The Novels

Economics 101, a Novel (Rough Draft) -- My first sustained attempt at a novel, two-thirds finished in rough draft, and heading a little too far south.
What would you do if you and your study partner, with whom you had been seriously discussing marriage, suddenly found yourselves all alone together on a desert island? Study economics?
Sociology 500, a Romance (Second Draft) -- The first book in the Economics 101 Trilogy.(On hold.)
Karel and Dan, former American football teammates and now graduate students, meet fellow graduate students Kristie and Bobbie, and the four form a steady study group.

Featured Post

Sociology 500, a Romance, ch 1 pt 1 -- Introducing Bobbie

TOC Well, let's meet Roberta Whitmer. Bobbie entered the anthropology department office and looked around. Near the receptionis...

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

RFQ4: Ch. 1, The Framing Story -- the Pilots and the Island




[Yet another false start.]

Studying economics is not like studying physics.

In physics, we can start with things we see and work directly with -- the angle of a shadow on sand, water pulling on an oar, a rubber dinghy floating in the sea, an airplane gliding through the air.

Even the moderately complex chemical reactions that are the regular controlled explosions of fuel in an airplane engine are quite repeatable. (And so are the effects of running out of fuel.)

With economics, nothing is static.

Sure, we have money. But money is a contrived proxy for value, and is not constant over time, or even from person to person. So we need to simplify our basic models to make them understandable.

The simplest economic system I can think of is one person on a desert island. Of course, one person alone is only interesting for a little while.


"Your thesis plan looks good, but you'll need to do some on-location research." Professor MacVittie was helping Karel Pratt review his plans for his doctoral studies at Orson Hyde University.

Karel nodded. "I guess I should mention it in the proposal. Should I revise the plan to say something about needing the fieldwork, but not yet knowing when and where?"

The Professor nodded in agreement. "Well, you could. But I think you know enough already to name some specific islands as possibilities."

Karel scratched thoughtfully behind his ear. "I guess I can say I'm looking at a few locations, but don't know which, yet, ..."

"Sure. Why don't you think about that." The professor hesitated before changing the subject. "Say, do you know a Roberta Whitmer?"

"Roberta ... ?" Karel was surprised. "No, not really."



The professor thought he might have seen something unsaid behind Karel's eyes, but it was gone before he could be sure.


"Well, I think I may have met her once. She calls herself Bobbie, right?"

"She does."

"And she's a pre-PhD student in the anthropology program, too?"

"Yes, that would be her."

"And?"

"Her thesis seems like it could complement yours. Professor White and I were thinking you might want to talk with her."

The professor still couldn't read Karel's reactions.

"Just a suggestion, of course, but it often helps to have someone you can work with."

"Mmm," Karel grunted, then nodded somewhat absently. "I'll look her up and talk with her and see."



"You two never seem to get together anywhere but in my office."

"We meet at the library, too." Bobbie looked a little taken aback.

"Once a month?"

"Twice a week for our study groups," Karel said.

Bobbie added, "We often eat together in the dorm cafeteria and talk about our theses and stuff."

"Was my suggestion about backing each other up during the fieldwork phase a bad suggestion?"

"No." Karel shook his head. "It's a great idea. We're working together on the schedule and the plans for traveling. But we find our theses different enough that we really don't have that much to coordinate besides the time we'll be in the islands and the flight schedule and such." He shrugged.

"We went to the airport to find the closest flights," Bobbie ventured, "... together. Talked about preparations for the trip on the way."

Karel continued. "And we've been working together on the itinerary. We contacted some travel agencies, ..."

"My suggestion." Bobbie interjected.

"... but no one really handles what we need. So we contacted the consulate and got names of some charter companies and independent pilots to talk to."

"The travel agents kept asking us if this is our honeymoon. Silly people." Bobbie grinned.

"Not so silly if they've never met you two. Okay, so you're ahead of me on setting up your plans."

"Not really," said Karel. "We needed to talk with you about the flight information we've found so far, and we would definitely appreciate it if we could have you check our travel plans over. Which is why we are here, now."



Ultimately, the faculty, Bobbie, Karel, and Sister MacVittie decided it would be best for Professor MacVittie to accompany them for the first two weeks. That way he could help them solve the early problems. He could also make contacts in the islands for the university.

Sister MacVittie was especially excited to go along, and to take their youngest son, who was preparing to go on a proselyting mission for their church.

(If you are wondering, the university is a Church-sponsored school, but Sister MacVittie is not a nun. She is Professor MacVittie's wife. In the beliefs of their church, God is the Progenitor, the Parent of all people, so everyone in the Church is called brother or sister.

Their son's mission? Yes, E-P-ism is a proselyting religion.

Names? I'm translating the names mostly by meaning and parallels in their history rather than sound. But some of the names do sound similar, Bobbie's and Karel's, in particular.)

Bobbie and Karel chose four islands in an island country where they could both do fieldwork, and they extended their planned schedule to allow a month on each of the islands. They wanted to give themselves time to find opportunities for volunteer service work, in the expectation that the service work would help them get to know the islanders and their culture better. Good relationships with the islanders would be essential for obtaining meaningful research results.



And things went quite well for the four months they were in the islands doing their research, but we are not interested in those details in this novel. If this were an ordinary novel, we would be interested, but it's just the framing story for our thought experiments.



Thought experiments?

And I told you this was a novel, right?

Well, it is -- something like a novel, anyway.
 
As I say, when trying to decipher the physical laws of the universe, we find it easier to start with a simplified model. For example, when describing the flight of a thrown football or papaya, we start by ignoring air friction, and wind, and the way it tumbles in the wind. That makes the math simple enough for one person to handle without a computer in many cases. And the calculated results are generally close enough to the actual flight.

Economics is not as easily simplified as physics.

But we can still simplify.

In economics, we deal with complex interactions and abstract interactants. Some of the elements are fairly straightforward, like food, fuel, and housing. Some, like value, are so abstract that we can't even safely define them once and expect them not to change while we are trying to observe them.

With only two people, maybe we can do away with money. Value systems can be simplified. And we can focus more easily on the bargaining processes, and on what they exchange.

Complex mathematics looks a lot like literature, abstract mathematics even more so. So, I'm taking a hint from the math, and making a small logical leap, as well, and constructing this informal thesis on the fundamentals of economics as a set of thought experiments in the form of a novel -- but a slightly unusual novel.

So we will ignore the work they did on the islands for the time being and concentrate on getting our laboratory prepared.

A good simulation game always has a good framing story, so we need a framing story to get them onto the island that will be our laboratory.

And we'll need an uncharted, uninhabited island for the story. Such islands no longer exist. That is, Google took the final steps to eliminating uncharted islands when they introduced their map service.

So I wanted to set the framing story about fifty or so years ago, when uninhabited islands still seemed like they might stay undiscovered for a while. Then I found that some of the simulations became too tangled up in history, so I ended up having to move the story to a different world, far, far away.

I'll tell you about that world as we go. It's kind of like ours in a lot of ways ... .

How we get to that world and back to tell the tale, in this universe limited by the speed of light, is a topic I won't address in this novel. (Maybe some day?)

So, where things get interesting for us again is towards the end of the last month, in the small airport on the main island, in the small borrowed room that Wycliffe and Zedidiah, the charter pilots who had taken them from island to island, used for an office.



Wycliffe sat on the desk they shared and picked up the scratch paper they were using that month to write their schedule on. "Hey, Zed. Look what we got this week."

Zedidiah looked up. "Yeah, I see that. Them two grad students from that Apist school. Come to study ant rope loggies -- native cull-chewer and all that. And do busybody serve ice pro jets. Straight as two rulers. Even the natives are laughing behind their backs."

(Anthropology, culture, and service projects, of course, but that's roughly how it would have sounded to us had Zedidiah been joking in English. Oh, and E-P-ist.)

"Yeah," agreed Wycliffe. "You know, I think they need help studying natural island nature, way up close. And help seeing just how Apist they are. And help growing up."

"Heh heh. Hey. Wait. They're paying passengers. Don't do anything stupid on me, okay? Just fly in and get them and fly them back here."

"What, me? Would I deliberately sabotage my own plane to strand them on a desert island and test their morals?"

"Depends on how drunk you've been this week."

"Heh heh."

"Okay, that does it. I own half that plane. I'm flying this one."

"Seven hour flight? The longest you've flown is two and a half hours, and you almost got lost that time. And you accuse me of plotting to strand them."

"That wasn't my fault. Sudden storm."

"Naw, I'm just kidding around. I'll bring them back safe and sound."



I really hate to tell stories about bad people.

But Wycliffe really wasn't a bad person, just a little mixed up. He had been himself converted to E-P-ism at some point, in love with a good E-P-ist woman. And maybe she was insecure. Or maybe she just didn't realize what a great guy he was. Or maybe she just knew she wasn't strong enough to be his wife, in particular. Anyway, she ditched him.

And that was part of the reason he was in the islands, trying to escape from himself and his memories, blaming the E-P religion for his sorrows.

E-P? Perhaps I should explain a little about that?

It's an abbreviation of "Eyeni Phuel," but the "ph" is an aspirated bilabial plosive, not a labiodental fricative.

Interestingly, the archaic meaning of "Eyeni" is "progress", and "Phuel" is "eternal" or "eternally". That was the name of the ancient prophet who put their book of scripture together, and it was the name of the book he compiled. And it was one of the prominent features of their theology.

It's a complete coincidence that "E-P" seems to stand for "Eternal Progression" in our English, and it begs the question of what the language Karel and Bobbie speaks really looks and sounds like. But I will dodge that question for the present.


 
About two hours after picking our two heroes up, already way off his flight plan, Wycliffe started deliberately running the engine lean.

Karel listened to the sound of the engine. "What's wrong?" he asked. "It sounds a little irregular."

Bobbie was also concerned. "Sounds like it's missing a stroke every now and then. Maybe vapor in the fuel lines?"

Wycliffe shook his head. He was a little worried by how much they seemed to understand engines, but he hid his concern. "No problem. Sometimes engines get finicky."

"Are we in trouble?"

"Well, if we have to ditch in the water, I do pack a dinghy. But my baby'll be okay." And he ran the mixture back to normal when he thought they weren't watching.

About a half hour later, in a lull in the conversation, he asked, "Well, you know something? I was bettin' my partner that you two would be, like, an item by this time. I guess I lost?"

Bobbie muttered a few expressions of disgust. Then she said, "Everyone seems to think that a single woman and a single man who work okay together and get to be good friends should be romantically involved with each other. You don't have to get married to everyone you love, you know."

"You love each other?"

Karel nodded. "Like brother and sister. We believe we are, by the way, because of our religion, if not just by being human."

"Well, what have you got against each other?"

Bobbie answered, "Nothing in particular. But we don't want to spend all of our evenings the rest of our lives talking shop at home." Maybe she wasn't being totally up front, but she didn't think her relationship with Karel was any of Wycliffe's concern.

Karel added, "Professional interests can sometimes get in the way of other kinds of interests."

"Okay, so you don't want to be arguing about work at home. I guess I could see how that wouldn't necessarily be too great."

Again, when he thought they weren't paying attention, he leaned out the fuel mixture and pretended to nurse the engine. "C'mon baby keep with us." Then he returned the fuel mix to normal.

"There you go," he said as the engine's rhythm restored itself. And, turning back to his passengers, "So, this wonderful, romantic view up here is just wasted on you two?

Bobbie looked out her window at the sky and the ocean. "I wouldn't say that. The ocean's beautiful." Then she checked the hinges on the door and opened it, leaning out into the wind.

"Hey! Careful!" Wycliffe cautioned her as he adjusted rudder and flaps for the increased drag on Bobbie's side.

Karel reached over casually and took her inside hand, and Bobbie used his weight to lean farther out so she could look at the sky above them, her hair streaming back in the wind. The open door protected her in part from the wind, but the drag made for a rough ride.

Bobbie looked up at the sky, then pulled herself back in, with a little help from Karel, and shut the door. "Nice breeze."

Karel rolled his eyes and shook his head, smiling a little lopsidedly.

"And the nether moon high in this late morning sky is just a tad romantic, too," she added.


Wycliffe laughed. "Remind me not to let you pilot my plane. Do you two have a stunt act or something?"


Karel laughed, too. "That would be fun."

"You know, romance is about adventure. There are many kinds of adventure other than getting married kinds of adventure," and Bobbie emphasized the next words, "adventures that people who are just friends can share."

Wycliffe almost found himself persuaded, but he was too far off the flight path and into his own plan to back out -- gone too far to back up and admit to them that he was taking them away from their destination, or to admit to himself why it was wrong.

He was repeating the game with the engine as a desert island came into view over the horizon.

"Maybe we'd better put down on that island and look at the engine."

Put yourselves in Karel's and Bobbie's shoes. What would you have them do? Pray?

Of course pray.

But how were they supposed to know that Wycliffe was planning to leave them on an uninhabited island for a few days?

Well, both of them prayed in their hearts, but God, for some reason, didn't tell them one way or another.

Karel looked at Bobbie and she nodded. "Well, if that's the safest route, then go ahead," he said. "Maybe we can help with the engine."

"Do you know anything about engines?" Wycliffe wondered whether they were onto his game.

"I know a little about car engines. But at least I can use a wrench or hold things for you or something. Bobbie is no stranger to engines, either."

"Actually, I'm certified to fly. I should have mentioned that earlier, but sea flight is not something I've done much yet. I do a lot of the maintenance for my dad's plane, too, but it has a different kind of engine. I'm not as familiar with radials." She stopped to listen to the engine again. "It does sound like something is making it run lean. Let's put it down."

So Wycliffe landed the plane on the beach and radioed Zedidiah and told him they were on an island they were not on, several hundred miles away.




Miles? Hours? You'll pardon a little bit of rough translation here, I hope.

An hour for them is about ninety minutes for us, to the extent that we can compare the entropic rates there and here meaningfully. Sixteen hours in a day, sixteen gohbu in an hour, sixteen bunmu in a gohbu. Got that?

And I guess it would be less confusing not to say "hour". Sixteen gohbu in a chippu, sixteen chippu in a day.

A rhip is the distance an adult can walk in a gohbu, a little less than half a kilometer if we could compare distances. Sixteen rhip are a derhip, and sixteen derhip are a sederhip. So a healthy man or woman can, on average, walk one derhip in a chippu.

In case you didn't notice, their numbering system is base sixteen. So when I say several hundred miles, it means several 100sixteen rhip -- several sederhip. That's close to several 100ten miles, isn't it?

Sorry, it is what it is. What can I say?



To get at the tools, they had to unload the luggage and the emergency supplies.

After about a half a chippu of fiddling with the engine, Wycliffe said, "I need to take her up and see how she's running. It'll take me about two gohbu of circling the island, and if there aren't any problems, we can fly on."

They both volunteered to help with the test flight, but Wycliffe made an excuse about needing the plane to be light. Once up, he circled twice, brought the airplane down as if to land, and then shouted out at them, "I'll be back when you two have had a chance to grow up!" and flew out.

Neither Karel nor Bobbie heard what he said over the engine noise. So they sat on the beach, said a prayer together for Wycliffe, for the airplane, for themselves, and for getting home, and waited for him to come back.



Now, as I say, I'm just setting up this simplified experiment in economics. If this were a regular novel, we would want to know why Wycliffe never came back.

In fact, there are many things we would want to know, if this were an ordinary novel, ...



(Table of Contents) (Next)



[Extracted and reconstructed from the partial 3rd draft, here and here 20170619.]



[In the 1st draft.]
[In the 2nd draft.]

[Earlier trashed version rfq3.]

RFQ3: Ch. 2, The Framing Story -- the Pilots and the Island

(Yet another false start:)
Foreword


The Framing Story -- the Pilots and the Island


"Your doctoral thesis plan looks good, but you'll need to do some on-location research." Professor White was busy, so Professor MacVittie was helping Karel review his plans.

Karel Pratt nodded his agreement. "I guess I should have said that in the plan? Should I revise the plan to say something about needing the fieldwork, but not yet knowing when and where?"

Professor MacVittie nodded in half agreement. "Well, you could, but I think you know enough to be somewhat specific already. You should be able to name several islands as possibilities."

Karel scratched his head behind his ear. "I guess I can say I'm looking at a few locations, but don't know which, yet?"

"Sounds reasonable." The professor paused to think. "Say, do you know Roberta Whitmer?"

"Not really. I think I've met her. She calls herself Bobbie, right? And she's in the anthropology program, too?"

"Yes, that would be her. Her thesis seems like it could complement yours. Professor White and I were thinking you might want to talk with her. Just a suggestion, of course, but it often helps to have someone you can work with."

"Uhmm, ... okay." Karel nodded hesitantly. "I'll talk with her and see."



"You two never seem to get together anywhere but in my office."

"We meet at the library, too." Bobbie looked a little taken aback.

"Once a month?"

"Once a week."

"Was my suggestion about backing each other up during the fieldwork phase a bad suggestion?"

"No." Karel shook his head. "It's a great idea. We're working together on the schedule and the plans for traveling. But we find our theses different enough that we really don't have that much to coordinate besides the time we'll be in the islands and the flight schedule and such." He shrugged.

"We went to the airport together to find the closest flights," Bobbie ventured.

Karel continued: "And we've been working together to contact the consulates and get names of charter companies and independent pilots to work with. We've even talked with travel agents who have put us in touch with people in New York who handle tours of our islands."

"The travel agents kept asking us if this is our honeymoon. Silly people." Bobbie grinned.

"Not so silly if they've never met you two. Okay, so you're ahead of me on setting up your plans."

"Not really," said Karel. "We needed to talk with you about the flight information we've found so far, and we would definitely appreciate it if we could have you check our plans over. Which is why we are here, now."



In the end, the faculty and Sister MacVittie decided it would be best for Professor MacVittie to accompany them for the first two weeks. That way he could help them solve the early problems. He could also make contacts in the islands for the university.

Sister MacVittie was especially excited to go along, and to take their youngest son, who was preparing to go on his mission.

(If you are wondering, the university is a Church-sponsored school, but Sister MacVittie is not a nun. She is Professor MacVittie's wife. In their beliefs, God is the Father of all, so everyone in the Church is called brother or sister.

The son's mission? Yes, E-P-ism is a proselyting religion.

Names? I'm translating the names mostly by meaning and history rather than sound.)

Bobbie and Karel chose four islands where they could both do fieldwork, and they lengthened their planned schedule to allow a month on each of the islands. They wanted to give themselves time to find opportunities for volunteer service work, in the expectation that the service work would help them get to know the islanders and their culture better. Good relationships with the islanders would be essential for obtaining meaningful research results.

Ultimately, things went well for the four months, and we are not interested in the details in this novel. If this were a normal novel, we would be interested, but it's just the framing story for our thought experiments.

Where things get interesting for us again is towards the end of the last month, in the small airport on the main island, in the small room that Wycliffe and Zedidiah, the charter pilots who had taken them around from island to island, borrowed for an office.



Wycliffe sat on their desk and picked up their schedule. "Hey, Zed. Look what we got this week."

Zedidiah looked up. "Yeah, I see that. Them two grad students from that Apist school. Come to study ant rope loggies. Native cul-ture and all that. And do busybody serve ice pro jets. Straight as two rulers. Even the natives are laughing behind their backs."

"Yeah," agreed Wycliffe. "You know, I think they need help studying natural island nature, way up close. And help seeing just how Apist they are. And help growing up."

"Heh heh. Hey. Wait. They're paying passengers. Don't do anything stupid on me, okay? Just fly in and get them and fly them back here."

"What, me? Would I deliberately sabotage my own plane to strand them on a desert island to test their morals?"

"Depends on how drunk you've been this week."

"Heh heh."

"Okay, that does it. I own half of that plane. I'm flying this one."

"Ten hour flight? The longest you've flown is four hours, and you almost got lost that time. And you accuse me of plotting to strand them."

"That wasn't my fault. Sudden storm."

"Naw, I'm just kidding around. I'll bring them back safe and sound."



I really hate to tell stories about bad people.

But, Wycliffe really wasn't a bad person, just a little mixed up. He had been himself converted to E-P-ism at some point, in love with a good E-P-ist woman. And maybe she was insecure, or maybe she just didn't realize what a great guy he was. Or maybe she knew she wasn't strong enough to be his wife, in particular. Anyway, she ditched him.

And that was part of the reason he was in the islands, trying to escape from himself and his memories, blaming the E-P religion for his sorrows.

E-P. Perhaps I should explain a little about that?

This is an abbreviation of "Eyeni Phuel," but the "ph" is an aspirated bilabial plosive, not a labiodental fricative.

Interestingly, the meaning of "Eyeni" is "progress", and "Phuel" is "eternally", so name of the ancient prophet after whom the book of scripture was named meant, "Eternally Progress," in the old language.

It's a complete coincidence, and begs the question of what the language Karel and Bobbie speaks really looks like. But I will dodge that question for the present.


 
About three hours after picking our two heroes up, already way off his flight plan, he started deliberately running the engine lean.

Karel listened to the sound of the engine. "What's wrong?" he asked. "It sounds a little irregular."

Bobbie was also concerned. "Sounds like it's missing a stroke every now and then. Maybe vapor in the fuel lines?"

Wycliffe shook his head. "No problem. Sometimes engines get finicky."

"Are we in trouble?"

"Well, if we have to ditch in the water, I do pack a dinghy. But my baby'll be okay." And he ran the mixture back to normal.

About an hour later, in a lull in the conversation, he asked, "Well, you know something? I was bettin' my partner that you two would be, like, an item by this time. I guess I lost?"

Bobbie muttered a few expressions of disgust. Then she said, "Everyone seems to think that a single woman and a single man who work okay together and get to be good friends should jump into bed with each other. You don't have to get married to everyone you love, you know."

"You love each other?"

Karel nodded. "Like brother and sister. We believe we are, because of our religion, if not just by being human."

"Well, what have you got against each other?"

Bobbie answered: "Nothing in particular. But we don't want to spend all of our evenings the rest of our lives talking shop at home."

Karel added, "Professional interests can sometimes get in the way of other kinds of interests."

"Okay, so you don't want to be arguing about work at home. I guess I could see how that wouldn't necessarily be too great."

Then he leaned out the fuel mixture again and pretended to nurse it. "C'mon baby keep with us." And returned the fuel mix to normal again.

"There you go," he said as the engine's rhythm restored itself. And, turning back to his passengers, "So, this wonderful, romantic view up here is just wasted on you two?

Bobbie leaned back. "I wouldn't say that. The ocean's beautiful. And romantic. But you know, romance is about adventure. There are many kinds of adventure other than getting married kinds of adventure -- adventures that people who are just friends can share."

Wycliffe almost found himself persuaded, but he was too far off the flight path and into his own plan to back out. Gone too far to back up and admit to them that he was taking them away from their destination, or to admit to himself why it was wrong.

He was repeating the game with the engine as a desert island came into view over the horizon.

"Maybe we'd better put down on that island and look at the engine."

Put yourselves in Karel's and Bobbie's shoes. What would you have them do? Pray? Of course pray.

But how were they supposed to know that Wycliffe was planning to leave them on an uninhabited island for a few days?

Well, both of them prayed in their hearts, but God, for some reason, didn't tell them one way or the other.

Karel looked at Bobbie and she nodded. "Well, if that's the safest route, then go ahead," he said. "Maybe I can help with the engine."

"Do you know anything about engines?" Wycliffe wondered whether they were onto his game.

"I know a little about car engines. But at least I can use a wrench or hold things for you or something. Bobbie is no stranger to engines, either, I think?"

"Actually, I'm certified to fly. I should have mentioned that earlier, but sea flight is not something I've done yet. I've worked on airplane engines, too, but not this kind." She stopped to listen to the engine again. "It does sound like something is making it run lean. Let's put it down."

So Wycliffe landed the plane on the beach and radioed Zedidiah and told him they were on an island they were not on, several hundred miles away.

To get at the tools, they had to unload the luggage and the emergency supplies.

After an hour of fiddling with the engine, Wycliffe said, "I need to take her up and see how she's running. It'll take me about ten minutes of circling the island, and if there aren't any problems, we can fly on."

They both volunteered to help with the test flight, but Wycliffe made an excuse about needing the plane to be light. Once up, he circled twice, brought the airplane down as if to land, and then shouted out at them, "I'll be back when you two have had a chance to grow up!" and flew out.

Neither Karel nor Bobbie heard what he said over the engine noise. So they sat on the beach, said a prayer together for Wycliffe, for the airplane, for themselves, and for getting home, and waited for him to come back.



Now, as I explained in the foreword, I'm just setting up this simplified experiment in economics. If this were a regular novel, we would want to know why Wycliffe never came back.

In fact, there are many things we would want to know ...

... what Wycliffe and Zedidiah were doing in the islands, and whether they were real no-gooders or just having good fun;

... why Wycliffe died and what he did after he died, and how he managed to do so much in apparently so little time after he died (Is time for the dead the same as for us, the living?);

... what Zedidiah did after Wycliffe died;

... how the police and others on the islands got involved; and, hey, what Bobbie and Karel's professors, family, friends, the school, and the Church all did when our co-protagonists failed to return; ....

But, mostly, our focus would be on Karel and Bobbie, since they are the lab subjects of our little experiment.


Foreword Table of Contents Next



[No edit history yet.]



[In the 1st draft.]
[In the 2nd draft.]
[4th draft Economics 101

Monday, April 24, 2017

RFQ4: Table of Contents & Title Page

Economics 101, a Novel

Written by Joel Matthew Rees, Amagasaki, Japan.
Copyright 2016, 2017 Joel Matthew Rees
All rights reserved.



[Yet another false start.]

Table of Contents

  1. Abandoned Preface -- Forewarned, Foreword
    -- in which I dump a lot of information.
  2. The Framing Story -- the Pilots and the Island
    -- in which two graduate students who have been doing research together find themselves suddenly alone on a desert island.
  3. Priorities Begin to Change
    -- in which Karel and Bobbie discover that they will have more time to explore their desert island.
  4. Wycliffe's Punishment
    -- in which we get to know Wycliffe a little better just before we lose him.
  5. Tentative Exploration (incomplete edit)
    -- in which Bobbie and Karel start taking a look around their new home.
  6. A Little Cosmology (incomplete edit)
    -- in which I try to invent a world.
  7. Chapter
    in which .
  8. Wycliffe Changing His Heart
    -- in which we take a look at the afterlife and Wycliffe tries various ways to make amends.
  9. Chapter
    in which .
  10. (placeholder)
    (placeholder)



This novel is an extract and adaptation of two drafts, which are found in my Freedom Is Not Free and Fantasy Economics blogs.


[Constructing as I assemble the chapters.]



[1st draft table of contents.]
[2nd draft start: Economics 101 table of contents]
[2nd draft start: Sociology 500 table of contents]

[Earlier trashed version RFQ3.]

RFQ3: Table of Contents -- Title Page

(Yet another false start:)

Economics 101, a Novel

Written by Joel Matthew Rees, Amagasaki, Japan.
Copyright 2016, 2017 Joel Matthew Rees
All rights reserved.




Table of Contents

  1. Author's Forward
    in which I try to excuse myself for imposing this overlong rant on the world.
  2. The Framing Story -- the Pilots and the Island
    -- in which two graduate students who have been doing research together find themselves suddenly alone on a desert island.
  3. Priorities Begin to Change
    -- in which Karel and Bobbie discover that they will have more time to explore their desert island.
  4. Wycliffe's Sacrifice
    in which we get to know Wycliffe better just before we lose him.
  5. A Little Cosmology
    -- in which I pretend to have something profound to say about the meaning of God and prayer in Bobbie and Karel's world.
  6. Chapter
    in which .
  7. Chapter
    in which .
  8. Chapter
    in which .
  9. Chapter
    in which .
  10. Chapter
    in which .
  11. (placeholder)
    (placeholder)



This novel is an extract and adaptation of two drafts, which are found in my Freedom Is Not Free and Fantasy Economics blogs.

[1st draft table of contents]
[2nd draft Economics 101 table of contents]
[2nd draft Sociology 500 table of contents]
[4th draft Economics 101]

RFQ4: Forewarned, I mean, Foreword

[Another false start]


Excuses, Excuses


When trying to decipher the physical laws of the universe, we find it easier to start with a simplified model. For example, when describing the flight of a cannonball, we start by ignoring air friction and wind. That makes the math simple enough for one person to handle without a computer in many cases, and the calculated results are close to the actual flight in the common cases.

Economics is not as easily simplified as physics. In physics, we can see, or at least measure the interactions, even when there are interactants we don't directly see, like wind, or electric or magnetic fields.

Of course, gunpowder is not very simple, but we might instead use a catapult or trebuchet to launch the cannonball. We can see what happens, we can measure and time the acceleration paths, etc. And we can compare our results with the path and timing of a dropped cannonball or a cannonball rolling on a slope.

In economics, we deal with complex interactants and abstract interactions. Some of the elements are fairly straightforward, like food, fuel, and housing. Some, like value, are so abstract that we can't safely define them once and expect them not to change.

Some elements of economics, like money, are deceptive simplicities hiding complex and abstract qualities whose continual, often hidden variations play directly into the math.

We need simplifications to be able to work with economics, even with help from computers. But economic interactions are difficult to simplify.

Complex mathematics looks a lot like literature, abstract mathematics even more so.

So, I'll take a hint from the math and make a small logical leap and construct this informal thesis on the fundamentals of economics as a set of thought experiments in the form of a novel.

I'll need a framing story. A good simulation game always has a good framing story, and this is (pretty much) a mental simulation game.

But I need an uncharted, uninhabited island. Such islands no longer exist.

That is, Google took the final steps to eliminating uncharted islands when they introduced their map service.

So I want to set the framing story about fifty or so years ago, when uninhabited islands still seemed like they might stay undiscovered for a while. But some of the simulations won't work in our history, so I'll have to move the story to a different world, far, far away. I'll tell you about that world as we go.

How we get to that world and back to tell the tale, in this universe limited by the speed of light, is a topic I won't address in this novel. (Maybe some day.)

Joel Matthew Rees




Table of Contents Framing Story



[No edit history yet for the 3rd draft.]



[In the 1st draft.]
[In the 2nd draft.]

[Trashed earlier attempt RFQ3.]

RFQ3: Forewarned, I mean, Foreword

(Yet another false start:)


Excuses, Excuses


When trying to decipher the physical laws of the universe, we find it easier to start with a simplified model. For example, when describing the flight of a cannonball, we start by ignoring air friction and wind. That makes the math simple enough for one person to handle without a computer in many cases, and the calculated results are close to the actual flight in the common cases.

Economics is not as easily simplified as physics. In physics, we can see, or at least measure the interactions, even when there are interactants we don't directly see, like wind, or electric or magnetic fields.

Of course, gunpowder is not very simple, but we might instead use a catapult or trebuchet to launch the cannonball. We can see what happens, we can measure and time the acceleration paths, etc. And we can compare our results with the path and timing of a dropped cannonball or a cannonball rolling on a slope.

In economics, we deal with complex interactants and abstract interactions. Some of the elements are fairly straightforward, like food, fuel, and housing. Some, like value, are so abstract that we can't safely define them once and expect them not to change.

Some elements of economics, like money, are deceptive simplicities hiding complex and abstract qualities whose continual, often hidden variations play directly into the math.

We need simplifications to be able to work with economics, even with help from computers. But economic interactions are difficult to simplify.

Complex mathematics looks a lot like literature, abstract mathematics even more so.

So, I'll take a hint from the math and make a small logical leap and construct this informal thesis on the fundamentals of economics as a set of thought experiments in the form of a novel.

I'll need a framing story. A good simulation game always has a good framing story, and this is (pretty much) a mental simulation game.

But I need an uncharted, uninhabited island. Such islands no longer exist.

That is, Google took the final steps to eliminating uncharted islands when they introduced their map service.

So I want to set the framing story about fifty or so years ago, when uninhabited islands still seemed like they might stay undiscovered for a while. But some of the simulations won't work in our history, so I'll have to move the story to a different world, far, far away. I'll tell you about that world as we go.

How we get to that world and back to tell the tale, in this universe limited by the speed of light, is a topic I won't address in this novel. (Maybe some day.)

Joel Matthew Rees




Table of Contents Framing Story



[No edit history yet for the 3rd draft.]



[In the 1st draft.]
[In the 2nd draft.]
[4th draft Economics 101

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Sociology 500, a Romance, ch 3 pt 10 -- Computers

Previous




"Thank you, Karen and Georgia, for volunteering to do the typing." Professor Billings turned back to Ted. "It looks like you've got your chart ready."

"Of course it's just like the first year from the computer generated chart, but it's a little more readable."
      Month   Length Sum    End 
Time-division:  30    30   29.39
Deep-winter:    29    59   58.78
War-time:       30    89   88.18
Thaw-time:      29   118  117.57
Rebirth:        29   147  146.96
Brides-month:   30   177  176.35
Imperious:      29   206  205.75
Glorious:       30   236  235.14
False-summer:   29   265  264.53
Harvest:        29   294  293.92
Gratitude:      30   324  323.31
Winter-month:   29   353  352.71

(You'll notice that some of the names of their months parallel ours and some don't. Winter solstice was usually the first day of Time-division, so that month started earlier than January starts for us.)

"I think I would show this chart to young students instead of the computer generated charts, or at least show it first. And I think it'd work best to have the students help me put the chart up -- ask about each month, add things up, and so forth."

"Sounds good," Professor Billings agreed.

Merill asked, "Is there a reason you didn't have the computer put the names of the months in the computer chart?"

"I was focusing on the math. Eventually, as Professor Billings suggested, I want to use double integers in the sums so I can print out a listing up to the present and beyond. But I haven't written all the double length integer routines yet."

"Can your computer do that?" asked the professor.

"Shouldn't be a problem. It's just a few more functions."

Ultimately, it wasn't a problem for him, and it's only a problem for us if we try to run the code below on an old eight or sixteen bit processor.

"So how much of a problem would it be to have the computer print the names of the months, too?"

Ted laughed. "Not too much. But there are several ways to do it, and I have a bad habit of trying to make the program too general, which means I tend to do things the hard way." Ted did not elaborate. I might explain later.

But I have the same bad habit. Come to think of it, so did Mr. Mon, whom we have heard a little about, 'though not yet by name.

"Nice chart," the professor complimented him.

"Yeah. But I want to write a program to print out a regular calendar for any month of any year, too."

Carl was the one to ask, "You can do that?"

"It should be possible, just a matter of the time to write the program. I should be able to show the phases of the moons, as well."

Georgia asked, with just a little acid in her tone, "So, you just happened to bring this printout today?"

Ted laughed a little shyly, "Not really. I read in the syllabus that we would be studying skip years, and started working on this program Saturday night."

The professor frowned in concern. "Please don't let this put a crimp in your social life."

Ted shrugged.

Mark asked, "So is there a way we could bring this whiz-bang computer into a classroom for students to, I don't know, interact with?"

Ted opened his mouth as if to say, "Sure!", but then he closed it without saying anything. He looked at Dan, as if looking for help.

Dan raised his hands in a hands-off gesture. "Don't look at me."

Ted mumbled, "Maybe, ... maybe not ..."

Dan face showed a bit of consternation. He said, "I'm trying to do what the judge said, too, although you know I don't think he had any authority to put a gag on me."

The classroom was suddenly dead quiet. All ears listened.

Dan continued, "Anyway, sorry, Mark, but Ted can't even say he can't talk about that. And, theoretically, I was not supposed to say what I just said." Dan's expression changed from irritation to amusement. "And I can't believe I just actually used the word, 'theoretically'. And I can't believe I'm going to ask everyone to forget you heard any of this." Chuckling, he shook his head.

There was scattered nervous laughter.

Kristie felt indignant that her friends would be so imposed upon. But, not knowing about the non-disclosure agreement, she didn't know what to think. In fact, this was the first indication she had that Ted and Dan knew each other very well.

Bess spoke up. "My dad is actually working on a device to let computers print things to a television screen. That would be really useful in a classroom. He thinks they will one day be cheap enough to have in regular elementary school classrooms, too."

Dan rolled his eyes, and Ted showed his surprise.

But Dan bit his tongue. Instead of commenting on the futility of non-disclosure agreements, he said, "Really? That's way cool. Does he think the prices of computers themselves will drop, too?"

Now Ted was indignant, but he also held his tongue.

Bess said, excitedly, "Yes, he does. He says according to his calculations, they could eventually be cheap enough and small enough for ordinary people to own."

Many of the students began to talk excitedly about the possibility of having a computer, and about what they might do with one.

Then Professor Billings noticed the clock and said, "Oh. Look at the time. We're done for today."

As the students left, a number of them gathered around Bess and Professor Billings to talk about the possibility of schools being able to afford a computer.

Merill left quietly.

Ted and Dan stayed away from the group and talked in low voices.

"Karel is right," Dan said. "Your old boss ought to be sharing his stuff, not trying to keep it secret so he can patent it all and have a monopoly."

"The more time passes, the more I agree with Karel. Maybe I should have just let the computer go to junk instead of signing the NDA so I could bid on it."

Kristie listened quietly.

"Would it have made any difference about the court order not to talk?"

"I don't know. Karel thought my signature gave weight to Mr. Mon's arguments."

"It puts you and Karel and Merill in a tough spot. Me too, even though I only heard a few things about it from Karel before the gag order was set."

"Sorry about that."

"I'd have gone to have a little talk with that judge, but Dad told me to forget it."

"I couldn't just let the computer go to scrap. All the work we put into it. And the programming system would have just been lost."

"I was wondering about that."

"No, Mr. Mon said we could let people see the high-level code, just not the parts that would be needed to build the system. I think he thought rumors would be good advertising."

"If we were allowed to talk, there'd be even better advertising."

The professor joined them, and asked, "Will what happened now cause trouble for you guys?"

"I don't think so," Ted replied. "I said nothing, and Dan can claim best effort."

Kristie spoke up. "We were going to meet Karel and Bobbie for lunch."

"Ah. Gotta go."

"Me, too."

And they gathered their books and said goodbye to the professor and left.



So, while they go to meet Bobbie and Karel, should we take a look at Ted's work?



( Forth code for calculating idealized lengths of months )
( relative to skip years in the world of )
( Bobbie, Karel, Dan, and Kristi, Sociology 500, a Novel. )

( by Ted Turpin, of the Union of Independent States, Xhilr )
( Earth Copyright 2017, Joel Matthew Rees )

( Permission granted to use for personal entertainment only. )

( -- If you need it for other purposes, rewriting it yourself is not that hard, )
( and the result will be guaranteed to satisfy your needs much more effectively. )



( You can save it as something like "econmonths.fs". )
( In gforth and most modern or emulated environments, )
( just paste it into the terminal of a running Forth session. )

( Run it with

 7 SHOWIDEALMONTHS

  for seven years, etc. )


( Uses integer math throughout. )
( Forth expression syntax is mostly postfix. )
( Only the definition syntax is prefix or infix. )
( I've added some comments with equivalent infix expressions )
( to help those unfamiliar with Forth. )


( Using baroque identifiers for ancient Forths. )
( fig-Forth used first three character + length significance in symbol tables. )


( UM*, FM/MOD, and S>D are already there in most modern Forths. )
( These definitions are only for ancient Forths, )
( especially pre-1983 fig and bif-c. )
( Un-comment them if you see errors like )
( UM* ? err # 0 )
( from PRMONTH or thereabouts. )

( : UM* U* ; ) ( modern name for unsigned mixed multiply )

( This is a cheat! Behavior is not well defined for negative numbers, )
( but we don't do negatives here. )
( So this is just sloppy renaming in a sloppy fashion: )
( : FM/MOD M/MOD DROP ; ) ( unsigned division with modulo remainder )

( : S>D S->D ; ) ( Modern name for single-to-double. )

( Showing the above in infix won't help. )

SP@ SP@ - ABS CONSTANT CELLWIDTH
( Infix won't help here, either, but I can try to explain: )
( CELLWIDTH = absolute-value-of difference-between SP-without-pointer and SP-with-pointer.  )

( Semi-simulate local variables with the ability to fetch and store relative to top of stack. )

( Infix will be confusing here, too. )
: LC@ ( index -- sp[ix] ) ( 0 is top. PICK is available on many modern Forths. )
  1 + CELLWIDTH *  ( Skip over the stack address on stack. )
  SP@ + @  ( Assumes push-down stack. Will fail on push-up. )
;

( Infix will be confusing here, too. )
: LC! ( n index -- ) ( 0 is top. Just store. This is not ROLL. )
  2 + CELLWIDTH *  ( Index and stack address are extra on stack during calculation. )
  SP@ +  ( Assumes push-down stack. )
  ! ( *** Will fail in MISERABLE ways on push-up stacks! *** )
;

( Make things easier to read. )
( Infix will be confusing here, too. )

: PRCH EMIT ;

: COMMA 44 PRCH ;
: COLON 58 PRCH ;
: POINT 46 PRCH ;
: LPAREN 40 PRCH ;
: RPAREN 41 PRCH ;

( No trailing space. )
: PSNUM ( number -- )
 0 .R ;


( Do it in integers! )

( Watch limits on 16 bit processors! )

7 CONSTANT SCYCLE ( years in short cycle )
( SCYCLE = 7 )

7 2 * CONSTANT SPMCYC ( short cycles in medium cycle )
( SPMCYC = 7 × 2 )

SCYCLE SPMCYC * CONSTANT MCYCLE ( years in medium cycle, should be 98 )
( MCYCLE = SCYCLE × SPMCYC )

7 7 * CONSTANT SPLCYC ( short cycles in single long cycle )
( SPLCYC = 7 × 7 )

SCYCLE SPLCYC * CONSTANT LCYCLE ( years in single long cycle, should be 343 )
( LCYCLE = SCYCLE × SPLCYC )

7 CONSTANT MP2LCYC ( medium cycles in double long cycle )
( MP2LCYC = 7 )
( MPLCYC would not be an integer: 3 1/2 )

MCYCLE MP2LCYC * CONSTANT 2LCYCLE ( years in double long cycle, should be 686 )
( 2LCYCLE = MCYCLE × MP2LCYC )

352 CONSTANT DPSKIPYEAR ( floor of days per year  )


5 CONSTANT RDSCYCLE ( remainder days in short cycle )

DPSKIPYEAR SCYCLE * RDSCYCLE + CONSTANT DPSCYCLE ( whole days per 7 year cycle )
( DPSCYCLE = DPSKIPYEAR × SCYCLE + RDSCYCLE )
( DPSCYCLE SPMCYC * CONSTANT DPMCYCLE )
( DPMCYCLE = DPSCYCLE × SPMCYC )
( DPMCYCLE MP2LCYC * CONSTANT DP2LCYCLE )
( DP2LCYCLE = DPMCYCLE × MP2LCYC )
( DPMCYCLE and DP2LCYCLE would overflow on 16 bit math CPUs. )
( No particular problem on 32 bit CPUs.

RDSCYCLE SPMCYC * 1 - CONSTANT RDMCYCLE ( remainder days in medium cycle )
( RDMCYCLE = RDSCYCLE × SPMCYC - 1 )

RDMCYCLE MP2LCYC * 2 + CONSTANT RD2LCYCLE ( remainder days in double long cycle -- odd number )
( RD2LCYCLE = RDMCYCLE × MP2LCYC + 2 )
( RD2LCYCLE / 2LCYCLE is fractional part of year. )
( Ergo, length of year is DPSKIPYEAR + RD2LCYCLE / 2LCYCLE, )
( or 352 485/686 days. )

12 CONSTANT MPYEAR ( months per year )

DPSKIPYEAR MPYEAR /MOD CONSTANT FDMONTH ( floor of days per month )
( FDMONTH = DPSKIPYEAR / MPYEAR )
CONSTANT FRMONTH ( floored minimum remainder days per month )
( FRMONTH = DPSKIPYEAR MOD MPYEAR )

2LCYCLE MPYEAR * CONSTANT MDENOMINATOR ( denominator of month fractional part )
( MDENOMINATOR = 2LCYCLE × MPYEAR  )

FRMONTH 2LCYCLE * RD2LCYCLE + CONSTANT MNUMERATOR ( numerator of month fractional part )
( MNUMERATOR  = FRMONTH × 2LCYCLE + RD2LCYCLE )
( Ergo, length of month is FDMONTH + MNUMERATOR / MDENOMINATOR, )
( or 29 3229/8232 days. )

MDENOMINATOR 2 / CONSTANT MROUNDFUDGE

( Infix will be confusing below here, as well. )
( Hopefully, the comments and explanations will provide enough clues. )

( Sum up the days of the months in a year. )
: SU1MONTH ( startfractional startdays -- endfractional enddays )
  FDMONTH + ( Add the whole part. )
  SWAP ( Make the fractional part available to work on. )
  MNUMERATOR + ( Add the fractional part. )
  DUP MDENOMINATOR < ( Have we got a whole day yet? )
  IF
    SWAP ( No, restore stack order for next pass. )
  ELSE
    MDENOMINATOR - ( Take one whole day from the fractional part. )
    SWAP 1+ ( Restore stack and add the day carried in. )
  ENDIF
;

: PRMONTH ( fractional days -- fractional days )
  SPACE DUP PSNUM POINT ( whole days )
  OVER 1000 UM* ( Fake three digits of decimal precision. )
  MROUNDFUDGE 0 D+ ( Round the bottom digit. )
  MDENOMINATOR FM/MOD ( Divide, or evaluate the fraction. )
  S>D <# # # # #> ( Formatting puts most significant digits in buffer first. )
  TYPE ( Fake decimal output. )
  DROP SPACE
;

: SH1IDEALYEAR ( year daysmemory fractional days -- year daysmemory fractional days )
  CR
  12 0 DO
    3 LC@ PSNUM SPACE ( year )
    I PSNUM COLON SPACE
    SU1MONTH
    DUP 3 LC@ - ( difference in days )
    2 LC@ ( ceiling ) IF 1+ ENDIF
    DUP PSNUM SPACE ( show theoretical days in month )
    3 LC@ + ( sum of days )
    LPAREN DUP PSNUM COMMA SPACE
    2 LC! ( update )
    PRMONTH RPAREN CR
  LOOP
;

: SHOWIDEALMONTHS ( years -- )
  >R
  0 0 0 0 ( year, daysmemory, fractional, days )
  R> 0 DO
    CR
    SH1IDEALYEAR
    3 LC@ 1+ 3 LC!
  LOOP
  DROP DROP DROP DROP
;

  0 CONSTANT SKMONTH
  1 CONSTANT SK1SHORTCYC
  4 CONSTANT SK2SHORTCYC
 48 CONSTANT SKMEDIUMCYC
186 CONSTANT LPLONGCYC  ( Must be short1 or short2 within the seven year cycle. )

( Since skipyears are the exception, )
( we test for skipyears instead of leapyears. )
( Calendar system starts with year 0, not year 1. )
( Would need to check and adjust if the calendar started with year )
: ISKIPYEAR ( year -- flag )
  DUP MCYCLE MOD SKMEDIUMCYC =
  IF DROP -1  ( One specified extra skip year in medium cycle. )
  ELSE
    DUP SCYCLE MOD DUP
    SK1SHORTCYC =
    SWAP SK2SHORTCYC = OR  ( Two specified skip years in short cycle, but ... )
    SWAP LCYCLE MOD LPLONGCYC = 0= AND ( not the specified exception in the long cycle. )
  ENDIF
;


( At this point, I hit a condundrum. )
( Modern "standard" Forths want uninitialized variables, )
( but ancient, especially fig-Forths want initialized variables. )
( The lower-level <BUILDS DOES> for fig is only partially part of the modern standard. )
( And CREATE is initialized as a CONSTANT in the fig-Forth, )
( but has no initial characteristic code or value in modern standards. )
( So. )
( On ancient Forths, VARIABLE wants an initial value. We give it a zero. )
( The zero stays around forever on modern Forths, or until you drop it. )
0 VARIABLE DIMARRAY  ( Days In Months array )
   30 DIMARRAY !  ( 1st month )
   29 ,
   30 ,
   29 ,
   29 ,
   30 ,
   29 ,
   30 ,
   29 ,
   29 ,
   30 ,
   29 ,
   0 ,

: DIMONTH ( year month -- days )
  DUP 0 < 0=
  OVER MPYEAR < AND 0=
  IF
    DROP DROP 0  ( Out of range. No days. )
  ELSE
    DUP CELLWIDTH * DIMARRAY + @  ( Get the basic days. )
    SWAP SKMONTH =  ( true if skip month )
    ROT ISKIPYEAR AND  ( true if skip month of skip year )
    1 AND - ( Subtrahend is 1 only if skip month of skip year. )
  ENDIF
;
   
: SH1YEAR ( year daysmemory fractional days -- year daysmemory fractional days )
  CR
  12 0 DO
    3 LC@ PSNUM SPACE ( year )
    I PSNUM COLON SPACE
    SU1MONTH  ( ideal month )
    3 LC@ I DIMONTH  ( real month )
    DUP PSNUM SPACE ( show days in month )
    3 LC@ + ( sum of days )
    LPAREN DUP PSNUM COMMA SPACE
    2 LC! ( update )
    PRMONTH RPAREN CR
  LOOP
;

: SHOWMONTHS ( years -- )
  >R
  0 0 0 0 ( year, daysmemory, fractional, days )
  R> 0 DO
    CR
    SH1YEAR
    3 LC@ 1+ 3 LC!
  LOOP
  DROP DROP DROP DROP
;



Copying and pasting from here doesn't work very well. You can download the source code from
https://osdn.net/users/reiisi/pastebin/4990
You can save the file as something like "econmonths.fs".

In most modern Forths, you can just paste it into a running Forth session, and run it with
7 SHOWIDEALMONTHS
to show the ideal months that Ted talks about here, or
7 SHOWMONTHS
to show the months by the skip years, according to their calendar. You can compare the two, to see how their skip years keep the slippage minimal, restoring to no slippage at all after six hundred eight-six years.

If you need a Forth to run it on, you can find gforth at
<https://www.gnu.org/software/gforth/>.
You can also find it in the packages of most modern OS distributions and in many application stores. (It is Android's store, but not in iOS's, at least, not at the time I wrote this.) For MSWindows, you can download Cygwin at <https://www.cygwin.com/> and get gforth through the Cygwin packages.

If you like to compile things like this yourself, I guess I won't need to tell you how.

HTML documentation can be found on the web at <http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/gforth/Docs-html/>, which includes a tutorial for experienced programmers. An easier tutorial can be found in the book, Starting Forth, which can be found here: <https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/>.

Gforth is not the only Forth which will work, I think most modern Forths will run the code without modification.

The newsgroup comp.lang.forth, which can be accessed through newsreaders and various web interfaces is a good source of amusing and sometimes informative conversation about Forth.

If you like compiling things to play with, I have my own Forth, written in C, which you can find here: <http://bif-c.sourceforge.net/>. You'll want to look at the wiki, too: <https://sourceforge.net/p/bif-c/wiki/Home/>.

If Forth's postfix syntax is uncomfortable, I wrote similar programs in the Basic Calulator utility, bc, which is generally part of most modern operating system distributions without having to get it from packages. (You can get it as a package through Cygwin if you are running one of Microsoft's OSses.)

Just run "bc" from the command line and paste in the bc code, which you can get here: <https://osdn.net/users/reiisi/pastebin/4988>.

And, as I suggest in the code comments, you might modify the code to see how well your own leap year system works for your world. (Pretty well, really.)



You may have noticed, their calendar includes zeros. Years, months, days, all start with the zeroeth. That's a little different from us, isn't it?

And you're probably wondering about hours and minutes at this point. Similar to the way it happened in our world, the 12 constellations that represented the months also represented the hours of the night. Day and night were divided into four watches, and the night had three constellations per watch, so the day did, too.

Then some bright soul recognized that day and night varied in length, and instead of tying the hours to dawn or sunset, tied them to noon. And the royalty of his country liked it and it stuck for the more progressive parts of the world.

Sixty minute hours were derived from twelves, to give sixty minute hours and sixty second minutes. And that's convenient for us, because we could get confused if they used hundreds or forty-nines or base two.

(I really would have liked to show Ted's original programs. But I would have to write the emulator for the hardware he used, write the assembler and use it to bootstrap the language interpreter, write tools for converting -- meaningfully -- from their character set to ours, and so on. And I'd want to construct a font for their characters, too. That's a lot of work. Maybe if I ever write a best seller and make a million dollars off of it, I'll be able to break loose the time and hire the employees to do such a thing. ;-)

Previous TOC Next



[Backup and edit history are here: http://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2017/04/backup-soc500-03-10-computers.html.]




[Chapter 3 part 10 is original to the second draft, and is not found in the first draft. Chronologically, it would be placed in chapter five of the first draft: http://free-is-not-free.blogspot.com/2016/05/economics-101-novel-ch05-first-semester.html.]



Backup: Sociology 500, a Romance, ch 3 pt 10 -- Computers

[JMR201704121825: metadata edits -- Title/name.]

Sociology 500, a {replace}Novel{with}Romance{replace.}, ch 3 pt 10 -- Computers

[JMR201704121825: end metadata edit.]


[JMR201704121022: edits -- cleanup.]

"{replace}It's{with}Of course it's{replace.} just like the first year from the computer generated chart, but a little more readable."

---------------

(You'll notice that some of the names of their months parallel ours and some don't. Winter solstice was usually the first day of Time-division, so {replace}it{with}that month{replace.} started earlier than January starts for us.)

---------------

"Shouldn't be a problem. It's just {replace}another function{with}a few more functions{replace.}."

---------------

But I have the same bad habit. Come to think of it, so did Mr. Mon, whom we have heard a little about, {replace}but{with}'though{replace.} not yet by name.

---------------

Dan continued, "Anyway, sorry, Mark, but Ted can't even say he can't talk about that. And, theoretically, I was not supposed to say what I just said." Dan's expression changed from irritation to amusement. "And I can't believe I just actually used the word, 'theoretically'. And I can't believe I'm going to ask everyone to forget you heard any of this."{add} Chuckling, he shook his head.{add.}

---------------

Bess said, {add}excitedly, {add.}"Yes, he does. He says according to his calculations, they could eventually be cheap enough and small enough for ordinary people to own."

---------------

{replace}The{with}Many of the{replace.} students began to talk excitedly about the possibility of having a computer{replace} and{with}, and about{replace.} what they might do with one.

---------------

Then Professor Billings {add}noticed the clock {add.}and said, "Oh. Look at the time. {replace}Class dismissed{with}We're done for today{replace.}."

---------------

"The more time passes, the more I {replace}think Karel was right{with}agree with Karel{replace.}. Maybe I should have just let the computer go to junk instead of signing the NDA so I could bid on it."

---------------

"I'd have gone to {replace}give the judge a piece of my mind{with}have a little talk with that judge{replace.}, but Dad told me to forget it."

---------------

So, while they go to meet Bobbie and Karel, should we take a look at Ted's {replace}programs{with]work{replace.}?

[JMR201704121022: end-edits.]

[JMR201704120928: backup of http://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2017/04/soc500-03-10-computers.html.]
Previous




"Thank you, Karen and Georgia, for volunteering to do the typing." Professor Billings turned back to Ted. "It looks like you've got your chart ready."

"It's just like the first year from the computer generated chart, but a little more readable."
      Month   Length Sum    End 
Time-division:  30    30   29.39
Deep-winter:    29    59   58.78
War-time:       30    89   88.18
Thaw-time:      29   118  117.57
Rebirth:        29   147  146.96
Brides-month:   30   177  176.35
Imperious:      29   206  205.75
Glorious:       30   236  235.14
False-summer:   29   265  264.53
Harvest:        29   294  293.92
Gratitude:      30   324  323.31
Winter-month:   29   353  352.71

(You'll notice that some of the names of their months parallel ours and some don't. Winter solstice was usually the first day of Time-division, so it started earlier than January starts for us.)

"I think I would show this chart to young students instead of the computer generated charts, or at least show it first. And I think it'd work best to have the students help me put the chart up -- ask about each month, add things up, and so forth."

"Sounds good," Professor Billings agreed.

Merill asked, "Is there a reason you didn't have the computer put the names of the months in the computer chart?"

"I was focusing on the math. Eventually, as Professor Billings suggested, I want to use double integers in the sums so I can print out a listing up to the present and beyond. But I haven't written all the double length integer routines yet."

"Can your computer do that?" asked the professor.

"Shouldn't be a problem. It's just another function."

Ultimately, it wasn't a problem for him, and it's only a problem for us if we try to run the code below on an old eight or sixteen bit processor.

"So how much of a problem would it be to have the computer print the names of the months, too?"

Ted laughed. "Not too much. But there are several ways to do it, and I have a bad habit of trying to make the program too general, which means I tend to do things the hard way." Ted did not elaborate. I might explain later.

But I have the same bad habit. Come to think of it, so did Mr. Mon, whom we have heard a little about, but not yet by name.

"Nice chart," the professor complimented him.

"Yeah. But I want to write a program to print out a regular calendar for any month of any year, too."

Carl was the one to ask, "You can do that?"

"It should be possible, just a matter of the time to write the program. I should be able to show the phases of the moons, as well."

Georgia asked, with just a little acid in her tone, "So, you just happened to bring this printout today?"

Ted laughed a little shyly, "Not really. I read in the syllabus that we would be studying skip years, and started working on this program Saturday night."

The professor frowned in concern. "Please don't let this put a crimp in your social life."

Ted shrugged.

Mark asked, "So is there a way we could bring this whiz-bang computer into a classroom for students to, I don't know, interact with?"

Ted opened his mouth as if to say, "Sure!", but then he closed it without saying anything. He looked at Dan, as if looking for help.

Dan raised his hands in a hands-off gesture. "Don't look at me."

Ted mumbled, "Maybe, ... maybe not ..."

Dan face showed a bit of consternation. He said, "I'm trying to do what the judge said, too, although you know I don't think he had any authority to put a gag on me."

The classroom was suddenly dead quiet. All ears listened.

Dan continued, "Anyway, sorry, Mark, but Ted can't even say he can't talk about that. And, theoretically, I was not supposed to say what I just said." Dan's expression changed from irritation to amusement. "And I can't believe I just actually used the word, 'theoretically'. And I can't believe I'm going to ask everyone to forget you heard any of this."

There was scattered nervous laughter.

Kristie felt indignant that her friends would be so imposed upon. But, not knowing about the non-disclosure agreement, she didn't know what to think. In fact, this was the first indication she had that Ted and Dan knew each other very well.

Bess spoke up. "My dad is actually working on a device to let computers print things to a television screen. That would be really useful in a classroom. He thinks they will one day be cheap enough to have in regular elementary school classrooms, too."

Dan rolled his eyes, and Ted showed his surprise.

But Dan bit his tongue. Instead of commenting on the futility of non-disclosure agreements, he said, "Really? That's way cool. Does he think the prices of computers themselves will drop, too?"

Now Ted was indignant, but he also held his tongue.

Bess said, "Yes, he does. He says according to his calculations, they could eventually be cheap enough and small enough for ordinary people to own."

The students began to talk excitedly about the possibility of having a computer and what they might do with one.

Then Professor Billings said, "Oh. Look at the time. Class dismissed."

As the students left, a number of them gathered around Bess and Professor Billings to talk about the possibility of schools being able to afford a computer.

Merill left quietly.

Ted and Dan stayed away from the group and talked in low voices.

"Karel is right," Dan said. "Your old boss ought to be sharing his stuff, not trying to keep it secret so he can patent it all and have a monopoly."

"The more time passes, the more I think Karel was right. Maybe I should have just let the computer go to junk instead of signing the NDA so I could bid on it."

Kristie listened quietly.

"Would it have made any difference about the court order not to talk?"

"I don't know. Karel thought my signature gave weight to Mr. Mon's arguments."

"It puts you and Karel and Merill in a tough spot. Me too, even though I only heard a few things about it from Karel before the gag order was set."

"Sorry about that."

"I'd have gone to give the judge a piece of my mind, but Dad told me to forget it."

"I couldn't just let the computer go to scrap. All the work we put into it. And the programming system would have just been lost."

"I was wondering about that."

"No, Mr. Mon said we could let people see the high-level code, just not the parts that would be needed to build the system. I think he thought rumors would be good advertising."

"If we were allowed to talk, there'd be even better advertising."

The professor joined them, and asked, "Will what happened now cause trouble for you guys?"

"I don't think so," Ted replied. "I said nothing, and Dan can claim best effort."

Kristie spoke up. "We were going to meet Karel and Bobbie for lunch."

"Ah. Gotta go."

"Me, too."

And they gathered their books and said goodbye to the professor and left.



So, while they go to meet Bobbie and Karel, should we take a look at Ted's programs?



( Forth code for calculating idealized lengths of months )
( relative to skip years in the world of )
( Bobbie, Karel, Dan, and Kristi, Sociology 500, a Novel. )

( by Ted Turpin, of the Union of Independent States, Xhilr )
( Earth Copyright 2017, Joel Matthew Rees )

( Permission granted to use for personal entertainment only. )

( -- If you need it for other purposes, rewriting it yourself is not that hard, )
( and the result will be guaranteed to satisfy your needs much more effectively. )



( You can save it as something like "econmonths.fs". )
( In gforth and most modern or emulated environments, )
( just paste it into the terminal of a running Forth session. )

( Run it with

 7 SHOWIDEALMONTHS

  for seven years, etc. )


( Uses integer math throughout. )
( Forth expression syntax is mostly postfix. )
( Only the definition syntax is prefix or infix. )
( I've added some comments with equivalent infix expressions )
( to help those unfamiliar with Forth. )


( Using baroque identifiers for ancient Forths. )
( fig-Forth used first three character + length significance in symbol tables. )


( UM*, FM/MOD, and S>D are already there in most modern Forths. )
( These definitions are only for ancient Forths, )
( especially pre-1983 fig and bif-c. )
( Un-comment them if you see errors like )
( UM* ? err # 0 )
( from PRMONTH or thereabouts. )

( : UM* U* ; ) ( modern name for unsigned mixed multiply )

( This is a cheat! Behavior is not well defined for negative numbers, )
( but we don't do negatives here. )
( So this is just sloppy renaming in a sloppy fashion: )
( : FM/MOD M/MOD DROP ; ) ( unsigned division with modulo remainder )

( : S>D S->D ; ) ( Modern name for single-to-double. )

( Showing the above in infix won't help. )

SP@ SP@ - ABS CONSTANT CELLWIDTH
( Infix won't help here, either, but I can try to explain: )
( CELLWIDTH = absolute-value-of difference-between SP-without-pointer and SP-with-pointer.  )

( Semi-simulate local variables with the ability to fetch and store relative to top of stack. )

( Infix will be confusing here, too. )
: LC@ ( index -- sp[ix] ) ( 0 is top. PICK is available on many modern Forths. )
  1 + CELLWIDTH *  ( Skip over the stack address on stack. )
  SP@ + @  ( Assumes push-down stack. Will fail on push-up. )
;

( Infix will be confusing here, too. )
: LC! ( n index -- ) ( 0 is top. Just store. This is not ROLL. )
  2 + CELLWIDTH *  ( Index and stack address are extra on stack during calculation. )
  SP@ +  ( Assumes push-down stack. )
  ! ( *** Will fail in MISERABLE ways on push-up stacks! *** )
;

( Make things easier to read. )
( Infix will be confusing here, too. )

: PRCH EMIT ;

: COMMA 44 PRCH ;
: COLON 58 PRCH ;
: POINT 46 PRCH ;
: LPAREN 40 PRCH ;
: RPAREN 41 PRCH ;

( No trailing space. )
: PSNUM ( number -- )
 0 .R ;


( Do it in integers! )

( Watch limits on 16 bit processors! )

7 CONSTANT SCYCLE ( years in short cycle )
( SCYCLE = 7 )

7 2 * CONSTANT SPMCYC ( short cycles in medium cycle )
( SPMCYC = 7 × 2 )

SCYCLE SPMCYC * CONSTANT MCYCLE ( years in medium cycle, should be 98 )
( MCYCLE = SCYCLE × SPMCYC )

7 7 * CONSTANT SPLCYC ( short cycles in single long cycle )
( SPLCYC = 7 × 7 )

SCYCLE SPLCYC * CONSTANT LCYCLE ( years in single long cycle, should be 343 )
( LCYCLE = SCYCLE × SPLCYC )

7 CONSTANT MP2LCYC ( medium cycles in double long cycle )
( MP2LCYC = 7 )
( MPLCYC would not be an integer: 3 1/2 )

MCYCLE MP2LCYC * CONSTANT 2LCYCLE ( years in double long cycle, should be 686 )
( 2LCYCLE = MCYCLE × MP2LCYC )

352 CONSTANT DPSKIPYEAR ( floor of days per year  )


5 CONSTANT RDSCYCLE ( remainder days in short cycle )

DPSKIPYEAR SCYCLE * RDSCYCLE + CONSTANT DPSCYCLE ( whole days per 7 year cycle )
( DPSCYCLE = DPSKIPYEAR × SCYCLE + RDSCYCLE )
( DPSCYCLE SPMCYC * CONSTANT DPMCYCLE )
( DPMCYCLE = DPSCYCLE × SPMCYC )
( DPMCYCLE MP2LCYC * CONSTANT DP2LCYCLE )
( DP2LCYCLE = DPMCYCLE × MP2LCYC )
( DPMCYCLE and DP2LCYCLE would overflow on 16 bit math CPUs. )
( No particular problem on 32 bit CPUs.

RDSCYCLE SPMCYC * 1 - CONSTANT RDMCYCLE ( remainder days in medium cycle )
( RDMCYCLE = RDSCYCLE × SPMCYC - 1 )

RDMCYCLE MP2LCYC * 2 + CONSTANT RD2LCYCLE ( remainder days in double long cycle -- odd number )
( RD2LCYCLE = RDMCYCLE × MP2LCYC + 2 )
( RD2LCYCLE / 2LCYCLE is fractional part of year. )
( Ergo, length of year is DPSKIPYEAR + RD2LCYCLE / 2LCYCLE, )
( or 352 485/686 days. )

12 CONSTANT MPYEAR ( months per year )

DPSKIPYEAR MPYEAR /MOD CONSTANT FDMONTH ( floor of days per month )
( FDMONTH = DPSKIPYEAR / MPYEAR )
CONSTANT FRMONTH ( floored minimum remainder days per month )
( FRMONTH = DPSKIPYEAR MOD MPYEAR )

2LCYCLE MPYEAR * CONSTANT MDENOMINATOR ( denominator of month fractional part )
( MDENOMINATOR = 2LCYCLE × MPYEAR  )

FRMONTH 2LCYCLE * RD2LCYCLE + CONSTANT MNUMERATOR ( numerator of month fractional part )
( MNUMERATOR  = FRMONTH × 2LCYCLE + RD2LCYCLE )
( Ergo, length of month is FDMONTH + MNUMERATOR / MDENOMINATOR, )
( or 29 3229/8232 days. )

MDENOMINATOR 2 / CONSTANT MROUNDFUDGE

( Infix will be confusing below here, as well. )
( Hopefully, the comments and explanations will provide enough clues. )

( Sum up the days of the months in a year. )
: SU1MONTH ( startfractional startdays -- endfractional enddays )
  FDMONTH + ( Add the whole part. )
  SWAP ( Make the fractional part available to work on. )
  MNUMERATOR + ( Add the fractional part. )
  DUP MDENOMINATOR < ( Have we got a whole day yet? )
  IF
    SWAP ( No, restore stack order for next pass. )
  ELSE
    MDENOMINATOR - ( Take one whole day from the fractional part. )
    SWAP 1+ ( Restore stack and add the day carried in. )
  ENDIF
;

: PRMONTH ( fractional days -- fractional days )
  SPACE DUP PSNUM POINT ( whole days )
  OVER 1000 UM* ( Fake three digits of decimal precision. )
  MROUNDFUDGE 0 D+ ( Round the bottom digit. )
  MDENOMINATOR FM/MOD ( Divide, or evaluate the fraction. )
  S>D <# # # # #> ( Formatting puts most significant digits in buffer first. )
  TYPE ( Fake decimal output. )
  DROP SPACE
;

: SH1IDEALYEAR ( year daysmemory fractional days -- year daysmemory fractional days )
  CR
  12 0 DO
    3 LC@ PSNUM SPACE ( year )
    I PSNUM COLON SPACE
    SU1MONTH
    DUP 3 LC@ - ( difference in days )
    2 LC@ ( ceiling ) IF 1+ ENDIF
    DUP PSNUM SPACE ( show theoretical days in month )
    3 LC@ + ( sum of days )
    LPAREN DUP PSNUM COMMA SPACE
    2 LC! ( update )
    PRMONTH RPAREN CR
  LOOP
;

: SHOWIDEALMONTHS ( years -- )
  >R
  0 0 0 0 ( year, daysmemory, fractional, days )
  R> 0 DO
    CR
    SH1IDEALYEAR
    3 LC@ 1+ 3 LC!
  LOOP
  DROP DROP DROP DROP
;

  0 CONSTANT SKMONTH
  1 CONSTANT SK1SHORTCYC
  4 CONSTANT SK2SHORTCYC
 48 CONSTANT SKMEDIUMCYC
186 CONSTANT LPLONGCYC  ( Must be short1 or short2 within the seven year cycle. )

( Since skipyears are the exception, )
( we test for skipyears instead of leapyears. )
( Calendar system starts with year 0, not year 1. )
( Would need to check and adjust if the calendar started with year )
: ISKIPYEAR ( year -- flag )
  DUP MCYCLE MOD SKMEDIUMCYC =
  IF DROP -1  ( One specified extra skip year in medium cycle. )
  ELSE
    DUP SCYCLE MOD DUP
    SK1SHORTCYC =
    SWAP SK2SHORTCYC = OR  ( Two specified skip years in short cycle, but ... )
    SWAP LCYCLE MOD LPLONGCYC = 0= AND ( not the specified exception in the long cycle. )
  ENDIF
;


( At this point, I hit a condundrum. )
( Modern "standard" Forths want uninitialized variables, )
( but ancient, especially fig-Forths want initialized variables. )
( The lower-level <BUILDS DOES> for fig is only partially part of the modern standard. )
( And CREATE is initialized as a CONSTANT in the fig-Forth, )
( but has no initial characteristic code or value in modern standards. )
( So. )
( On ancient Forths, VARIABLE wants an initial value. We give it a zero. )
( The zero stays around forever on modern Forths, or until you drop it. )
0 VARIABLE DIMARRAY  ( Days In Months array )
   30 DIMARRAY !  ( 1st month )
   29 ,
   30 ,
   29 ,
   29 ,
   30 ,
   29 ,
   30 ,
   29 ,
   29 ,
   30 ,
   29 ,
   0 ,

: DIMONTH ( year month -- days )
  DUP 0 < 0=
  OVER MPYEAR < AND 0=
  IF
    DROP DROP 0  ( Out of range. No days. )
  ELSE
    DUP CELLWIDTH * DIMARRAY + @  ( Get the basic days. )
    SWAP SKMONTH =  ( true if skip month )
    ROT ISKIPYEAR AND  ( true if skip month of skip year )
    1 AND - ( Subtrahend is 1 only if skip month of skip year. )
  ENDIF
;
   
: SH1YEAR ( year daysmemory fractional days -- year daysmemory fractional days )
  CR
  12 0 DO
    3 LC@ PSNUM SPACE ( year )
    I PSNUM COLON SPACE
    SU1MONTH  ( ideal month )
    3 LC@ I DIMONTH  ( real month )
    DUP PSNUM SPACE ( show days in month )
    3 LC@ + ( sum of days )
    LPAREN DUP PSNUM COMMA SPACE
    2 LC! ( update )
    PRMONTH RPAREN CR
  LOOP
;

: SHOWMONTHS ( years -- )
  >R
  0 0 0 0 ( year, daysmemory, fractional, days )
  R> 0 DO
    CR
    SH1YEAR
    3 LC@ 1+ 3 LC!
  LOOP
  DROP DROP DROP DROP
;



Copying and pasting from here doesn't work very well. You can download the source code from
https://osdn.net/users/reiisi/pastebin/4990
You can save the file as something like "econmonths.fs".

In most modern Forths, you can just paste it into a running Forth session, and run it with
7 SHOWIDEALMONTHS
to show the ideal months that Ted talks about here, or
7 SHOWMONTHS
to show the months by the skip years, according to their calendar. You can compare the two, to see how their skip years keep the slippage minimal, restoring to no slippage at all after six hundred eight-six years.

If you need a Forth to run it on, you can find gforth at
<https://www.gnu.org/software/gforth/>.
You can also find it in the packages of most modern OS distributions and in many application stores. (It is Android's store, but not in iOS's, at least, not at the time I wrote this.) For MSWindows, you can download Cygwin at <https://www.cygwin.com/> and get gforth through the Cygwin packages.

If you like to compile things like this yourself, I guess I won't need to tell you how.

HTML documentation can be found on the web at <http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/gforth/Docs-html/>, which includes a tutorial for experienced programmers. An easier tutorial can be found in the book, Starting Forth, which can be found here: <https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/>.

Gforth is not the only Forth which will work, I think most modern Forths will run the code without modification.

The newsgroup comp.lang.forth, which can be accessed through newsreaders and various web interfaces is a good source of amusing and sometimes informative conversation about Forth.

If you like compiling things to play with, I have my own Forth, written in C, which you can find here: <http://bif-c.sourceforge.net/>. You'll want to look at the wiki, too: <https://sourceforge.net/p/bif-c/wiki/Home/>.

If Forth's postfix syntax is uncomfortable, I wrote similar programs in the Basic Calulator utility, bc, which is generally part of most modern operating system distributions without having to get it from packages. (You can get it as a package through Cygwin if you are running one of Microsoft's OSses.)

Just run "bc" from the command line and paste in the bc code, which you can get here: <https://osdn.net/users/reiisi/pastebin/4988>.

And, as I suggest in the code comments, you might modify the code to see how well your own leap year system works for your world. (Pretty well, really.)



You may have noticed, their calendar includes zeros. Years, months, days, all start with the zeroeth. That's a little different from us, isn't it?

And you're probably wondering about hours and minutes at this point. Similar to the way it happened in our world, the 12 constellations that represented the months also represented the hours of the night. Day and night were divided into four watches, and the night had three constellations per watch, so the day did, too.

Then some bright soul recognized that day and night varied in length, and instead of tying the hours to dawn or sunset, tied them to noon. And the royalty of his country liked it and it stuck for the more progressive parts of the world.

Sixty minute hours were derived from twelves, to give sixty minute hours and sixty second minutes. And that's convenient for us, because we could get confused if they used hundreds or forty-nines or base two.

(I really would have liked to show Ted's original programs. But I would have to write the emulator for the hardware he used, write the assembler and use it to bootstrap the language interpreter, write tools for converting -- meaningfully -- from their character set to ours, and so on. And I'd want to construct a font for their characters, too. That's a lot of work. Maybe if I ever write a best seller and make a million dollars off of it, I'll be able to break loose the time and hire the employees to do such a thing. ;-)

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[Backup and edit history will eventually be here: http://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2017/04/backup-soc500-03-10-computers.html.]




[Chapter 3 part 10 is original to the second draft, and is not found in the first draft. Chronologically, it would be placed in chapter five of the first draft: http://free-is-not-free.blogspot.com/2016/05/economics-101-novel-ch05-first-semester.html.]

[JMR201704120928: end-backup.]