Joel C. Ewing writes (of Julian days): | That makes much sense for astronomers that work through | the night and sleep during the day, but is a terrible fit for people | and businesses that have to deal with "normal" work hours and | who would never tolerate the same period of daylight being | called by two different dates
What people find tolerable is a function of their experience. When my wife and I lived in Iran we rapidly came to terms with the convention that the day ends at sundown and even, with only a little more difficulty, with idea that a dinner invitation for Tuesday night was an invitation to have dinner following sundown on Monday. However that may be, this objection has another, much more important defect. It confounds internal representations for machines with external representations for people, which need to be interconvertible but should seldom--I had almost written never--be the same. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
