astroaztec | give us back our 11 days

One daughter is out of school today (Lincoln's birthday) and the other daughter is in school. On the walk to school this morning my daughter asked me about the presidents' birthdays. I said Washington was born on February 11 in the old calendar, but we celebrate his birthday on February 22 in the new calendar. Having said that I was obliged to explain the whole subject. That included covering how and why the practice of celebrating federal holidays changed -- from the date to the Monday -- between the time I was born and the time I was grown.

Among other things I said that calendars are not something that everyone has to agree on. Everyone has to agree on when the sun rises because that's a real event, but the date is just a convention. I noted how strange things were in England from 1583 through 1752 when you could take a boat across the channel and have to reset your calendar by 10 or 11 days.

And I happen to be up on all of this because of an article in Harper's magazine, ``the oldest general interest monthly in America''. After some delay they put many of their articles online, but it seems that they reserve some of them until an external event makes them timely. The article in question happens to have been scanned by a guy who I think works for Google, and he has it all online starting here.

Perhaps my daughter will always be happy for me to tell long stories like that, and perhaps I'll always manage to read her level of cognition and interest to keep it that way. Or perhaps she, like many others, will learn that it's better not to ask an astronomer ``What time is it?'' unless you really want to know.