There's also an article about that Maya room with the calculations on
the wall in today's NYT, and no doubt other places. As usual with
press releases, there's a lot of hype involved. There's nothing
particularly exciting about finding a calendar system that extends
over more than 2.5 million days. The long-known long count, in fact,
will cover 2,880,000 days (18 x 20^4) before a new digit would have to
be added at the left. The present high-order digit, 12, will roll over
to 13 on either December 21 or December 23 this year, depending on
which of two competing correlations one accepts. (I suspect the
December 21 one is more popular with the public partly because of the
coincidence with the winter solstice. Austin's resident expert and ex-
caver Barb MacLeod favors the December 23 version.) Presumably that
digit will continue to count up to 19, after which it will go back to
0 and another digit will be needed, in about 2300 years, provided, of
course, that the world doesn't end this December.
The long count is a mixed-radix number with, currently, 5 "digits."
All but the second from the right count from 0 to 19; the second from
the right counts from 0 to 17. Today is 12 19 19 6 14, by the December
23 scheme. -- Mixon
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God created the world in six days. On the seventh day, while God
rested, the Devil created religion.
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