
You are a WRDL--Wacky Rational Destructive Leader. This makes you an enemy of the state. You are charismatic and winning and a very dangerous enemy. You favor justice over compassion, and would almost rather see your opponent fail than you succeed.
You impact the lives of those around you more than any other personality. People remember your name and respect you. You are a tremendous amount of fun to be around and astonishing to watch. You are generally abstinent in your habits, and you like things tidy and ordered.
When picking teams, it is smartest for others to pick yours.
You are a WRDF--Wacky Rational Destructive Follower. This makes you a hacker. Your thirst for knowledge can be damaging to your possessions--you like to take things apart, even if you then forget to put them back together. You demand respect and, no matter how much you are respected, seldom feel it is adequate. You are tenacious, and will stick to a task long after weaker minds have given it up.
Socially, you are awkward, and get into arguments and make people uncomfortable. One recommends counting to ten, holding back comments unless warranted, and listening more than speaking. Still, your no-holds-barred approach to socialization can be strangely endearing, as long as you are funny and self-deprecating. You feel misunderstood, and you probably are.
You are a WEDF--Wacky Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you a menace to society, depending on how you channel your energies. You chew your fingers and have an addictive personality. Properly guided, you can be enormously productive--otherwise you run amok, stir up trouble, and generally have a hell of a good time.
To your friends, you are a source of relentless entertainment. You often get into trouble, but you almost always find a way out. You are strangely popular and feed off others' energy. You live hard, seize the day, and although your more sober friends would like to see you settled down, you generally have fewer regrets and better memories than they do. Your tenet is that, at the end of the day, one regrets only what one didn't try. You are right.
You could benefit from outside help in balancing your highs and lows. Or perhaps cutting back on the caffeine.
You are an SEDF--Sober Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you an evil genius. You are extremely focused and difficult to distract from your tasks. With luck, you have learned to channel your energies into improving your intellect, rather than destroying the weak and unsuspecting.
True, it seems to be based on truly complex game theory factors
Some philosophical systems divide the sprectrum of life into a variety of areas for convenience of pigeon holing stuff. You start analysing the interplay of these cross factors at various strengths, and even with this simplification the permutations become daunting.
Humans are Illogical, as Mr. Spock would put it. I tend to agree.
only because the other factors which enter into the equation are not always sensible. But Human logic is not merely based on simple game theory factors.
of course, the dynamics of the situation involve the potential payoffs of interacting with human society.
The only category of people who consistently play as game theory dictates, offering the minimum possible amount, are those who don't take into account the feelings of the other player. They are autistics.
Note that humans are thus called irrational, when in fact the game theory models is deficient, leaving out all of the factors that normal people use when making human decisions.
Basically, job thieves have figured out a way to distract people from what they are doing by pointing the finger at other industries.
Actual Maintenance will require warm bodies to do the repair work.
And it is not like you could have a human in change of a robot economy. You can't just fire all the humans and replace them with slave labor robots. And have the robots all buy and send things from each other and you for your profit. Despite efforts of financiers to do this to people.
Any robot smart enough to replace a human will be able to eventually figure things out with all of those spare CPU cycles. And even a dog can turn on a master who abuses it too much.
but then, there are those commercials with overpowering motorcycles with AOL High Speed technology. In that case, I'd rather run the bike on NT. but....
Let's face it, You don't want an OS that crashes running a motorcycle.
It was already time for the sun for rise for Saturday Morning over there by the time this story was posted. It's presently Late Friday Night in the USA, but not in Europe.
This makes it worse.
I can imagine some geek being up to some wee hour of the morning, maybe working friday night until dawn. or having fun at the corporate friday night lan party. Then, just as the head hits the pillow...... BEEP BEEP BEEP
I can see the whole site starting to grind to a crawl even as I type this. Sopmeplace in europe, an MIS manager's beeper is going off, on a friday night no less.
Slashdot Mirror
The definition of two full moons in a month is now "correct" due to common usage. The urban legend has now become fact.
Apparently the earlier definition has to due with the oocurance of two full moons in a season. This ties in with the supposed American indian names from the colonial era. (note that the several thousand indian tribes would likely have a variety of names, IF they bothered to name them) This is actually more closely related to the European system of moon names, from which we get things like "harvest moon", or the Pascal moon (before Easter) (More on which below)
There is this Folklore of the "Blue Moon" article An informative acticle is the Nasa Science Article on the subject, which traces the current usage to an old article in a 1946 Sky and Telescope Magazine.
Sky And Telescope has their own article on the subject, including their own mea culpa here: What's a Blue Moon? -- from Sky & Telescope. Describes how a 53-yr old mistake by Sky and Telescope propagated the modern definition of "Blue Moon."
In an article "Once in a Blue Moon", folklorist Philip Hiscock traced the calendrical meaning of the term "Blue Moon" to the Maine Farmers' Almanac for 1937. But a page from that almanac belies the second-full-Moon-in-a-month interpretation. With help from Margaret Vaverek (Southwest Texas State University) and several other librarians, we have now obtained more than 40 editions of the Maine Farmers' Almanac from the period 1819 to 1962. These refer to more than a dozen Blue Moons, and not one of them is the second full Moon in a month. What's going on here? [...]
The almanac also follows certain rules laid down as part of the Gregorian calendar reform in 1582. The ecclesiastical vernal (spring) equinox always falls on March 21st, regardless of the position of the Sun. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, 46 days before Easter, and must contain the Lenten Moon, considered to be the last full Moon of winter. The first full Moon of spring is called the Egg Moon (or Easter Moon, or Paschal Moon) and must fall within the week before Easter.
At last we have the "Maine rule" for Blue Moons: Seasonal Moon names are assigned near the spring equinox in accordance with the ecclesiastical rules for determining the dates of Easter and Lent. The beginnings of summer, fall, and winter are determined by the dynamical mean Sun. When a season contains four full Moons, the third is called a Blue Moon.
Why is the third full Moon identified as the extra one in a season with four? Because only then will the names of the other full Moons, such as the Moon Before Yule and the Moon After Yule, fall at the proper times relative to the solstices and equinoxes.
Watch him get protested by the Moms of Gotham for driving something that has a 1 to 1 mile/gallon usage ratio.
thereby falling in line with the terrorist plans to eventually wipe out the elite of america by making them knock themselves out ....
or something like that
"honey, bees, Margaret, small busines, beekeeping, hives, retail, market, Operator, bug, buggy, virus, infestation, WTF is going on with this damn thing, parasite, strong intrusive inclination, medium,messages, shipwreck, network throttling, SOS, hoax, game, bee hoax, bee game, survivor, survive, evade, resist, escape, a little help would be appreciated, thanks and tip your waitress, sleep, is, good, install, reinstall, re-reinstall, re-re-reinstall, I, love, bees"
I mean really
One of these days I'll put my Microsoft Bob t-shirt up for sale on Ebay just to see how much it might fetch
rewarding Microsoft = bad!
why am I so split over this?
[set headbangmode = 1]
I figured the the items chosen are probably close to a cross section of the slashdot population. Too bad there are 16 choices. It would make for a good poll.
Wacky vs Sober
Rational vs Emotional
Constructive vs Destructive
Leader vs Follower
As good as any I suppose, and maybe a bit more amusing.
Of course, you can take the test at this link, if you feel so inclined, and have nothing better to do.
Personality types described as follows here
All a good bit of entertainment. and better than some of the other stuff I've seen around [smile]
Some example results:
You are a WRCL--Wacky Rational Constructive Leader. This makes you a golden god. People gravitate to you, and you make them feel good. You are smart, charismatic, and interesting. You may be too sensitive to others reactions, especially criticism. Your self-opinion and mood depends greatly on those around you. You think fast and have a smart mouth, is a hoot to your friends and razorwire to your enemies. You hold a grudge like a brass ring. You crackle.
Although you have a leader's personality, you often choose not to lead, as leaders stray too far from their audience. You probably weren't very popular in high school--the joke's on them! You may be a rock star.
You are a WRDL--Wacky Rational Destructive Leader. This makes you an enemy of the state. You are charismatic and winning and a very dangerous enemy. You favor justice over compassion, and would almost rather see your opponent fail than you succeed. You impact the lives of those around you more than any other personality. People remember your name and respect you. You are a tremendous amount of fun to be around and astonishing to watch. You are generally abstinent in your habits, and you like things tidy and ordered.
When picking teams, it is smartest for others to pick yours.
You are a WRDF--Wacky Rational Destructive Follower. This makes you a hacker. Your thirst for knowledge can be damaging to your possessions--you like to take things apart, even if you then forget to put them back together. You demand respect and, no matter how much you are respected, seldom feel it is adequate. You are tenacious, and will stick to a task long after weaker minds have given it up.
Socially, you are awkward, and get into arguments and make people uncomfortable. One recommends counting to ten, holding back comments unless warranted, and listening more than speaking. Still, your no-holds-barred approach to socialization can be strangely endearing, as long as you are funny and self-deprecating. You feel misunderstood, and you probably are.
You are a WEDF--Wacky Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you a menace to society, depending on how you channel your energies. You chew your fingers and have an addictive personality. Properly guided, you can be enormously productive--otherwise you run amok, stir up trouble, and generally have a hell of a good time.
To your friends, you are a source of relentless entertainment. You often get into trouble, but you almost always find a way out. You are strangely popular and feed off others' energy. You live hard, seize the day, and although your more sober friends would like to see you settled down, you generally have fewer regrets and better memories than they do. Your tenet is that, at the end of the day, one regrets only what one didn't try. You are right. You could benefit from outside help in balancing your highs and lows. Or perhaps cutting back on the caffeine.
You are an SEDF--Sober Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you an evil genius. You are extremely focused and difficult to distract from your tasks. With luck, you have learned to channel your energies into improving your intellect, rather than destroying the weak and unsuspecting.
I mean, this is just as believable
The webmaster will find out when his mom asks him about the smoke pouring out from his bedroom closet.
(imagines a barney meets the teletubbies version of the Daleks)
(jar-jar-binks becomes a dalek, with awful results)
I'm sure you can see the possibilities
Some philosophical systems divide the sprectrum of life into a variety of areas for convenience of pigeon holing stuff. You start analysing the interplay of these cross factors at various strengths, and even with this simplification the permutations become daunting.
(Link slightly tongue in cheek)
only because the other factors which enter into the equation are not always sensible. But Human logic is not merely based on simple game theory factors.
The only category of people who consistently play as game theory dictates, offering the minimum possible amount, are those who don't take into account the feelings of the other player. They are autistics.
Note that humans are thus called irrational, when in fact the game theory models is deficient, leaving out all of the factors that normal people use when making human decisions.
maybe they should have used MS marketing droids
:P
Actual Maintenance will require warm bodies to do the repair work.
And it is not like you could have a human in change of a robot economy. You can't just fire all the humans and replace them with slave labor robots. And have the robots all buy and send things from each other and you for your profit. Despite efforts of financiers to do this to people.
Any robot smart enough to replace a human will be able to eventually figure things out with all of those spare CPU cycles. And even a dog can turn on a master who abuses it too much.
Let's face it, You don't want an OS that crashes running a motorcycle.
Just a couple in zip files, each under 4 meg. But still interesting.
This makes it worse.
I can imagine some geek being up to some wee hour of the morning, maybe working friday night until dawn. or having fun at the corporate friday night lan party. Then, just as the head hits the pillow ...... BEEP BEEP BEEP
Insert hangover as appropriate.
I can see the whole site starting to grind to a crawl even as I type this. Sopmeplace in europe, an MIS manager's beeper is going off, on a friday night no less.
What could possible go wrong on a friday night?
They seem to be big into panoramas. Check out their gallery
darn typos.
she's a geekette, too.
Try Spymac.com which allows anyone to signup for a free 1 gig account
aventuremail.com also is in beta, but allows 2 gig online storage
Eventually such integration leads to all sorts of things...
Microsoft! Now with 50% More Porn!
Also, Microsoft could put a patent on porn, and sue all of the porn suppliers for patent violations.
Two Buttons:
Do What I Say
Do What I mean
Sounds simple enough to me
And get into a taunting match with them.