Holiday Favorites & Facts
By Amelia Bosque
Dog Days
The hot, muggy period of summer between early July and early September.
A period of stagnation.
ETYMOLOGY:
Translation of Late Latin dies caniculares, Dog Star days (so called because the Dog Star (Sirius) rises and sets with the sun during this time): literally day + of the Dog Star
Where does the term come from? Why do we call the hot, humid days of summer “dog days?”
The dog days of summer, refers to the hottest days of summer. Days that usually fall between early July and early September in the Northern Hemisphere, but the actual dates vary greatly from place to place. The traditional timing of the Dog Days is the 40 days beginning July 3 and ending August 11, coinciding with the ancient heliacal rising of Sirius, the Dog Star. The ancient Greeks would sacrifice a dog at the beginning of the Dog Days to appease the rage of Sirius, believing that the star adding its own heat to that of the sun was the cause of the hot weather.
In the past, the dog days of summer was believed to be the source of all types of maladies including but not limited to wine turning sour, dogs going mad, fevers, and hysterics among other ills. As recently as 1937, in Zora Neale Hurston’s book “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, the old belief that the dog days of summer actually caused dogs to turn rabid has been expressed. The period is commonly called rotting-month in Sweden and Finland, due to the risk of foodstuff spoiling in the high temperatures. However, a casual survey will usually find that many people believe the phrase is in reference to the conspicuous laziness of domestic dogs (who are in danger of overheating) during the hottest days of the summer. When speaking of "Dog Days" there seems to be a connotation of lazing about, on these hot and humid days. This usage, recently attached to the phrase, has nothing to do with the original source or meaning.
Eternal September
Eternal September (or the September that never ended,) is Usenet slang expression for the period beginning in September 1993. The term was first used when it became apparent the there would be a never-ending swell of new users and that since that date, the standards and behavior on Usenet and by extension, the entire internet, have declined at a steadily increasing rate.
The idea of an eternal September was particularly apt (and dreaded) among Usenet users as Usenet originated as a linking network between colleges and universities. As a result, every September a large number of new students would have university access to Usenet, and it took time for them to acclimate themselves to the network and its netiquette. After about a month, the new users would have learned the standards and norms of Usenet, and would behave themselves accordingly. In other words, September was known and dreaded as the time of year where there’d be a swell in new users who needed everything, even basic Usenet manners, explained to them.
In 1993, or 1994 according to some, America Online began offering Usenet access to its customers. To many of the old Usenet users, most particularly and distressingly among the administration or other leaders of the sites/newsgroups, the AOL users were far less prepared to learn netiquette than the freshmen they were used to dealing with. This was thought to be because AOL took little if any time to explain to users Usenet’s customs and standards of behaviour, there is even some speculation that AOL did not initially tell people that the newsgroups were not a part of AOL's ever expanding catalogue of services. But it was not AOL’s entry into the newsgroups alone that was a problem to the old-time Usenet users, there was also the problem of experiencing a larger scale of growth than ever before. In previous years, after September, the number of disruptive influences (“newbies”) would soon die down as people got the hang of it, with AOL and the wider availability of the internet, the numbers of new users threatened to overwhelm the existing Usenet community’s ability and desire to help the new users assimilate into Usenet culture.
Since 1993, cheaper and more readily available access to the internet as well as other factors like it’s popularity as a social networking hub (MySpace, FaceBook, etc.) and the rise in online MMORPG communities (Meridian 59, Ultima Online, EverQuest and World of Warcraft, etc.) and other online features have seen such an unending stream of new users that some people hold that the old social norms and even the old Usenet itself has been drowned out by the “noise” of all the new (post 1993) users, in effect, keeping us all perpetually in September 1993.
As a joke, the date at which the internet will finally “grow up” is often given as October 1, 1993.
Quotes:
“ It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September that never ended. ” --Dave Fischer, January 26, 1994; alt.folklore.computers
“The time when college students return to school and start to post stupid questions, repost MAKE MONEY FAST, break rules of netiquette, and just generally make life on Usenet more difficult than at other times of the year.
Unfortunately, it has been September since 1993. With the growing sensationalism surrounding the ‘Information-Superhighway’ in the United States, the current September is likely to last into the next century.” --Tom Seidenberg, alt.culture.usenet
“Rule #9: It's *always* September, *somewhere* on the Net.” --David DeLaney, Net.Legends FAQ
It’s Sep 5432, 1993 as I write this, better known as July 15, 2008.
