John Yeung <gallium.arsen...@gmail.com> writes: > I think the choice of epoch is not a big deal, once you pick one far > enough back. Ben Finney's suggestion to use 4004 BCE is not > appreciably different (computationally) from JDN. (Though I will say > that the Wikipedia link he provided doesn't mention 4004 BCE, and if > anything suggests using 1 CE as the epoch.)
My apologies, I gave the wrong year. I was intending to refer to the <URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_date> system, which begins at the year −4712 (4713 BCE). This has the advantages of: * clearly covering spans of human history more recent than ancient civilisations * having a long-recognised standard specification * being commonly used in computing (for astronomy and other scientific computing applications) * making arithmetic on dates simple (it uses a year zero, making the time line an uninterrupted number line) -- \ “When we talk to God, we're praying. When God talks to us, | `\ we're schizophrenic.” —Jane Wagner, via Lily Tomlin, 1985 | _o__) | Ben Finney -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
