On Sun, 13 Jul 2003, Mark A Mandel wrote: > On Sun, 13 Jul 2003, Philip Hart wrote: > > #It's 29 hours, according to some nice FAQ somewhere. > > It's 30 hours, well attested. See my writeup at > http://world.std.com/~mam/Cracks-and-Shards/time.html#clock For the record, I was misquoting http://www.mojoworld.net/sil/ref/world.html For the record, I think I could come up with reasonable arguments against your position - basically I'd say that you've simply asserted a D-minute equals an E-minute and trusted a variety of Brusts (or rather, trusted a particular set of writings of the Brusts over others). Maybe _he_'s the one with the thing about 17 - and has systematically (more or less) mistranslated the Vladiad and the Paariad to suit, so 17^2 days = 1 D-year = 1 E-year results in the 30 hours figure. > After living on Dragaera for over 200,000 years, I rather imagine that > the humans (Easterners) have adapted well to the 30-hour day. Fair enough - I've fallen into the error of thinking humans aren't subject to selection pressure any more. However, on the other hand I would imagine that the adaptations might not result in 30-hour circadian clocks - there could be societal adaptations, such as several sleep periods per day, or a willingness to not be up at dawn every day or to say farm by torchlight - which might be coupled with genetic changes... Incidentally, how bright is it beneath the enclouding? Bright enough to farm, obviously, and for Eastern-adapted eyes to work fine - this seems odd. > Just don't ask how Terran languages remain recognizeable over such a > span, and the Easterners haven't gotten past medieval tech. Just... > don't. Damn - too late - many times too late... The former I've ascribed to "SB" taking some liberty in translation, the latter to Dragaeran depredations, the gods, and most of all the Cycle.