cyclical or linear?

time, people. something that we either have too much of or, usually, too little. recently, i was rummaging through some stuff in my parent's basement and found a 1980 calendar that was probably my brother's (Steve). curious, i brought out the almanac and looked at the perpetual calendars. turns out that the 1980 calendar, will repeat itself in 2008; all leap year calendars repeat every 28 years. therefore, if you had an old 1976 calendar hanging around, it would be the same exact one used for this year and in 2032.

the perpetual calendar is quite a neat tool to have. by looking up a year, you can find the corresponding designated calendar. and although i'm probably the only person who makes use of them on occasion, it's most useful to find the day of significant events.

for example, i can tell you that the year i was born (1970), was a #5 on the perpetual calendar list...which, btw, will be coming up in 2009. anyway, i was born on a monday (June 15th). lessee here...

12/7/41...bombing of Pearl H*rbor. #4 calendar. happened on a sunday. course, that was a strategic tactic on the behalf of the Japanese bombers, to catch 'em off guard while the servicemen were off duty...picnicking with their families.

3/24/89...grounding of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker (which is not the largest oil spill by far, just in U.S. history). #1 calendar. happened on a friday.

1/17/95...Kobe, Japan earthquake. #1 calendar. happened on early tuesday (Japan), but it was a monday here since Japan is 15-18 hours ahead of the entire USA. hell, you didn't need a perpetual calendar...i coulda told you what day that happened ;)

4/20/99...Columb*ne rampage. #6 calendar. happened on a tuesday. bet you can recall what you were doing the exact moment you heard the news (me? i was standing next to the bread warmers at the Harvest, when our manager, Nikki, told us what she just heard on the radio). quite similar to the generation before us and their memories of the JFK assassination.

9/11/01...this is the December 7th of our generation. #2 calendar. another tuesday. and just a few days before i was supposed to go to Bolivia. surprisingly, actually got out on the right plane (without cancellations)...after spending three hours in line, just to get to the dang ticket counter.

and now that i've lost the remainder of my 'loyal' readers with this posting...

i forgot to mention that there are 14 different calendars that make it perpetual. #1-#7 repeat in six or eleven year intervals. basically, if the year repeats in six years, it will repeat in two eleven year intervals before it repeats in six again. of course, 6+11+11=28...just like the leap years (i.e., calendars #8-#14) repeating in 28-year intervals.

now, there should be a small asterisk next to all that i have said because based on the Gregorian calendar formula, there are century years as well. this goofy year is thrown in to balance out all those freaky quarter days that the earth gets on its axis (kinda like mileage). century years are years that are only divisible by 400...like 1600, 2000, 2400, etc. basically, by having a century year thrown in (it's still a leap year), it eliminates three leap years in a 400 year period...somehow straightening out all those 365 days and 5 hours and 48 minute (a true solar year) rotations. damn, this has my head spinning now.

so, with the century year, there will be a twelve year skip in the 6+11+11 interval. as for the leap years, it messes them up too. three of the seven leap years come back in twelve (#9,#11,#13 on the perpetual) and the other four (#8,#10,#12,#14) are extended to a 40 year interval before returning to the 28 year pattern. luckily, it only happens every 400 years... maybe a mathematician has collaborated with a computer programmer and figured out the whole pattern by now.

looks like calendar tinkering is much more work than we can imagine. hell, it's so easy to take it for granted and just buy that cute puppy calendar...or the Sports Illustr*ted Sw*msuit calendar...or the latest Far Side planner.

it works fairly well though. if you look at other ancient calendar systems (e.g., Egyptian or Julian), they weren't so easily transitional. the Egyptians knew that the earth year was 365.24 days, but they chose to have a 360 day calendar and have a leap year every 1460 years, to even things out. this meant that they had a precisely correct calendar only every 1460 years. 'course, even if you lived to be 100...you were just 25 days off ;) nevertheless, if we implemented their system, that would mean 730 years of opposite seasons. like it matters when your body has already been reduced to microdust.

so, even though we Americans and much of the western world tend to run on a linear system of thought and calendrics, things really are cyclical. after all, what goes around...

back to time on our hands...either too little or too much...guess which one i had in composing this post?

bet you won't come back for a week... shee-yit, i'm so confused that i may not blog for longer than that ;)