Joining list. Calendar reforms.

[Mark J. Reed]

The Roman system is, apart from February, a quite logical extension of
a lunar calendar (with 29- and 30-day months) to a solar calendar.
Keep the existing months but fix their lengths at 30 and 31 days
instead of 29 and 30.  Sure, a system with seven 30-day months and
five 31-day months, with one of the 30-day months gaining a 31st day
in leap years, would have made more sense, but at least all the
weirdness, including the leap day, is confined to one month.  Beyond
that, the arrangement we have distributes the seven 31-day months as
evenly as is mathematically possible throughout the calendar year.  As
the existence of Irv's formula demonstrates.

On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 6:03 PM, Irv Bromberg <irv.bromberg@...> wrote:

> On 2009 May 22, at 15:39 , MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
>
> any calendar with a rational, un-arbitrary month-system would be an
> improvement over the Roman Calendar.
>
> Irv replies:  The Gregorian month lengths are not arbitrary, they follow a
> consistent pattern, which is given by:
> Month_Length = 30 + { [ month + FLOOR(month / 8) ] MOD 2 } days
> where month is an integer from 1 to 12 where January = 1 ... December = 12.
> If month = 2 (February) then subtract 2 days and if Leap Year then add 1
> day.
>
> -- Irv Bromberg, Toronto, Canada
> <http://www.sym454.org/>

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

[Mikhail Petin]

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Dear Calendar People,

 

MIKE OSSIPOFF WROTED:

Is there now a calendar-reform proposal underway or about to be started? What do listmembers propose for civil use?

 

I  SAY:

Mikhail Petin has offered (2003) for civil use:

 

 The World Dual Calendar (solar + lunar-solar)

 <http://calendarpetin-meton.narod.ru/2009page1-42.pdf> 

 

   where  7-day's week (mythical)  is eliminated in order to improve a harmony of  lives of mankind with natural lunar and solar cycles

   Gregorian calendar is used in given calendar as a seasonal calendar and reflects the historical chronology, memorials (birthdays, commemoration etc.)

 

   See also:

http://www.amazon.com/World-Dual-Calendar-2009-religions/dp/1440430004/ref=pd_rhf_p_img_1   Amazon.com 

 

[Mark J. Reed]

I wouldn't say this was a reform.  The use of numbered weeks in
financial circles goes back at least a couple hundred years.  The ISO
8601 week-number calendar is in wide use in those same circles, and
other business/technological contexts, but is hardly threatening to
supplant the Gregorian calendar.

And the determination of the 53-week years is perfectly standardized.
Although the rule is given in terms of the Gregorian calendar ("week
1" is the week containing the first Thursday of the year), it can also
be formulated as an independent pattern of leap years.

2009/5/22 Amos Shapir <amos083@...>:

> Yes there is a calendar reform going on, which is based on week numbers.  It
> has never been proposed officially or voted on or even discussed in any
> national or international body or forum, yet it is already in use by many
> businesses.  I noticed it the last time I have bought new tires for my car:
> the garage worker showed me the way the production day was imprinted, as
> year+week number.  Also, a company I used to work for (one of the largest
> computer manufacturers at the time) used an internal week-number scheme for
> internal reporting.  Not also the Microsoft Outlook's calendar can display
> week numbers along with Gregorian dates, so I guess many businesses use them
> in some way.
>
> All this is not standardized (I'm not sure that Microsoft have even heard of
> the ISO standard) and just week numbers do not make a calendar; but I am
> sure that pretty soon there will be some guidelines set up about how to
> determine which years have 53 weeks, and how to group weeks in months or
> seasons.  This will be done in the usual grass-root method: one big company
> will set up its own rules, and others will follow, simply out of
> convenience.
>
> People will still keep their religious calendars to determine holidays (just
> as there are still christian religious groups who use the Julian calendar
> for that, and of course other religions keep their own).  Eventually, as
> christian users of the Gregorian calendar will become less dominant, the
> prevailing business calendar will be based on week numbers and the Gregorian
> calendar will be abandoned for business use.
>
> Amos Shapir
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 17:03:08 +0000
> From: nkklrp@...
> Subject: Re: Joining list. Calendar reforms.
> To: CALNDR-L@...
>
>
>
> To all listmembers in general:
>
> ...
> Is there now a calendar-reform proposal underway or about to be started?
> What do listmembers propose for civil use?
>
> In particular, let me know if these assumptions are wrong: I assume that
> most calendar-reform advocates want a fixed calendar. I assume that most
> agree that blank days won't gain acceptance, and therefore propose a
> leapweek, as do I (for aesthetic reasons too).
>
> I assume that most want a leapweek fixed calendar with subunits (like
> months) divisible by 7, so each subunit begins with the same day of the
> week, for easy day-of-week determination.
>
> ________________________________
> See all the ways you can stay connected to friends and family

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

[Amos Shapir]

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It's even simpler if January is appended as month 13 of the previous year:
 
Month_Length = 30 + { [ (month - 2) MOD 5 ] MOD 2 } days

The curious fact is that any sequence of 5 consecutive months which does not include the Feb.-March boundary, contains exactly 153 days.

Amos Shapir
 



 

---

Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 18:03:45 -0400
From: irv.bromberg@...
Subject: Re: Brief addendum and reply
To: CALNDR-L@...

On 2009 May 22, at 15:39 , MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:

any calendar with a rational, un-arbitrary month-system would be an improvement over the Roman Calendar.

Irv replies:  The Gregorian month lengths are not arbitrary, they follow a consistent pattern, which is given by:

Month_Length = 30 + { [ month + FLOOR(month / 8) ] MOD 2 } days

where month is an integer from 1 to 12 where January = 1 ... December = 12.

If month = 2 (February) then subtract 2 days and if Leap Year then add 1 day.

-- Irv Bromberg, Toronto, Canada

<http://www.sym454.org/>

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[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

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You wrote:
 
> No, he didn't. First, it was 46 BC, not AD.
 
I reply:
 
I knew that it was B.C., but I was writing in a hurry, and somehow I accidentally wrote "A.D." Forgive the typo.
 
You continue:
 
Second, we don't know for
> sure exactly what the correspondence was, since the leap year
> observance between then and 8 AD was erratic. But none of the
> accepted correspondences has a New Moon on Jan 1st of the first year
> of the calendar.
 
I reply:
 
Ok, then the information I found in the widely-distributed book _365 Days_ is incorrect. What can I say? The error is that of the author of that book.
You say one thing, and that author says another. Because you sound sure, you may very well be right, and he may be wrong.
 
If so, then that re-opens the question of why Julius started his year on that arbitrary day, not corresponding to a solstice, equinox, new moon or full moon.
 
If you're right, then the Roman year-starting date, currently in use by our civil calendar, is even more irrational and arbitrary than I thought it was.
 
Mike Ossipoff
 

 

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[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

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Amos--
 
Thanks for the interesting information about the week-number calendar. I hadn't heard of it before. If so many businesses and companies are using week numbers then it must have considerable practical value, and, as you suggested, it likely has good promise for wider acceptance, maybe enough to replace the current civil calendar. I hope that, when it is eventually fleshed-out, the details will make it a thorough reform, as I define the term,  with a rational astromical or seasonal starting date, and with equal or nearly equal quarters.
 
Mike Ossipoff
 

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[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

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Irv--
 
You wrote:
 

Irv replies:  The Gregorian month lengths are not arbitrary, they follow a consistent pattern, which is given by:

Month_Length = 30 + { [ month + FLOOR(month / 8) ] MOD 2 } days

where month is an integer from 1 to 12 where January = 1 ... December = 12.

If month = 2 (February) then subtract 2 days and if Leap Year then add 1 day.

 

I reply:

 

It's interesting and surprising that that un-arbitrary formula gives two 31-day months adjacent to eachother, not 1 and 12, not 6 and 7, but the asymmetrical pair 7 and 8.

 

Yes, but isn't that special rule for February arbitrary?

 

Mike Ossipoff

 

 

 

 

-- Irv Bromberg, Toronto, Canada

<http://www.sym454.org/>

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[Mark J. Reed]

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 2:48 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF <nkklrp@...> wrote:
> Ok, then the information I found in the widely-distributed book _365 Days_
> is incorrect.

It's possible the author simply presented something as
incontrovertible fact that is not so certain...

> You say one thing, and that author says another. Because you sound sure,

All I'm sure about is that we're not sure about it. :)

We know the pre-Julian Roman calendar was originally lunisolar, with
lunar months and an intercalated 13th month (oddly, added inside one
of the common months instead of between two) added to keep it aligned
with the seasons.

However, by the time of Caesar, both the months and the year were out
of synch with their original inspirations.  The months were not tied
to the moon, but fixed in length in a pattern of 29- and 31-day months
(even numbers were considered unlucky, so the months that would have
been 30 days in a typical lunar calendar were split into some of 29
and some of 31 days).  And the pontifices had stopped using
intercalation to keep the calendar aligned and instead inserted or
failed to insert extra months for political purposes; e.g.
intercalation was shunned during wartime because it was considered bad
luck for the campaigning soldiers.

> If so, then that re-opens the question of why Julius started his year on
> that arbitrary day, not corresponding to a solstice, equinox, new moon or
> full moon.

To a certain extent it was determined for him by the previous
calendar.  Yes, the Republican calendar was out of alignment with the
seasons, and he added extra days to the  Last Year of Confusion (46
BC).  But by most accounts this lengthening was accomplished by
inserting three *whole* months (the usual 13th month plus two more
entire extra months between November and December).   Adding whole
months got the calendar within a month of the target (spring equinox
in March), but didn't do anything for the alignment with the moon.

But a lot of the details are lost to us or documented contradictorily.
 Certainly, Caesar could have tweaked the lengths of the extra months
to get January 1st closer to the new moon - but given that the months
in his new calendar are completely divorced from the moon's phases,
there wasn't much point.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

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Mark--
 
You wrote:
 
> The Roman system is, apart from February, a quite logical extension of...
 
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
 
 
You continued:
 
but at least all the
> weirdness, including the leap day, is confined to one month.
 
I reply:
 
Yes, but there are many possible month-systems that don't have any
 
You continued:
 
Beyond
> that, the arrangement we have distributes the seven 31-day months as
> evenly as is mathematically possible throughout the calendar year.
 
I reply:
 
What? The book _365 Days_ says that Julius Caesar's year perfectly alternated the 31-day months throughout the year. I've been told that that book's author was wrong about something else, and maybe he's wrong about that too. But the fact remains that it's possible to alternate the 31-day months and not have two of them adjacent to eachother.
 
If you want to altenate the longer months, then there's the 36-day and 37-day months; and the 41-day and 40-day months. I'm not sayng that I advocate those, because 9 and 10 aren't divisible by four; I want the whole months divisible into four equal or nearly-equal quarters.
 
There's something pretty funky about an alternation that requires making one month shorter than any of the others.
 
Mike Ossipoff
 
 

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[Mark J. Reed]

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 3:27 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF <nkklrp@...> wrote:
> It's interesting and surprising that that un-arbitrary formula gives two
> 31-day months adjacent to eachother, not 1 and 12, not 6 and 7, but the
> asymmetrical pair 7 and 8.

To put seven odd months in a sequence of 12, you have to have two
together.  The exact placement of those two months is itself
completely arbitrary.  In the case of the Julian calendar, the month
lengths were based on the established lengths of the previous
calendar, just lengthened to give an average of 1/12 of the solar year
rather than a lunar month.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

[Mark J. Reed]

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 3:42 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF <nkklrp@...> wrote:
> The Roman system is, apart from February, a quite logical extension of...
>
> "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

I'm not saying that the system we have is easy to learn or optimal.
Just not as entirely free of logic as is often claimed.

>< Beyond
>> that, the arrangement we have distributes the seven 31-day months as
>> evenly as is mathematically possible throughout the calendar year.
>
> I reply:
>
> What? The book _365 Days_ says that Julius Caesar's year perfectly
> alternated the 31-day months throughout the year.

No.  The original Julian calendar, from day 1, had the same structure
it has today, complete with February weirdness.  It was all inherited
from the Republican calendar, with only the lengths of the months
adjusted.  It's true that Quintilis and Sextilius were renamed in
honor of Julius and Augustus Caesar, but in each case it wasn't the
ruler's own idea, and there was no shifting of days to make them
longer.


> But the fact remains that it's possible to alternate the 31-day
> months and not have two of them adjacent to eachother.

Not if you have seven of them. :)  Which you'll notice my statement
above assumes...

Sure, six each in leap years with, one of the 31-day months having 30
days in common years would make more sense.  But that has never been
the structure of the Julian calendar.

> There's something pretty funky about an alternation that requires making one
> month shorter than any of the others.

Sure there is.  It's all down to superstition about intercalation
bringing bad luck to the associated month, which was therefore made
shorter to minimize the number of unlucky days.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

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Mark--
 
Thanks for the info about the history of the Roman Calendar. One conclusion it suggests is that we don't have any reason to keep its final version (or any other version of it).
 
What ever Julius's reason was for starting his year when he did, there's no reason why we should keep his starting date when we reform the calendar.
 
Mike Ossipoff
 

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[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

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Mark--
 
You wrote:
 
To put seven odd months in a sequence of 12, you have to have two
together. The exact placement of those two months is itself
completely arbitrary.
 
I reply:
 
...but it could have at least been done symmetrically: 1 and 12; or 6 and 7.
 
You continued:
 
In the case of the Julian calendar, the month
lengths were based on the established lengths of the previous
calendar, just lengthened to give an average of 1/12 of the solar year
rather than a lunar month.
 
I reply:
 
I understand. And that was up to Julius. I'm just saying that we needn't base _our_ calendar on the ones that preceded Julius.
 
Mike Ossipoff
 

 

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[Mark J. Reed]

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 4:05 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF <nkklrp@...> wrote:

> I understand. And that was up to Julius. I'm just saying that we
> needn't base _our_ calendar on the ones that preceded Julius.

Naturally not.  But Julius chose to keep the structure of the new
calendar as similar as possible to the old one to ease its acceptance.
 That consideration is still valid today.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

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Mark--
 
Yes, I'm grateful to the Romans for at least making the 31-day months alternate as much as possible, given the two adjacent long months of the two Caesars.
 
If the Romans didn't take a day from February in order to lengthen Augustus's month, then I'd better stop quoting from _365 Days_. In fact, I'm sure that I shouldn't post any more statements from that book here, because it has led me to make more than one false statement.
 
> > But the fact remains that it's possible to alternate the 31-day
> > months and not have two of them adjacent to eachother.
>
> Not if you have seven of them. :) Which you'll notice my statement
> above assumes...
 
I reply:
 
Ok. I was just going by the the 6 31-day months that _365 Days_ says that Julius's calendar had. That book keeps gettng me in trouble.
 
Mike Ossipoff
 

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[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

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Mark--
 
You wrote:
 
>But Julius chose to keep the structure of the new
> calendar as similar as possible to the old one to ease its acceptance.
> That consideration is still valid today.
 
True. I'm glad you mentioned that, because it leads to the subject of what is probably the one irreconcilable difference among calendar-reform advocates: Keep as close as possible to the Roman months, or completely depart from them.
 
I call that "moderate vs thorough reform".
 
In particular, I call a calendar reform "moderate" if it keeps the currenly-used Roman year-starting-date, or the Roman names of the months. And "thorough" if it doesn't keep either.
 
The two most famous reform proposals (International Fixed Calendar and World Calendar) are both moderate, as are most or all of the ones I've run across on the web so far.
 
Asimov's reform proposal is the only modern thorough reform that I know of (other than my own similar one). But I haven't yet checked out many calendar reform websites.
 
Do listmembers here have some thorough reforms for cival solar calendars?
 
I don't like keeping the old starting-date, because it seems arbitrary. As someone pointed out today, no one really knows why Julius chose it. That isn't a good enough reason for us to copy it from him!
 
I like a starting date that makes the calendar's dates mean something with regard to the natural year, the seasonal year.
 
Mike Ossipoff
 

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[Mark J. Reed]

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 4:35 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF <nkklrp@...> wrote:
> I don't like keeping the old starting-date, because it seems arbitrary.

Well, it's only a few days off from perihelion. :)  (Of course, the
anomalistic year is not the same length as any of the tropical years,
so a seasonal calendar will drift with respect to the apses...)

> someone pointed out today, no one really knows why Julius chose it. That
> isn't a good enough reason for us to copy it from him!

What we need is a good reason not to.

> I like a starting date that makes the calendar's dates mean something with
> regard to the natural year, the seasonal year.

It just depends on what you're looking for in a calendar.  The Muslim
world seems to do OK with a calendar that's not at all tied to the
seasons, but is tied to the natural month.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

[Irv Bromberg]

On 2009 May 23, at 18:12 , Mark J. Reed wrote:

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 4:35 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF <nkklrp@...> wrote:

I don't like keeping the old starting-date, because it seems arbitrary.

Well, it's only a few days off from perihelion. :)  (Of course, the
anomalistic year is not the same length as any of the tropical years,
so a seasonal calendar will drift with respect to the apses...)

Right, at the time of the Gregorian reform, the mean ecliptic longitude of perihelion was almost 276°.

The solar longitude on Gregorian January 1, 1583 was 280°.

-- Irv Bromberg, Toronto, Canada

<http://www.sym454.org/>

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

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I'd said:

 > > someone pointed out today, no one really knows why Julius chose it. That
> > isn't a good enough reason for us to copy it from him!
>

Mark replied:
 
> What we need is a good reason not to.

How about so that we'll have a civil calendar that explicitly relates to the natural year, the seasons in particular?
 
Mark continued:
 
>> It just depends on what you're looking for in a calendar. > -- 

I reply:
 
Aye, there's the rub. Some of us are looking for copying the Romans for another two millenia. Some of are looking for something with seasonal relelvance.
 
If you're just going to modify the Roman month-lengths a little, don't even bother changing the calendar, because it then wouldn't be worth the effort.
 
Mike Ossipoff
 

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[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

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 I was late getting to the computer today, and so I probably won't get the opportunity to make the replies that I'd like to make today.
 
Memorial Day, tomorrow, I won't be able to get to a computer. Tomorrow is Spring the 65th, in Asimov's World Season Calendar. That's SpringIII/2, if we divide the quarters a la 454.
 
I find calendar reform interesting, and it's great that there are people here who have things to say about it. So I like to reply immediately to postings here, which is why I regret that I didn't get the opportunity to do so today, and won't be able to get to a computer tomorrow.
 
See you Tuesday (Martes)
 
Mike Ossipoff
 

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