The measurement and division of time

THE MEASUREMENT AND DIVISION OF TIME

Victor Manuel Guzmán Villena

The calendar is a system for calculating and recording the time: days, months and seasons. The rotation of the earth on its axis with reference to the sun, stands for one day. The revolution of the moon around the earth, one month, and the earth's revolution around the sun in one year. Different cultures have developed their own calendar through history.

The Moslem calendar is one of the most primitive. Strictly is a lunar calendar. The year consists of twelve lunar months, which retrograde through the seasons in about 32.5 years.

The Egyptian calendar divided the year into 12 months of 30 days each, with 5 additional days that followed every 12 months. As you know the annual loss of a quarter day, go backwards through the seasons in 1460 years, 1461 years hence Egyptians 1360 years are equal to Julian. Egyptian year was called lazy because they started at different times in different seasons.

The Hindu calendar is a lunisolar calendars early in the year is divided into 12 months, with an intercalary month of the same name, inserted after every month in which there are two moons, which occurs approximately every three years . The year begins around April 11.

In the Chinese calendar the year begins with the first new moon after the sun enters Aquarius. It consists of 1 month, a month is intercalated every 30 months. Each month is divided into thirds. Dating from the year 2697 a.de C. So the Chinese equivalent Gregorian year 4702 is 2005 AD.

The Jewish calendar is also lunisolar calendar governing since 3761 BC, the traditional year of creation. The church year begins with the first new moon after the spring equinox, but the civil year begins with the new moon following the autumnal equinox. The years are flawed, every 353 days, 354 days regular, or perfect for 355 days, with an intercalary month in years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17 and 19 Metonic cycle of 19 years. Each month begins with the new moon, allowing some flexibility to make certain festivities on appropriate days of the year.

The Roman calendar was originally assumed that consisted of 10 months, with a total of 304 days, beginning in March and ending in December. Numa added January and February, bringing to 355 days, and ordered an intercalary month every second year. The Romans counted backwards from three fixed points of the month: the Kalends, the 1st, the Ides, March 15, May, July and October, and 13 other months, and the nights were the Nones of March while March 30 was the third day before the Kalends of April.

The abuse of power by the pontiffs and the many wars of conquest before the Christian era so broke the Roman calendar after the conquest of Egypt, Julius Caesar led Rome to a Greek named Sosigines astrologer, who with the Marcus Fabius help conducted the first major reform of the calendar: The Julian calendar, which gave its name and entered into force in the Western world in the year 45 BC and continued in use until 1582.

These reforms consisted of: The equinox was returned to March, by inserting two months between November and December of the year 46 BC Christ, creating what later became known as the last year of confusion. It abolished the lunar year and the intercalary month. The duration of the solar year was fixed at 365.25 days. As compensation for the accumulation of these fractions in one day every four years, the extra day was inserted at the end of February, then the last month of the year, making the "leap year" of 366 days.

The fifth month, Quintilis, was named in his honor July. Evenly distributed on the months, 30 days to even months and 31 days for odd, except February which had 30 days in leap year. He ordered it to enter into force on 1 January of the year 45 BC of Christ. However, despite the fact that the Julian calendar came into effect on 1 January, followed the calendar year starting March 25. Augusto slightly disarranged the system and changed the name of Sextilis by Augustus, but refusing to be honored with a month shorter, as July, ordered that he raise it to 31 days, reducing to February to 28 days, except leap years. Hence, to him we should irregular arrangement of the months of 30 and 31 days. However, provided an important service to discontinue leap years about 11 years to correct an error of 3 days that had accumulated gradually because the popes had been inserting a day every 3 years instead of every 4 for 36 years without the error from 1 to 3 days in the chronology of the period never been corrected.

Later Roger Bacon wrote a thesis on calendar reform and referred to the Pope, and in 1474 Pope Sixtus IV summoned Regiomontanus to Rome to lead a reconstruction of the calendar, but died before completing his task. Pope Gregory XII convened a group of learned to discuss and build an accurate calendar. That was how after five years of study went into effect the Gregorian calendar, which instituted the following reforms: 10 days were excluded, provided, that on October 5 will be counted as 15 October; Fixed the duration of the solar year, setting it to 365, 5 hours, 49 minutes, 12 seconds, was made to start the year on January 1, years became the leap secular, only if it is divisible by 400, thus earned a fraction of one day every 100 years than 15 centuries had risen to 10 days. The new calendar was adopted immediately in all Roman Catholic countries, but the rest of the world delayed its acceptance.

History of the months The names of the months are of great antiquity, although in many respects lost its original significance, continue to survive as part of our common language. Originally tended to represent the twelve arches of the annual revolution of the earth in its orbit around the sun, and thus were comparable to those arches are now known as astrological or astronomical signs of the zodiac.

The original meaning of the months is as follows:

January: Month of 31 days, the first in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. It is named for Janus, who ruled ancient Roman deity doors and gates, and therefore all beginnings. He is depicted with two faces, turning in opposite directions, to indicate that every end is also a beginning. Janus is identified as Jupiter, and indicate that they look both ways to better protect the house that is kept.

February: Month of 28 days, except when added to another inserted in leap years, the second month of the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Not included in the calendar Romuliana, and it is said that Numa him into the Roman calendar in 713 BC C.. The name derives from februaro, purify, what Febra born, the festival of atonement, celebrating the end of the month during which the women were "purified" by priests.

March: Month of 31 days, the third of the Julian and Gregorian calendars first Roman. It is called the honor of Mars, God of War, the famous father of Romulus, who traditionally attributed the compilation of the first calendar. But the month Ovid says that existed before the time of Romulus.

April: 30 days, the fourth month of the Julian and Gregorian calendar, second Roman. Usually relates etymologically with aperire (Latin open), as the season when the flowers open their petals. However, the months were named according to the Roman gods and as April was sacred to Venus and Festum Veneris et Fortunae Virilis was concluded on day 1, it is possible that the month was originally Aphrilis, by Aphrodite, the Greek name of Venus.

May: Month 31 days, the fifth of the Julian and Gregorian third of the Roman. It is said that it is called in honor of the goddess Maya, daughter of Atlas and mother of Mercury and Jupiter. Nevertheless, for other historians presumably named it in honor of the senators. The month was considered unlucky for marriage due to the celebration of the Lemurs, the feast of the dead unhappy, which took place on 9, 11 and 13. This is reflected in the draft unidentified origin "Marry in May and you'll regret it."

June: Month 30 days, the sixth of the Julian and Gregorian calendars, the fourth in the Roman calendar. Oviedo makes the month was named after Juno, but elsewhere the author contradicts this source. June should probably named after the junior assembly (MPs) from the government, the assembly and May senior (senators). Before the reform of the Julian calendar was 29 days.

July: Month of 31 days, the seventh of the Julian calendar and Gregorian and fifth Roman. Originally called Quintillius. Marco Antonio was renamed in honor of Julius Caesar, who was born in that month.

August: Month of 31 days, the eighth in the Julian and Gregorian calendars, the sixth of the Roman calendar. Originally known as Sextilis, by order of Augustus Caesar changed the name, who in rejecting that he was honored with a month smaller than that devoted to Julius Caesar, called July, ordered him to be increased to 31 days, taking the extra day of February . In Gaul and remote part of the empire was known as Aust, which means harvest.

September: Month of 30 days, the ninth in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and seventh Roman. The Ludi Magni, in honor of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, the Romans celebrated September the 4th. In the calendar of Charlemagne was called "month of the harvest", corresponding in part to Fructidor Vendemiaire and partly to the First French Republic.

October: Month of 31 days, the tenth in Julian and the Gregorian and eighth in the Roman calendar. The Equirria when Equuus October was sacrificed to Mars in the Campus Martius, was celebrated on Oct. 15. Successive attempts were made to be called Germanium, Antoninus, Tacitus, Hercules, but all failed, as did the Roman Senate was proposed Faustinus name it in honor of Faustina, wife of Antoninus.

November: Month 30 days, the eleventh in the Julian and Gregorian calendars, the ninth of the Roman calendar. The Roman winter started on November 11 and was celebrated on 13 with a sacred banquet in honor of Jupiter, Jovis Epulum. The purpose of the Senate was called Tiberius was vetoed by the Emperor, asking that they would propose to the arrival of Caesar thirteenth. The All Saints Day is 1, the All Souls 2.

December: (Latin: Decem, ten). 31-day month, twelfth in the Julian and Gregorian calendars, the tenth of the Roman calendar. The Saturn Saturnalia or holidays celebrated this month. During the reign of Commodus Amazonius was temporarily named in honor of his lover whose portrait was painted as Amazons. Holy month, by the fact that Christmas is celebrated in this month.

Disciplining the Time

Disciplining the Time

Víctor Manuel Guzmán Villena

The first of January is the beginning of the year for many peoples, religions, cultures and ethnic groups. It is a date of big celebrations and of new hopes. According to our calendar, Julian, and citing as an example a year 2008, points out the calendar of the Coptic ones that we are in the year 1723.

According to the Muslims it is the year 1427 (in memory of the flight of Mahoma of the Mecca to Medina). According to the Jews we are in the year 5768. It is necessary to add that the anecdotal fact of which, because of the French revolution, there began a new calendar that was starting on September 22, 1792 (year I) but that only lasted three years, being absorbed by the Gregorian one, whose reform entered in effect from 1582, which the Julian calendar corrects, and to establish the balance eliminates on October ten days: from 5 to 14!, but this reform did not come everywhere immediately into force. Consulting the perpetual calendar, the only copy is in Quito, Ecuador, in a historian's private library, there is the reform that was promulgated in 1582 and they were abolished in ten days.

In Germany a movement took place and the catholic regions adopt the reform in 1584, as in Bohemia, but in the Protestant regions the reform is adopted in 1775, almost two hundred years later, not to speak about Bulgaria, this is a fact that is convenient to retain that only adopted it in 1917.

In England the Gregorian reform is applied in 1752, for hate towards the papists, the Anglican ones also resisted two centuries.

In Latin America towns the Julian calendar was adopted after the Spanish conquest and imposed by force. The Mayan, Aztecs and Incas who were using different time measurements and who were done in accordance with their cultures and needs, were erased of the map of the science despite having big astrologers and astronomers.

The Mayan calendar not only has marked the time but it has indicated with big accuracy the solar and lunar eclipses and has a lack of coordination of only 2 seconds in 2 thousand years of its existence.

Hence would derive, in poetical terms walking for house nothing it exists so relatively as the time. Unable to fix its beginning, the same way of fixing cycles – its duration - and let's not say its end.

In the beginning it was not the clock, it was the Verb

The duration of the time depends on if we have a good time or suffer, on if the things move or they are calm, on themselves, if with the age, we project ourselves towards the future or turn the look backwards.

As for the end of the times we do not know with accuracy of which it consists, if must be understood by it that what we call time will stop existing or if there will supervene a type of time radically different from the one that till now has been showed to us.

How much time do we waste?

Exists the time sidereal: the one that measures itself for the apparent movement of the stars and more especially of the first Aries point. Exists the Paschal time. The Dictionary of the real Spanish Academy of the Language says to us that we can have good time, give time to the time, train it, cheat it, lose it, lift it and even make ourselves comfortable to it.

I am impressed exceedingly by the “dead time” of the waiting rooms in the public offices, in the medical offices and that of the sleep, where the secret of our survival is. A 50-year-old man has slept nearly 20 years. Some explanation fits: How much time do we waste watching TV , in front to the screen of the computer? …

The optimists usually say: "Every day is the best of the year” and “a quarter of an hour is more valuable than thousand golden ounces”. The pessimists answer that “there is no expense costlier than the time” and that “the year has 365 anxiety”.

Between some and others the eclectic ones for which everything depends on the concept of the eternity, assumption that the eternity can be a concept. The musicians know the discipline of the time as nobody, and in this line I would remain with Mozart.

There are painters of whom I would say that they do against themselves and against the clock: I am thinking about Van Gogh, Dalí or Picasso. The current architects, without time to conceive a cathedral, and that they do not aspire that his designs last, and up to the futurologists in his majority they stop every year perplexed on having thought about the advances of the XXIst century.

If it is true that we come from the water, since we are aquatic beings and today we are in the age of aquarium, era of transparence, crystalline and of peace, after leaving the terrifying age of piscis, era of change to base difficulties: The Inquisition, the Middle Ages, two world wars.

Really have been million years to get to our condition. Now it is anticipated that soon wings will sprout on us and that for a still unknown chink we will glimpse the universe.

“I have no time” acceptable phrase in mouth of Miguel Ángel but not in Leonardo da Vinci that was taking a lot of time to realize his masterpieces. Terrible in mouth of the executives, politicians, bankers, business men, since the ambition does that the time swallows them and that when they realize already they will not have time to enjoy it.

Therefore we owe time to the time and we all will go out winning. Well, if we do what we should do, but let's remember that suitable armchairs exist to ponder on the time. If we have the feeling of waste our time, the anxiety will supervene and they will place a pacemaker in us: apocalyptic vision? Sensible measurement – and if not to the time, I was thinking a night of timeless moon.

Destiny, Luck and Fortune

DESTINY, LUCK AND FORTUNE

VICTOR MANUEL GUZMAN VILLENA

We have said that the luck consists of the fact that happens something favorable or adverse beyond of an effective prevention. There exists a significant difference between the luck and the fortune. An individual is furtunate whenever something good happens following the normal course of the things. Nevertheless, is lucky when the benefit comes.

In spite of being doubtful and especially if it happens in spite of being slightly probable and against any reasonable expectation. A person who inherits a big quantity of money, is going to be able to travel in first class is fortunate, but, in strict sense, it is not possible to say that this person is lucky.

On the contrary, the passenger of a plane to which the crew changes his tourist's seat to the first class, is possible to affirm that he has been lucky. Usually, the destiny and the fortune have to do with the conditions and specific circumstances of our lives, while the luck is in the ambience of the good or bad things that happen to us for coincidence.

Our capacity and innate talents are at the side of the good fortune; the opportunities that the coincidence puts in our way to develop them at the side of the luck. To have a cold is a misfortune, it happens often to many people, if that happens to someone the day when is going to a premiere is to have no luck.

You have to inherit an immense fortune thanks to a favorable destiny, but it is possible to be said that you are a person with luck if you inherit it just on time to save you from the bankruptcy.

The luck and the coincidence constitute two faces of the same coin. But the destiny is something different, something that is not chance. Let's suppose that it is discovered that an enormous meteorite, which has not been detected, is on the point of clashing with the earth. The destiny of the humanity is marked. During a certain number of days, the earth will be covered by a cloud of dust that will make the continuation of the life impossible for the mammals. What a catastrophe!

In these circumstances we will be able to say that the extinction of the human species, definitely speaking, is a misfortune, but we might not say that we have had no luck. It is the element of the surprise, of the coincidence and of the unpredictable thing, what allows us to distinguish the luck of the destination, or of the fortune in general.

The dangerous of the luck means that in interactions where one part runs with all the risks, and the only one can be lucky. The sponsors of the lottery are destined to win, but only the players can be lucky.

The same can be applied to the casinos where the things are organized in such a way that the house “always wins”. Of the same way, we can be lucky, in certain circumstances, for example being red-haired (in case this peculiarity makes us eligible for securing a certain benefit), nevertheless, we cannot say someone should be lucky only for the fact of be. Nevertheless, the red-haired individuals are lucky if the sponsor decides that they should be the beneficiaries of his generosity.

The luck is unforeseeable. And this is reflected in the inconsistency and in to the variable of the luck. A Scotch proverb of 1721 says: "Behind the bad luck the good one comes." (The opposite is also true). There is another old maxim that he says: "The only sure thing of the luck is that it changes.”

Only if we believe that we get a life in luck, as if it was a question of a share-out at random, we can interpret the global destination of a person in luck terms. In this case the entire sum of everything good and the bad thing that happens to an individual remains limited, in a global and automatic way, to a matter of eventful assign. Obviously it seems slightly realistic.

And so, it is considered that a person is lucky for being gifted in the field of the mathematics, but we cannot say that this person should be lucky with regard to the mathematics because the coincidence is not implied. His gift and his capacity are integral parts of the mentioned person; it is not anything that the hazard provides him and that be added to his current identity.

A person is lucky if he finds in his life a person who stimulates him or helps him to develop his own capacities. But the fact of having the mentioned capacity has to be with the fortune and not with the luck.

It has no sense to establish comparisons between the personal destination and the gambling games, because in case of the games there always exists a player who has been in a competition earlier, while in case of the people a precedent never exists, an individual deprived of identity that obtains everything for having a special quality.

The distinction that occupies us is not pure and completely one to have to realize of the different uses of the terms “luck“ and “fortune“.

It is necessary, to do some clarifications of linguistic character. When we ask a girl who says to us that she has just being engaged: "Who is the lucky one?", it would be necessary to use the word fortune and to ask: Who is the furtunate one?, whenever we want to avoid any other type of suggestion that would make us think that she has extracted the name of a hat.

It would be necessary to speak so about fortune and not about luck. The distinction between both, bearing in mind that the second one bears an eventful element which the first one lacks, sometimes is not present in the common use where any occasional infraction is detected.