Tuesday March 23, 2021
Ron White in his comedy CD “Drunk in Public” recounted how he got thrown out of a bar after having too much to drink. He was arrested for being “Drunk in Public.”
He argued that he had been drunk in a bar and “they threw me into public.”
( BTW – This is not a good defense. )
I thought of this routine as I was puzzling over Mayan distance numbers.
When Ron saw the staff approach him in the bar to throw him out I think he said there were five people coming to do the job. He said he didn’t know how many it would take but he said he knew how many were going to try, which he considered at the time “a handy piece of information.”
This brings me to my study of Mayan glyphs. I decided to try and really understand distance numbers. The Mayan erected this big stela (large flat round top gravestone looking slabs of rock.) They inscribed these scenes, typically with a king “dancing” on top of some poor bound victim. The text would start with a Long Count which would anchor the action to some important date. Then there would be another date which counted forward or backward from that Long Count date to when something happened that they wanted to tell you about. (A capture, the birth of the king, their accession to the throne, etc.) That date is referred to as a “Distance Number.”
All these distance numbers count the number of days (kan) and the number of months (winik) in one glyph the winik glyph with two bar dot numbers: on on top and one on the left side of the winik glyph.
For example: The Mayans might inscribe a stella and say “January 1, 2000 the beginning of the new millennium and one year nine months and eleven days from that date our country was attacked …” (Okay, they wouldn’t admit to being attacked so they wouldn’t inscribe it but I hope you get the idea.)
Here’s the weird thing about the distance number. I was doing an exercise on them and checking myself by looking up the answers. Sometimes the number on top was the count of the kan (the number of days) and sometimes it was the winik (the number of months).
What, I asked myself was the determining factor? I went back to the discussion of distance numbers. There was no mention that I could find. I went through five sources (Johnson, Coe/Stone, Montgomery, Stearns/Harris) before I found it in the fifth source – a pdf by (Kettune/Helmke). Now this information is what Ron Johnson would call “a useful piece” to have.
Maybe, it is in those other sources and I missed it.
But, come on guys, don’t make it that hard to find.
It turns out that the Winik coefficient as it is called is as wide as the glyph, while the Kan coefficient takes up the whole space of the glyph. You can look in the upper left hand corner of the glyph block to see which number is extended into that space and then know it is the Kan number.
So there you have it. Moving on.
I was sent an video clip. I know you’ll find this astounding but the clip I was given came from Fox News which showed Jeanine Parrillo cutting off a guest’s mic and ending an interview because he had the audacity to tell her what she was saying was not correct. Her reason for cutting him off was that “she doesn’t allow lies” on her show. That is all her show is! In fact, she interrupted him, said a bunch of lies and then cut off his mic and the camera.
The point being made in the clip by someone commenting on Parrillo was that these are the folks talking about “cancel culture” and they are the ones practicing it. This is nothing new. It’s just the same old same old. But it is worth bringing up every now and again in case anyone has forgotten.
In other ironic news Mitch McConnell gave one of his little speeches on the Senate floor where he talked about the comity of the Senate and how that would be lost if the Democrats got rid of the filibuster, and he threatened a scorched earth response when and if he got back in the majority. Dick Durbin rose immediately to challenge by asking what could be more scorched than what McConnell had already done when last he was in the majority?
The Republicans have voted to a person against the Biden Covid relief package, which is wildly popular with people in this country at a cost of $1.9 trillion.
Next up is a $3 Trillion dollar infrastructure bill, which is polling as even more popular. Will Mitch extend that reach across the aisle comity he wishes for? (No, F* no. Are you kidding me?)
And, with the shooting in Colorado we have a sad return to a kind of dreary normalcy. I recall during the worst of the pandemic I thought that at least we weren’t having mass shootings. They have now returned.
However, we can take comfort that right wing second amendment Congresswoman from Colorado has said her thoughts and prayers go out to those affected. Aw, that’s so nice. But as long as your state allows someone to legally walk across a parking lot with a long gun no one is safe in your state.
But, this is nothing new. Just a return to normalcy.
PS Priest bearing the Canopus jar of Osiris, from the Alexandria East Harbor (BCE 100)
PPS I just found reference to the Kan/Winik thing in Montgomery under “Suppression of Signs” page 116. I knew this would happen. Tell the world then find out what you couldn’t find before.
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