From rob@twcny.rr.com Fri Sep 14 16:16:51 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: rob@twcny.rr.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_2_2); 14 Sep 2001 23:16:51 -0000 Received: (qmail 28574 invoked from network); 14 Sep 2001 21:51:33 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l8.egroups.com with QMQP; 14 Sep 2001 21:51:33 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mailout6.nyroc.rr.com) (24.92.226.177) by mta2 with SMTP; 14 Sep 2001 21:51:32 -0000 Received: from mail1.twcny.rr.com (mail1-1 [24.92.226.139]) by mailout6.nyroc.rr.com (8.11.6/Road Runner 1.12) with ESMTP id f8ELoTw13788 for ; Fri, 14 Sep 2001 17:50:29 -0400 (EDT) Received: from riff ([24.92.246.4]) by mail1.twcny.rr.com (Post.Office MTA v3.5.3 release 223 ID# 0-59787U250000L250000S0V35) with ESMTP id com for ; Fri, 14 Sep 2001 17:50:28 -0400 Received: from rob by riff with local (Exim 3.32 #1 (Debian)) id 15i0rX-0000Hu-00 for ; Fri, 14 Sep 2001 17:51:03 -0400 Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 17:51:03 -0400 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] (from lojban-beginners) pi'e Message-ID: <20010914175103.A892@twcny.rr.com> Reply-To: rob@twcny.rr.com References: <21.1117055d.28d35add@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <21.1117055d.28d35add@aol.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.20i X-Is-It-Not-Nifty: www.sluggy.com From: Rob Speer X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 10708 On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 09:06:37AM -0400, pycyn@aol.com wrote: > Well, aside from being lousy at math and history, what else can you tell us > about yourself? Nice flame. > What new has been discovered about PA and where are these > discoveries published? A while ago Xorxes made an informal grammar of PA cmavo, which was part of a thread about what PA in various combinations meant. It seemed to meet with general approval. (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban/message/5817) Of course, I suppose it might not _really_ be part of Lojban history, because you didn't get to bless it with one of your sacred Records. In the first go-round of the date argument, I saw nobody mentioning {no'o} or {tu'o} or any such number, except in a digression about specifying centuries. They just weren't used then. There weren't enough examples of using them, and so using them was scary. > What is this if not {pi'e}? -- it looks like {pi'e}, > acts like {pi'e}, and indeed is a paradigm case of {pi'e} in the Book. As > for the math, you carried wrong, as I assume you know (among other things, > {pi'e} warns that something weird is likely to happen). You also go the > bases wrong, since they are way over 2 -- 31 (give or take) and 12, though > the numerals don't keep up with the numbers. You seem to be unfamiliar with the concept of a mixed base. I refer you to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban/message/2716. You say I got the bases wrong and I carried wrong. I did neither; what I did was to write the date wrong (day pi'e month pi'e year) and try to take it to its logical conclusion. I apologize for being unclear in doing so. Here's how this backwards date system works if you try to pretend it's any sort of mixed base: day month year = A B C C is the units digit. It goes from negative infinity to positive infinity - which is a strange thing for a units digit to do. B is the 1/12ths place. Its digit ranges from 1 to 12. A is the 1/365ths place. Its digit ranges from 1 to 28-31. This is not good. Consider an actual instance of mixed bases, such as a time including days. (If I didn't include days the bases wouldn't be mixed.) When you express an elapsed time such as 1d 2h 35m 6s, these are digits in the mixed base (24, 60, 60). In this case, they're even nice enough to do what digits expect to do - the minute and second places range from 0 to 59, and the hour place ranges from 0 to 23. To add two times, you add the seconds and if the total is more than 60 seconds you carry it over into a minute. If the total minutes are more than 60 you carry over into an hour. If the total hours are more than 24 you carry over into a day. This could be done the same way with dates in year-month-day form, except with less convenient digits. The units digit (the day) would range from 1 to 30 or so, and the months would range from 1 to 12. The years would not have a set range because they would not be carried. I assume this concept is what is meant by "variable base" in the ma'oste. What I was trying to demonstrate was not, in fact, that I am bad at math, but that operations which apply to other {pi'e} numbers, such as addition or subtraction, do not apply to day-month-year dates. So, if the places have no mathematical relation to each other, why use pi'e? It would have just as much meaning to express the day-month-year date 9/14/2001 as {li 9 pe li 14 pe li 2001}. ----- To get this argument out of the abstract: In day-month-year, how do you refer to an event happening during a certain year? It seems you don't. The lessons avoid this by naming years. So this year is {la renonopananc.} and the next year is {la renonorenanc.} and the next year is {la djimbab.}, or might as well be, because cmene are not analyzable. How do you tell me that {la kristoBAL. koLON. pu falnu litru le xasmi co blanu} in 1492, and not during the lifespan of some guy named Pavoso Renanc? -- Rob Speer