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==Gregorian calendar article== ==Gregorian calendar article==
You might be interested to know that an incorrect calendar conversion procedure is being repeatedly introduced into ]. An interesting coincidence is that for the two years (1200 and 2800) I checked, the procedure works for converting between the ] and Julian calendar, but not the Gregorian calendar. Since the IP editor is an advocate of the New Calendar, I wonder if this is a matter of what the editor is familiar with, or what the editor advocates. ] (]) 21:08, 16 February 2010 (UTC) You might be interested to know that an incorrect calendar conversion procedure is being repeatedly introduced into ]. An interesting coincidence is that for the two years (1200 and 2800) I checked, the procedure works for converting between the ] and Julian calendar, but not the Gregorian calendar. Since the IP editor is an advocate of the New Calendar, I wonder if this is a matter of what the editor is familiar with, or what the editor advocates. ] (]) 21:08, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

==Tall stories: Meletian calendar v Gregorian==

Good morning, Joe. Can I debunk a falsehood which you, Simon Cassidy and most of the other usual suspects have been putting out for many years now? See e.g. ]. The claim is that Gregory XIII's Bull mandates the use of the observed vernal equinox in the regulation of the Gregorian calendar. That's exactly what the claim is - bull.

As Gregory says, the object of the reform is to prevent the vernal equinox receding towards the winter months - i.e. to make the calendar year approximate to the length of the mean tropical year. He didn't make a very good job of it - the equinox still recedes although at a much slower rate - one day in 3,323 years compared to one day in 128 years under Julius Caesar's system.

That is why astronomers and Eastern European governments got together last century and introduced the new leap year rule, to reduce the rate of slippage to one day in 44,000 years. The observed equinox is a red herring - to keep it on March 21 eight leap days have to be intercalated every 33 years, a solution rejected by Gregory primarily because it messes up the Easter tables. The new leap year rules haven't been widely publicised because of the misinformation campaign, so here they are.

'''Step 1''' - divide the year's last two digits by four - if there is no remainder the year is a leap year '''unless''' the last two digits are 00, in which case it probably is not.

'''Step 2''' - if the last two digits are 00, ignore them and divide the rest of the number by nine. If there is a remainder of two or seven the year is a leap year. If not, it isn't.

The next bit concerns the Easter tables. You are clued up on them, but others aren't, so please bear with me.

In Clavius' theory, there is a solar correction (SOL) which postpones the date of the paschal full moon by one day in most centennial years. There is also a lunar correction (LUN) in 32 per cent of centennial years which advances the date of the paschal full moon by one day. This is averaged out over a long period to one thirtieth of a lunation.

My table shows the cumulative effect of the two corrections over a full 900 - year cycle.

{| class="wikitable"
!Correction date||Sunday Letter(s)||SOL||LUN||Cypher
|-
|1600||BA||0||0||0
|-
|1700||C||+1||0||+1
|-
|1800||E||+2||-1||+1
|-
|1900||G||+3||-1||+2
|-
|2000||BA||+3||-1||+2
|-
|2100||C||+4||-2||+2
|-
|2200||E||+5||-2||+3
|-
|2300||G||+6||-2||+4
|-
|2400||B||+7||-3||+4
|}

The cypher is the combined effect of the two corrections. In 1582 there was a one - off advance in the date of the paschal full moon by four days, and a one - off removal of ten days from the calendar, giving a net retardation of six days. If, therefore, the cypher is added to the ten days dropped and then LUN is added (disregarding the minus sign) this gives the difference between the two calendars.

The beauty of the new system is that the cypher increases by four every 900 years until 4199. It is the only arrangement of the 900 - year cycle which produces this result, and eliminates the defect of Clavius' theory in which the movement of the date of the paschal full moon sometimes goes into reverse.

The next thing is to see how the quantities are manipulated to give the date of Easter Sunday. Let's take an actual year - 2410. To do the calculation you'll need a copy of the ''Book of Common Prayer'' of the Church of England or the Church of Ireland. If you speak Welsh you can use the Book of Common Prayer of the Church in Wales. If you don't have access to the book
you can access the relevant table at . You'll need the Sunday Letter for the year, which is easy to find. The table gives the Sunday Letters of every centennial year from 1600 to 2400 - it can be extended because every 900 years the Sunday Letter cycles forwards two places (e.g. B becomes D and GF becomes BA. A leap year has two letters - one for January and February and the other for March to December. As Easter falls in March or April, reference in this explanation to the Sunday Letter of a leap year is a reference to the second letter. Every year the Sunday Letter cycles back one place (two if the second year is a leap year). Also, every eleven years the Sunday Letter repeats, provided that the first year of the eleven is not exactly divisible by four. The entire sequence repeats every 28 years. If a centennial year falls within any of these periods these alignments may break down, so use them only if the intervening centennial year is a leap year. If you want to start your eleven - year period from a year which is exactly divisible by four, work out the Sunday Letter for the preceding or following year and apply the eleven - year rule from there.

For 2410 we see from the table that the Sunday Letter for 2400 is B and it's not a leap year. So the Sunday Letter for 2401 is A, for 2412 also A, for 2411 C and for 2410 D. We now need the Golden Number for 2410. The rule is, add one to the year and divide by nineteen - the remainder is the Golden Number but if there is no remainder the Golden Number is nineteen. For 2010 the Golden Number is 17.

The table tells us that the cypher for 2410 is 4, so we look for 4 in the prayer book table under Golden Number 17. It is marked against March 21, so in that year the paschal full moon falls on March 21. All Sundays are marked D in the second column, the next one is March 22, so that is Easter Day.

Now, in 2410 the vernal equinox falls on Saturday afternoon March 21 at 4.23 Greenwich Mean Time. The full moon falls on Sunday March 22 at 9.38 A.M. So a March 29 Easter would have been better, but at least the table puts Easter in the right month. Clavius fares abysmally - his Easter is on April 25, the (wrong) full moon having fallen on Monday 19th at 6.28 P.M.

The combined Easter table below gives Catholic Easter for 1900 - 2199 (both dates inclusive) and Orthodox Easter for 1900 - 2099 (both dates inclusive). It is taken from the back of a calendar - in the actual table the Golden Numbers are bracketed into three groups, A, B, and C, which I have represented by ordinary type (for group A), italic type (for group B), and bold type (for group C). The accompanying text does not mention Orthodox Easter - the rule which I have added at the end is mine. The period of validity is not given but is as above. The instructions are as follows.

The calendar cards are printed both sides to cover all possible day/date variations in ordinary and leap years. March, April, July and December have cards to themselves. A year is normally a leap year if its last two digits divide exactly by four. If the last two figures are 00, then the year is not a leap year unless it gives remainder two or seven when its other digits are divided by nine. A year which is not a leap year ends on the same day of the week as that on which it began.

The date of Easter is found from numbers which are allotted to certain dates as indicated in the table at left. For any particular year, the number which is taken is the same as the remainder that is obtained when one is added to the year and the total divided by nineteen. If there is no remainder 19 is taken.

If the number is in Group A, Easter falls on the Sunday following the date against which that number appears. If the number is in Group B, Easter falls on the Sunday of the week commencing with the date against which that number appears.

If the number is in Group C, the date against which it appears is to be treated as a day of March, and Easter falls on the day after the Saturday following that date.

''For Orthodox Easter, ignore the brackets. Easter is the Sunday after the Wednesday following the date against which the number appears''.

{| class="wikitable"
!Date||Number
|-
|March 30||16
|-
|March 31||5
|-
|April 1||
|-
|April 2||13
|-
|April 3||2
|-
|April 4||
|-
|April 5||10
|-
|April 6||
|-
|April 7||18
|-
|April 8||7
|-
|April 9||
|-
|April 10||15
|-
|April 11||4
|-
|April 12||
|-
|April 13||12
|-
|April 14||1
|-
|April 15||
|-
|April 16||9
|-
|April 17||
|-
|April 18||''17''
|-
|April 19||''6''
|-
|April 20||
|-
|April 21||'''14'''
|-
|April 22||'''3'''
|-
|April 23||
|-
|April 24||'''11'''
|-
|April 25||
|-
|April 26||'''19'''
|-
|April 27||'''8'''
|}

] (]) 08:45, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Revision as of 13:05, 30 April 2010

/Archive 2004/03/23–2006/10/08
/Archive 2006/10/15–2009/04/20

Decimal time

Please add an exception for "decads" in Decimal time#Decimal times in fiction. Because this is fictional and matches Asimov's spelling of "centads", it should not be changed to "decades". — Joe Kress (talk) 19:54, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting that. Consider it excepted! :)
Cheers, CmdrObot (talk) 19:56, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

NATO Phonetic Alphabet Undo

Nevermind -- see Talk:NATO phonetic alphabet#Charlie Racist and the "Growing Movement". 209.159.37.194 (talk) 22:41, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Greek numerals

Why did you remove my reference? Languagehat (talk) 22:05, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Answered at Talk:Greek numerals#Alternate name ref. — Joe Kress (talk) 23:46, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Affirmation of daily rotation in 24 hours

The Earth's rotation in 24 hours exactly is organised around a formal proof of cause,effect with values in support and it cannot be disproved.The 'sidereal time' value represents a specific line of reasoning based on timekeeping averages originating with John Flamsteed who inverted the references for daily and orbital motion and created a catastrophic situation in the process.

There is nothing worse than the 'fact' of the Earth rotating in the 'sidereal time' or rather,it exists on the same conceptual level as a flat Earth.The matter,which arises from Flamsteed ill-considered conclusion in the late 17th century by correlating the return of a star directly with planetary dynamics and specifically daily rotation, requires immediate attention insofar as a society which cannot express the basic facts of planetary shape,rotation and rotational characteristics contained in the fact that the Earth turns at 15 degrees per hour is in serious difficulties.

The simple formal proof for rotation in 24 hours -

http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Earth%27s_rotationOriel36 (talk) 17:47, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Answered at Talk:Earth's rotation#Earth's rotation in 24 hours. — Joe Kress (talk) 19:46, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

180th meridian article name

Hi, I noticed that you prefer the article to be at 180th meridian as opposed to antimeridian, yet the edit summary says, "antimeridian depends on prime meridian". If this is the case, then would it not be better to name the article "antimeridian", since all the points on the antimeridian have an antipode on the prime meridian? Thanks.   Set Sail For The Seven Seas  357° 30' 00" NET   23:50, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Answered at Talk:180th meridian#Article name. — Joe Kress (talk) 21:57, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
{{notice}}   Set Sail For The Seven Seas  347° 30' 00" NET   23:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Break Tag

Hi again, you seem to have removed the break tag. It was inserted because of this bit of text.

"These festivities recall the story of creation and the ancient cosmology of Iranian and Persian people."

This has overlapped with the picture. This problem is now back again. There maybe another way to fix it that I'm not aware of, but it does the job for now. It seems justified to putback the break tag. Thanks.   Set Sail For The Seven Seas  347° 00' 00" NET   23:08, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

What browser are you using? No overlap exists in either IE7 and FF2 on my computer when I view Equinox#Cultural aspects of the equinox. — Joe Kress (talk) 01:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm using Firefox 3.0.13, in which the text doesn't appear to wrap around the picture properly. It might a problem with the brower as opposed to the page. Thanks.   Set Sail For The Seven Seas  173° 00' 00" NET   11:32, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 Fixed   Set Sail For The Seven Seas  322° 55' 15" NET   21:31, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

References for invariable plane and other subjects

Hallo Joe K, thanks for posting your list of references on Talk:Invariable_plane, it certainly gives a strong showing -- and contains much of wider interest also, specially this item Astrometric and geodetic properies of Earth and the Solar System, it looks like a whole treasure-house I didn't see before.

There's also something curious about it, if you compare it with another copy I found online at the AGU (searched because I had trouble trying to decipher one of the equations in the JPL copy). It turns out there is a big difference in legibility. I occasionally noticed that the pdfs in the JPL online database seem to be scrambled as if passed through some kind of rather bad OCR process. This is another of them! I can't think how it could be accidental.

The AGU page, besides offering an not-scrambled version, also shows a whole lot more material of related reference interest: Global Earth Physics (handbook) 1995.

So thanks for the Yoder link and the others: With good wishes Terry0051 (talk) 15:43, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Nautical time

With reference to this edit have you actually checked the reference to make sure it contains appropiate information? From your edit summary I get the impression you have added it on the assumption that it was what RadioFan meant to do. When I removed the strange bit of RadioFan's edit I left a message on their talk page saying what I'd done and from their reply I'm far from certain that they meant to duplicate the reference and instead it was just some weird error. Therefore unless you can confirm that the book is a good reference for that paragrah I don't think it should be included - at least without checking with RadioFan. Dpmuk (talk) 10:05, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

10s link

Hi again, it seem that once again you have reverted my edit. Generally exponentiation is written using superscripts. The only reason that the page name didn't have this superscript is because html tags can't be used for page names to give the exponentiation required; but the link name can use html tags, so it should be perfectly justified to restore the superscript tags to the link name. Thanks.   Set Sail For The Seven Seas  193° 27' 30" NET   12:53, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I found an exception to the general rule against piping in WP:PIPING for technical reasons, so I won't object. However, I think the short line under the superscript in linked names is ugly (10)—the underline indicating a link should be continuous with that under normally sized characters. You might consider replacing 10<sup>4</sup> with 10{{sup|4}} due to the smaller number of typed characters. Although personal preference, 10{{smallsup|4}} results in a smaller superscript font: 10 vs 10. — Joe Kress (talk) 00:29, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
I wasn't actually aware of the "sup" and "smallsup" templates. It is a lot more convenient and the small superscript does look a lot better. I'll probably use that one, thanks for that tip.   Set Sail For The Seven Seas  260° 22' 30" NET   17:21, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Please contact me

Dear Joe Kress Please contact me via wikipaedia internal e-mail. I have a bronze calender and wish to discuss it. cheers chris-do-algarve Chris-do-algarve (talk) 19:10, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I do not use e-mail with Misplaced Pages. I do not know what you mean by a "bronze calendar". I have no interest whatsoever in proposed calendars, only in historical or existing calendars. — Joe Kress (talk) 07:37, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! Dating Creation

Thanks for help on the reference, man. 76.244.59.146 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:56, 27 October 2009 (UTC).

Editing talk pages

Hi, you seem to be editting the entire talk page, rather than just individual sections. This makes it harder for other readers to tell which section you've added your comments to. Thought you might like to know. --Michael C. Price 07:40, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

You are correct. Although I have "Enable section editing via links" checked in my preferences, I almost never use it. I always click on the "edit this page" tab, rather than a section of the page. I've used this method since before section editing was even allowed in Misplaced Pages. Indeed, just finding the section is difficult on talk pages with long active sections. I easily find edits anywhere within articles or talk pages by clicking on "hist" to the right of any articles or talk pages on my watchlist and then "compare selected revisions" since the last time I checked the page. This allows me to find multiple edits by editors (including vandals) anywhere on the page. A watchlist only indicates the last section edited by the last editor of any article or talk page, so that is useless for finding multiple edits. Clicking on the names of articles or talk pages on my watch list and then clicking on its history is indirect. Furthermore, clicking on the individual time/date of edits within an article's history is much too slow for me. Nevertheless, I'll try to use section editing on at least talk pages for those that don't use my technique. — Joe Kress (talk) 09:55, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
I just tried to use a section edit in an article and found it utterly useless if a reference is included, because the text of references are in another section which is not shown in "Show preview". — Joe Kress (talk) 22:10, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, good point. That is a real drawback with section editing. Swings and roundabouts, I guess. --Michael C. Price 22:37, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
A workaround is to temporarily add a <references/> or {{reflist}} tag at the end of the section prior to previewing it, but that temporary tag must be removed before the edit is saved. — Joe Kress (talk) 00:30, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Merge discussion for Misplaced Pages:Section

An article that you have been involved in editing, Misplaced Pages:Section , has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. – imis 01:38, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Old Style and New Style dates

Joe,

The calendar article of course if not a place for discussing unrelated history detail, but my view, as that of a person who's read some literature on the period, using the term "Sovier Union" to refer to anything that took place in 1918 sounds very anachronistic, while "Soviet Russia" is a commonly used and easily recognizable, even if not official, name for the polity that existed at the time. The actual calendar decree referred to the "Russian Republic", because the state did not receive the RSFSR name until the summer of 1918. The USSR was still a long way off, and in the intervening years the Bolsheviks did in fact have a lot of discussion as to whether various ethnic republics should legally be an autonomous states within the RSFSR, or separate states of the same level as the RSFSR.

It's quite true, as you said, that the Bolshevik decree applied (at least theoretically) to the entire territory of the post-1922 Soviet Union, as all of it was probably claimed by the then Russian Republic at the time (assuming they had time to think of such legal niceties). In practice things may have been less crystal clear: e.g., I would not be surprised if the Gregorian Calendar was in fact introduced earlier in German-controlled Ukraine and Belarus, or that cerain "White" governments during the Russian Civil War turned back the clock in the areas they controlled. (I don't actually know if any of that was the case; I do note though that in mid-May 1918, the New York Times may still have been rather confused about the current calendar situation in Moscow.)

Would you find acceptable the following rewrite/expansion of the relevant sections?

An early decree of the Council of the People's Commissars, introducing the "Western European calendar" in Russia

In Russia, the terms "Old Style" and "New Style" have the same significance as elsewhere. The start of the year was moved to 1 January in 1700, but the Gregorian calendar was introduced only after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. According to the decree by the Council of the People's Commissars of the then "Russian Republic" dated March 9  1918, January 31, 1918 (Old style) was to be followed by February 14, 1918 (New style). Therefore, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 is referred to as October Revolution, despite having started on 7 November under the Gregorian calendar (25 October ).

If the piping "Russian Republic" sounds inappropriate to you for some reason, we could use "the then Russian Republic" (see where the 2 links point). Vmenkov (talk) 03:41, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

You responded here before I could revert myself, which I considered but delayed because I wanted to do more research. Similar to you, I suspected that "Russian Republic" in the Pravda article may be a new name for the entire Russian Empire before some regions (including Belarus and Ukraine) were ceded to Germany and subsequently became autonomous republics. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 3 March 1918 makes this interpretation virtually certain. I was also uncertain how to mention the post-1922 Soviet Union. I have reverted myself and reworded the passage in Old Style and New Style dates to include the post-1922 Soviet Union.
I was aware of the Pravda article because it appeared in История календаря в России и в СССР (Calendar history in Russia and the USSR), chapter 19 in История календаря и хронология by Селешников (History of the calendar and chronology by Seleschnikov). Because it is so short and assuming you can read and write Russian, I would appreciate a literal translation of the Pravda article into English.
Thanks for the New York Times article. It is indeed quite confusing. All three dates in the article imply that May Day was celebrated on 1 May Julian, not Gregorian. That is, the date of the celebration itself (14 May), the date the correspondent cabled the story (15 May), and the date the newspaper printed it (17 May). Yet the article also states that the celebrations were held during Holy Week, that is, the week before Easter Sunday (not Bright Week, the week after Easter Sunday). In 1918, Julian Easter was 22 April in the Julian calendar and 5 May in the Gregorian calendar. No confusion is possible with the Gregorian Easter which was over a month earlier. Thus 1 May Gregorian was within Holy Week. I regard both as good evidence, so I don't know which calendar was used to determine when May Day should be celebrated.
I wrote the article Soviet calendar within which I mention two similar Time Magazine articles which were also confused. I see that Arhivarij has modified the previously incorrect Russian Misplaced Pages article Советский революционный календарь by adding much of the information I found and provided additional valuable information which I should include in the English article. By the way, Roscoe Lamont in The reform of the Julian calendar translated Peter the Great's AD 1699 (AM 7208) edict adopting 1 January as New Years Day beginning in 1700. — Joe Kress (talk) 23:14, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for reverting and rewriting; I think it looks fine now. I added the full translation of the text to commons:File:Sovnarkom-Gregorian-Calendar-Decree-izo39.jpg. As to the May 1918 NYT article, my hypothesis is that May Day was in fact celebrated in Moscow on May 1, 1918 Gregorian calendar. But by the time the Moscow reporter's report made it to New York, it was already mid May (their earlier articles of the period complained about telegraph cables being cut in Finland, etc etc), and the NYT editor/staff writer there just assumed that the Russians were still on Julian calendar, and wrote the final text accordingly. I am sure they had fact checkers, but those probably weren't very up-to-date... Vmenkov (talk) 01:47, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for translating the Pravda article, which I have tweaked slightly. In Soviet calendar, Shilova (2007) and Malevsky-Malevitch (1933) disagree on whether International Worker's Day and the Day of the Proletarian Revolution was one or two days from 1917 to 1929. Of course, both may have been celebrated for two days but they may have had different kinds of celebrations on those days, which I also read was the case for the post-1929 21–22 January. My specific concern is whether one or both days were days of rest. Another possibility is that they were originally only one day of rest and were expanded to two days sometime between 1917 and 1929. Could you cast a deciding vote and provide an additonal reference? — Joe Kress (talk) 04:33, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Public holidays in Russia, 1921-2008
I've expanded that article a bit, based on the meticulously written ru:История праздников России (History of public holidays in Russia) and sources therein. It appears that May 2 and Nov 8 were indeed designated (national) public holidays only in 1928. But, as the write-up in that Russian article and the chart from it (see above) indicate, the full story is rather complicated, and I certainly won't have time and patience trying to write it up. The situation is complicated by the existence, until 1929, of up to 10 "special" holidays - additional public holidays (however, unpaid) which local governments were authorized to set. Those could be used both to extend the "May Holidays" and "November Holidays" into May 2 and Nov 8, and to provide workers with days off for major religious feasts. Vmenkov (talk) 08:23, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for editing...

Thanks for editing the section I added to the Maya calendar article about the supplementary series. I forgot that Misplaced Pages uses the un-conventional convention that text in titles is not in Title Case. I also forgot that the text editor from which I cut and pasted the text adds invisible newlines. Also, I'm a crappy typist and proof-reader. Senor Cuete (talk) 21:33, 4 December 2009 (UTC)Senor Cuete

Joe: Thanks for cleaning up the Long Count calendar section about correlations. I reiterate the self-deprecating comments above. I'll add some citations soon where you indicate they are needed in the reference about the lunar age. Senor Cuete (talk) 22:35, 24 March 2010 (UTC)Senor Cuete

Thanks

Do you think Mardyks doesn't like me? :-) Dougweller (talk) 07:00, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

An anal passage will function quite well, whether liked or not. No worries, mate! MARDYKS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.64.120.186 (talk) 22:31, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Request for review

I will soon create a new article with more extensive tables for converting between the Julian and Gregorian calendar. It is presently at User:Jc3s5h/sandbox4. I would appreciate it if you would look it over, since I know you are interested in calendars. --Jc3s5h (talk) 16:30, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Enquiry about your reference/citation to Newcomb solar tables

I was interested to see your citation of Newcomb (1895) solar tables (vol.6 of 'A.P.A.E.') with a URL. It's puzzling, but when I try that link, I get to see the summary but the site won't let me see any of the text (although I have a few hard-copy photocopy extracts).

Certainly the work is out of copyright, and some of the neighboring volumes in the series are visible on archive.org (and I don't have trouble with other books on google generally). I wonder if you know of any way, or could suggest any way, that I could get to see the downloaded pdf of Newcomb vol.6? Terry0051 (talk) 02:34, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

You may be a victim of Google books selective geographic availability. Some books which Google uploads, even those in the public domain, are only available to United States users or may only be available to United Kingdom users, etc. I found two editions of volume 6 on my United States English Google books site, and . If that is not the problem, you might try another Google books site. Just change the language code in http://books.google.com/books?hl=en I have found books written in Latin on the Russian Google books site that were not even listed on the English Google books site. I just checked the Russian site (hl=ru) and the same two 1898 editions are listed for "other editions" (Другие издания) of "astronomical papers prepared for the use of the american ephemeris and nautical almanac". "Other editions" is usually the last link under any edition that is listed under a specific title. — Joe Kress (talk) 08:12, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I didn't know about selective geographic availability, and it looks as if you're right. I tried all the links and parameters you suggested, with negative result. I'm in the UK. Maybe someone at Google checked the wrong box and accidentally switched off availability here. I guess I'll have to try and see if there's any way I can get to see a download made from where it is available. Terry0051 (talk) 18:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Two comments that do not bear exactly on accessing this data. (1) It is probable that this work was never under copyright, because by law, writing created by US federal employees in the course of their duties is in the public domain. (2) Google books seem to have a rough time classifying old astronomy books; I have seen several classified as juvenile non-fiction (or maybe it was juvenile fiction). --Jc3s5h (talk) 20:06, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
I learned about selective geographic availability from complaints to HASTRO-L, The History of Astronomy Discussion Group. Some readers were searching for astronomical articles published in the 1950s which were avaiable online to US readers but not to European readers. This problem is not limited to astronomy books. I discovered that Google books had a very hard to find book on calculating the date of Easter while searching for something else, The ecclesiastical calendar: Its theory and construction by Samuel Butcher (1877). I mentioned it to an anonymous editor on Talk:Computus, but he could not access its image via Google, nor via the link to Google books provided by the Internet Archive, even though it was published in London, not the US (he did not reveal his country). He was able to access the corrupt text provided by the Internet Archive. I just checked the University of Leiden and Gallica, Bibliotheque nationale de France, but neither had this series, which is not surprising since most of their books and articles are European. As far as I can see, virtually all astronomy books on Google are classified as juvenile nonfiction, so I pay no attention to that. — Joe Kress (talk) 23:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Permanent gregorian calendar

Hello Mr.Joe Kress, my copyright:

The first print was by C.H.Beck-Munic 1992 "Juristenkalender/Steuerberaterkalender". The next print by "Max-Planck-Institut" Heidelberg, see by "Sterne und Weltraum" 5/93. The next print was a poster in special nr.5 from march in year 2000 by "Sterne und Weltraum".

I am the dokument for "the first perpedual and permanent calendar" from "Guinnessbuch-Verlag" oct/1998, please see http://www.ewige-kalender.de Thanks for your job. Ich spreche leider nicht englisch; verzeihen Sie bitte. Greetings from saxniaLenderCarl (talk) 14:25, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, but I have already read this twice, including User talk:Jc3s5h#perpedual calendar. I understand that your perpetual calendar, or something quite similar, was published previously. That only reinforces your copyright. But you cannot retain a copyright for any image that you place on Wikimedia Commons. You must remove the copyright symbol "( C )" from the image or the entire image may be deleted. For your convenience I repeat this paragraph via Google translate:
Vielen Dank, aber ich habe schon gelesen das auf User talk:Jc3s5h#perpedual calendar. Ich verstehe, dass Ihr ewiger Kalender, oder etwas ganz Ähnliches, die bisher veröffentlicht wurde. Das verstärkt nur Ihr Urheberrecht. Aber man kann nicht behalten ein Urheberrecht für jedes Bild, die Sie auf Wikimedia Commons. Sie müssen das Verlagsrecht-Symbol zu entfernen "( C )" aus dem Bild oder das gesamte Bild gelöscht werden können. Ich wiederhole dies mit Google übersetzer. — Joe Kress (talk) 20:14, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Joe, I believe that is incorrect. The terms of the Misplaced Pages:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, for example, contains the phrase "Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright) license..." (emphasis added). Non-exclusive means that the licensor retains the copyright, and is free to grant additional licenses to others, or under other terms. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:27, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Upon further consideration, you're probably right. The Berne Convention, now accepted by the United States, does not require any copyright symbol, in contrast with former United States copyright law, which did. That is, a copyright under the Berne Convention is automatic (no symbol), whereas former US law required both registration in the Library of Congress and a distinct copyright symbol. Thus the presence of a copyright symbol does not affect the copyright status of the work. I was thinking in terms of the old law rather than current law. — Joe Kress (talk) 22:06, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Gregorian calendar article

You might be interested to know that an incorrect calendar conversion procedure is being repeatedly introduced into Gregorian calendar. An interesting coincidence is that for the two years (1200 and 2800) I checked, the procedure works for converting between the New Calendar and Julian calendar, but not the Gregorian calendar. Since the IP editor is an advocate of the New Calendar, I wonder if this is a matter of what the editor is familiar with, or what the editor advocates. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:08, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

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