Happy Reformation Day! Have Some Musings.

On October 31st, A.D. 1517, a monk named Martin Luther sent a copy of ninety-five theses he had written to the Archbishop of Mainz (and may or may not have also have posted them on the door of at least one church in Wittenburg), kicking off a long and costly process that would come to be known as the Reformation. Isaiah 29:13 was just as relevant then as when Isaiah spoke it and Jesus quoted it to the Pharisees:

“This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.”

(And though the Reformation helped remedy that quite a bit, we're deluding ourselves if we think those prophetic words can't be relevant again in our own time!)

The Reformation is a long and fascinating tale with repercussions that continue to reverberate around the world to this day, one too long for me to cover in detail here. Instead, how about a nifty little historical fact about dates?

Five hundred years is a long time. In fact, it's so long ago that it actually predates the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in October 1582. Now, dealing with time differences is tricky, subtle, and gives me a headache, but if I've understood the formula in the Wikipedia article on the subject correctly, if we project the Gregorian calendar back to 1517 it would have been ten days ahead of the Julian calendar that would have been in use at the time. Thus October 31st, 1517 in the Gregorian calendar would have corresponded to (assuming I've done this correctly, which is by no means a sure thing) October 21st, 1517 in the Julian calendar, which I think means we still have another ten days to go before we can truly celebrate the Reformation's half-millennium birthday.

That, or we've missed it by ten days. Honestly, I give it even odds either way.

On another, less date-heavy note, I've also got a video of another flag-vectorization! This also relates to the Reformation, because it's the flag of Saxony, the principality where Martin Luther lived and whose prince gave him sanctuary from the Pope and also helped kick off the Reformation. Anyway, here it is:

While making this video, I was struck by the incredible utility of Bézier Curves, which are the lines you see me bending and shaping to form the outlines of the green surface. I'd like to talk about them more at some point, but it's getting late and this post is already long enough. So another time, and for now, Happy Reformation Day everyone! Let's bring back Reformation Day as a thing.

And if I might indulge in some linguistic musings: “reformation” is made of the roots re- (as in again) and formation, meaning to make or create. The Hawaiian term “hana hou,” sort of the Hawaiian equivalent to “encore,” is made up of hana (with a range of meanings related to “work, make, create, do, perform”) and hou (meaning “new,” but also “again,” so a call of “hana hou!” at the end of a performance means essentially “Encore! Do it again!”). So with a little liberalness of interpretation, “Happy Reformation Day!” could plausibly be “Hauʻoli Lā Hanahou!” in Hawaiian. (I checked the online Hawaiian diction and found no entries for “reformation,” so I can't confirm if this is actually correct.) Anyway, I should really end this ever-lengthening post. A hui hou! (Until we meet again!)