Complex Numbers

What's Wrong Ain't Right

It's maddening. I'm over here losing my goddamned mind. Look... it doesn't matter how many times you repeat an error, it's still an error. It's still wrong. Like, it doesn't matter how many people mistakenly use "it's" as a possessive pronoun, or "your" as a contraction of "you are," those are objectively wrong and can never be right, no matter how much English changes otherwise. (This, of course, doesn't mean I never make inadvertent mistakes like that.)

Similarly, claiming that tomorrow's full moon is a Blue Moon is objectively wrong and can never be right, even if it is being propagated by formerly trusted sources of mine like Atlas Obscura. It makes me call all of their "facts" into question. No, I'm not going to link their offending article. One stupid mistake in a magazine back in the 1940s, and this is what we get: rampant, viral misinformation, combined with anchoring bias (which is the one where the first thing we hear about a certain topic sticks in mind, even in the face of arguments evidence to the contrary). Ugh.

As for the "supermoon" thing that you've probably heard in conjunction with that (that's a very obscure pun, because a full moon occurs at opposition, while a new moon represents an astronomical conjunction), well, whatever. It's a real thing, though probably overhyped. By all means, if you can gaze at the full moon tonight and/or tomorrow night, I encourage you to do so. Here, it's supposed to be cloudy. Of course.

At least I only have to do this rant every three years or so (except for the time a few years ago when we got two full moons in January, none in February, and two in March, which for fuck's sake should have ended that false definition once and for all). With luck, I'll be dead the next time the false Blue Moon comes around, and you won't have to see me kvetch about it.

For the record, once more with feeling, the actual Blue Moon is the third full moon of a season containing four full moons, and the next one occurs next August. It can never occur in the last few days of a Gregorian calendar month.

Eh. This is long enough now that I don't need to get into a random article today. One might say this happens once in a Blue Moon; that is, one can say it if one wants me to start this rant all over again. I'll get back to my usual format tomorrow. I will, however, link one of my longer arguments in favor of the traditional definition, in the form of two consecutive Fantasy newsletter editorials:

"It's Not a Blue Moon, Part I" 
"It's Not a Blue Moon, Part II"