World Book Day
23 April 2017
A word about World Book Day before it is over: April 23 is the death date of William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, and the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. While the dates are the same, the days are not. Spain used the Gregorian Calendar, but England used the Julian calendar, with the result that Cervantes died on the same date as Shakespeare, but ten days before him.
The connection between these dates was made in Catalonia in 1925 and it was there that the death of Cervantes was celebrated. Don Quixote, after all, decided to travel to Barcelona, rather than Zaragoza, in the second part of Don Quixote (1615). The link to the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (author of the Comentarios reales) linked two continents and three great, very original authors. In 1995, UNESCO declared April 23 to be World Book and Copyright Day.
The conflict between the two calendars (Julian and Gregorian) also complicates the dates mentioned in the various ships engaged in the Spanish Armada that sailed for England in 1588. Battles took place on different day and different dates, according to the not always accurate logs of the two navies.
Two complicate things further, time at sea was very difficult to judge and candles, water clocks, sandglasses, and lanterns were all very unreliable and gave great differing times for the different actions that took place during the engagements.
In 1988, for the three hundredth anniversary of the event, instead of days and hours, the ships’ actions were logged into a computer along with the retro-calculated tidal tables. What emerged was a seaman’s account of time and tide in which actions were seen in the light of the actual sea environment. As a result, very different picture of that famous series of sea battles emerged.
Very interesting! How marvelous that they worked it out by calculating the sea and the tides. That’s pretty amazing!
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Stonehenge was finally decoded by sending the star patterns back 4,500 years to their earlier positions, ie, where they would have been that long ago, if the universe was not expanding. That’s when all the sight marks fell into line. This was all computer driven of course and computer modelling, in general, has really opened a new universe for us. This is true, too, of algorhythms designed to study and predict literary form and potential success.
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I’ve seen that about Stonehenge – a Smithsonian Channel documentary, I think. There are algorithms for predicting everything. It’s a wonder there’s any wonder left in the world. Literary form and potential success? How does one access this information?
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I’m not sure how accessible it is. Just google, I should imagine.
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Hmmm…. I wonder if I even want to know.
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Try here: it’s hilarious and has some very good advice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ
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That was great, Roger! Thanks for sharing! 😀
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It’s a very funny video, but it talks a great deal of sense. If you use a comouter progran=m to track the “shapes” of a dozen best-sellers (or a thousand!), you get a fairly clear pattern (an algorhythm) that tells you that these shapes succedd (and fit the algorhythm) and these don’t. This works for best sellers … but it doesn’t necessarily work for, let’s say, Surrealism, or Inner Monologue, or any form of yet to be invented differentiated novel form. That said, we can claim ‘pure artistry’ as a reason for our ‘failures’, but deep down it is not that … it is our own lack of artistic skill. Hey … this sounds like a post for next Wednesday to me … I need to do silence and algorhythms …
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I was thinking that… some of the most memorable stories I’ve read don’t necessarily follow that pattern. However, the ones where the ending is on the down slope and everyone is dead or ruined may be memorable but maybe not so satisfying. I think this topic would be a great Wednesday Workshop!
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Me too, half of it has just been written! I’ll think about it. I want to do Silence as well. Maybe next week.
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Excellent!
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What fun – same day, different dates, resolved by the tides… You have reminded me of a philocoughical favourite: when I was teaching coastal navigation, I indulged in the fancy that the place where we sailors sailed , I.e. the surface of the salt water, wasn’t really “there”, as the tides (on the NS Atlantic coast) rise and fall through a range of 6 feet, on average, twice daily but not at the same time each day, of course, because of the moon…so if the police ask where you were on the afternoon of July 1st, you could honestly say “I could tell you (by calculation) but it isn’t there.”
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Beautiful, Jan. You do have a different outlook on the world. I love it. The tactics of Drake, for example, were governed by the fierce rip tides that he had worked with but about which the Spaniards in the Armada knew very little. It’s a fascinating study, as you can imagine.
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Complete coincidence, but my eBook went live today. Fascinating article, Roger. Maybe it will be a good omen for me…
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It will be a good omen for you, Tanya. Enhorabuena: may it have happened at a propitious time and congratulations. I suppose I’d better think about getting an e-reader … oh dear, I am still in the stone age.
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Lol…I’m proofing the paperback this week. It should be up by the end of the week/weekend…
Thank you for your friendship and support! I means a lot to me.
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Proofing the paperback: that’s always a fun chore. A Cancer Chronicle should be here, any day now, in hard copy. I am watching for the arrival of the delivery truck.
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That is like Christmas and Birthday all rolled up in one! Seeing your work in print is thrilling…
I haven’t ordered mine yet. I’m going to order my copies with the order of my softcover…good omen for us both!!!
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A good omen, indeed. Here’s hoping …
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