Joining list. Calendar reforms.

[Brillig]

On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 3:53 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF<nkklrp@...> wrote:
> I reply:
>
> Ok, Victor has changed his position.

Not at all. But maybe there's an issue of semantics that makes you
believe so. I would consider, for example, the Gregorian calendar to
serve as an example of such a calendar. One need only change the start
of the year.

> Now a seasonally-meaningful

Uh... was "meaningful" in your previous post? I must have missed it.

> terrestrial-seasonal calendar is feasible, but just is not useful or
> advantageous.

> Now, if you don't move across the equator, then, because you already are
> familiar, over your entire lifetime, with the seasonal connotations of our
> latest-version Roman months that are in use now, Victor would claim that it
> isn't "useful" to change calendars, because, under those conditions, any
> kind of numbering of months and days would work for you--if you've been
> using it all your life.

Don't put words in my mouth. Lifelong usage of a calendar is certainly
not required for its usefulness. I think your calendar would be
approximately as useful as the Gregorian, hence it's not useful,
because the Gregorian is already entrenched. Your calendar doesn't
have an advantage that makes the change worthwhile.

> Change to a neater, less arbitrary , but not
> terrestrial-seasonally-explicit, numbered month system, such as one that
> measures time between equinoxes and solstices, without the irrationally odd
> month-lengths?

I think the rationality of the month lengths has already been explained.

>Well, then it would be similar to how it would be if you
> moved across the equator, because the month-names would lack obvious
> seasonal connotation--unlike the month names of Subjective Seasonal.
>
> The Monday that is tomorrow is the Monday that starts North-IV, calendrical
> (northern  hemisphere) summer's last month, in the fixed Subjective Seasonal
> Calendar. If you were vacationing in Australia, that date-name would
> automatically explicitly tell you that it was the beginning of Winter's last
> month.

... which gives me absolutely no new information, since I already know
by being alive what season it is. Switching to the opposite season
from what it is presently is not that difficult. In fact, I would say
it's so easy that it's downright obvious.

Victor

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

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I'd said:
 
> > Ok, Victor has changed his position.
>
> Not at all. But maybe there's an issue of semantics that makes you
> believe so. I would consider, for example, the Gregorian calendar to
> serve as an example of such a calendar. One need only change the start
> of the year.
 
Yes, Karl suggested a compromise between Subjective Seasonal and Gregorian: Keep the Roman/Gregorian months, and the Gregorian leapyear system, with the leapday placed near the ecliptic longitude where it is now, but simply re-name June, July, August and September as North-I, North-II, North-III and North-IV. Likewise for the other calendarical seasons. I start Subjective Seasonal's year, including that Roman-Months compromise version, on South-I/1.
 
And yes, in fact the Gregorian Calendar, without any modification, could of course be used as a the seasonal calendar that I describe in the paragraph before this, with the understanding that North, Southward, South and Northward begin on June 1, October 1, December 1 and April 1, respectively. I mean, everyone already knows that that pretty much describes their perception of the seasons anyway.
 
Yes, because of the tradition of equal 3-month seasons, some would answer that, in the northern hemisphere, Fall arrives with September, a notion re-inforced by a song sung by Dinah Washington in '61. I admit that I used to believe that too. And, each year, when summer continued into September, I always thought that summer was lasting anomalously long that year. But, if you combine the perception that summer arrives with June, with the typical midrange seasonal time-lag of 1.25 months (38 days), that gives you a summer that lasts through September 26th. By that reckoning, the first day of Fall is September 27th.

>
> > Now a seasonally-meaningful
>
> Uh... was "meaningful" in your previous post? I must have missed it.

Uh...yes it was.
 
>

> > terrestrial-seasonal calendar is feasible, but just is not useful or
> > advantageous.
>
> > Now, if you don't move across the equator, then, because you already are
> > familiar, over your entire lifetime, with the seasonal connotations of our
> > latest-version Roman months that are in use now, Victor would claim that it
> > isn't "useful" to change calendars, because, under those conditions, any
> > kind of numbering of months and days would work for you--if you've been
> > using it all your life.
>
> Don't put words in my mouth. Lifelong usage of a calendar is certainly
> not required for its usefulness.

 
...But it certainly helps a lot for the purpose of interpreting a certain Gregorian date as a certain time of year :-)
 
But you're right: For the purpose of making business appointments, the Gregorian Calendar is exactly as useful as Subjective Seasonal....if you think that a calendar should be only a business-scheduler.
 
Well, I take that back: For the purpose of making business appointments, vacation plans, weekend plans, etc., the fixed version of Subjective Seasonal is a lot more convenient than the Gregorian Calendar, because each year's calendar is the same, and because of the convenient relation between days of the week and dates of the month.
 
In elementary schools, they used to (and may still) make students recite the "Thrity days hath September..." poem, to teach the irrational month-lengths of the current calendar. I admit that "Thirty days hath September..." is quite unnecessary, because the Romans were considerate enough (and I'm grateful to them for that) to make the 31-day months alternate as much as possible with the othre months (given the two adjacent long months named for emperors). "Thrity days hath September...", then, makes the Roman/Gregorian month lengths more work for elementary school students than they need to be.
 
But the irrational months are still not as easy as they could be if they were rational. And "Thirty days hath September..." shows the kind of unnecessary work that people are willing to impose on children. My point with that poem is that, just like the irrational month-lengths, the correspondence between year-dates and seasonal time of year is another thing that young people must become acquainted with over time. So when you say that Gregorian is just as "useful" as Subjective Seasonal, there's a question about what you call "useful". Subjective Seasonal's month-names explicitly represent the seasonal time of year. Today we enter the last month of North.
 
But if you think that some notion of practical "usefulness" is all that matters, then we disagree on that too. Aside from the usefulness differences that I've described so far in this message, there's also the matter of the aesthetic desirability of a calendar being un-arbitrary and having month names that make the most sense.
 
Can you explain the phobia against naming the months for the seasonal time of year, the time of the natural year that the calendar measures? What could be more obvious for naming the months?
 
And if anyone wants to say that that isn't feasible, then I ask them to address all of the answers that I've posted, to that claim.
 
I suggest that, having used a seasonally irrelevant calendar for over 2000 years, people, from habit, have come to believe that a calendar can't or shouldn't be otherwise.
 
>
> > Change to a neater, less arbitrary , but not
> > terrestrial-seasonally-explicit, numbered month system, such as one that
> > measures time between equinoxes and solstices, without the irrationally odd
> > month-lengths?
>
> I think the rationality of the month lengths has already been explained.
 
The origin of the month lenghs has been explained. But the rationality?  :-)   Oh, you mean like the rationality of two adjacent 31 days months because the Romans wanted two emperors to have adjacent long months? Or starting the year at on a day that was (maybe) loosely based on a new moon in 46 B.C.? Or the rationality of one of the months having only 28 days?
 
I don't criticize the Romans' respect for their emperors. It's commenable. I merely question its modern relevance, and your use of "rational" to describe our practice of keeping features like that today, 2000 years later.

>
> >Well, then it would be similar to how it would be if you
> > moved across the equator, because the month-names would lack obvious
> > seasonal connotation--unlike the month names of Subjective Seasonal.
> >
> > The Monday that is tomorrow is the Monday that starts North-IV, calendrical
> > (northern  hemisphere) summer's last month, in the fixed Subjective Seasonal
> > Calendar. If you were vacationing in Australia, that date-name would
> > automatically explicitly tell you that it was the beginning of Winter's last
> > month.
>
> ... which gives me absolutely no new information, since I already know
> by being alive what season it is.

 
Exactly--you know that by having been alive for a considerable number of years. A child doesn't have your longtime experience with the Roman/Gregorian months. I made that point in my previous post. And if we changed to a new calendar, with new months, but not Subjective Seasonal, then you too would have a bit of inconvenience in seasonally interpreting the new calendar's dates. Yes you could convert dates, but it would be an inconvenience.
 
> Switching to the opposite season
> from what it is presently is not that difficult. In fact, I would say
> it's so easy that it's downright obvious.
 
Of course. You just add 6 months. But, when talking on the phone to someone in Australia about business travel or vacation plans, or when making decisions at a hotel desk, or travel agent desk, with a line of people behind you, even that easy conversion could interrupt the flow of conversation. Sure, you ordinarily make your travel plans in advance, at your leisure, but sometimes, during a conversaion, based on new information, plans have to be changed, and sometimes those plans can be affected by seasonal time of year.
 
Mike Ossipoff
 

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[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

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Irv,

I don't know how I missed this message when it was first posted. Maybe it didn't post immediately:
 
I'd said:
 
On 2009 Aug 28, at 16:55 , MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:

This is identically the same argument that anti-seasonalists, Irv included, on this list have been stating and re-stating since I first suggested a terrestrial-seasonal calendar.

You replied:
 
I am outraged (OK, maybe just peeved) that you would denigrate me with the descriptive "anti-seasonalist" when in fact I have done so much work to analyze the lengths of the seasons, the lengths of the equinoctial and solstitial years, and the lengths of the solar years measured from arbitrary points in Earth's orbit, with so much of my web site dedicated to these efforts.
 
I reply:
 
I never said that an anti-seasonalist was someone who has no interest in seasons, or someone who opposes them.
 
The first times that I used the term "anti-seasonalist", I carefully defined it. So it's a bit unfair to imply that I meant something incorrect when I referred to you as an anti-seasonalist.
 
As I said the first time I used the term, an anti-seasonalist is someone who opposes terrestrial seasonal calendars. You'd been opposing terrestrial seasonal calendars, by denying their value or validity, and therefore, by my definition, you are an anti-seasonalist.
 
You said that you've worked to analyze the lengths of the seasons. That has been an interest of mine, and is an important consideration in my calendar proposals. But I don't think that you mean the same thing that I do by "the lengths of the seasons". What do you mean by the seasons? The astronomical quarters between equinoxes and solstices?
That's how the media define the seasons, but I'm more interested in how people perceive them, as evidenced partly by authors, throughout history, who wrote about the months, saying that (in the northern hemisphere) June is complete summer and that December is complete winter, and counting May and November among the months of spring and autumn; and by the agreement in Australia that winter starts on June 1 and that summer starts on December 1.
 
Given those beginning dates for North and South, I arrive at an ending date for those calendarical seasons by the two methods that I've described in previous postings. That results in North and South having a length of 117 or 118 days, depending on which of those two methods is used. The 118 day figure results from the better of the two methods, and it is close to the 119 days (17 weeks) that is the length of North and South in the fixed version of the Subjective Seasonal Calendar.
 
You want a peeve? How about the media's practice of consistently copying eachother with their 4-times-annual statements that the seasons begin on equinoxes and solstices? Because the equinoxes and solstices are astronomical, some may believe that, therefore, somehow, those "seasons" have astronomical authority. Of course there's no astronomical (or other) justification for saying that seasons start on equinoxes and solstices.
 
Mike Ossipoff
 
 
 
 

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[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

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 I just want to say a few more things, for my recent reply:
 
1. Seasons: I didn't mean to imply that the astronomical quarters divided by solstices and equinoxes aren't seasons. In a broad sense, of periods of the tropical year defined by some annually recurring natural change, event or condition (terrestrial or astronomical), of course those quarters are astronomical seasons, and a calendar based on them is an astronomical-seasonal calendar.
 
I merely meant that such seasons aren't "the seasons" in the strictest sense, the usual sense: winter, spring, summer and autumn.
 
I understand that solstices have been very important throughout histsory, and are times very much worth noting, and that measuring the year and defining its beginning at an equinox or solstice has often been people's practice.
 
Though I understand and agree with celebrating the winter solstice, I'm more inclined to celebrate the middle of winter, typically around January 28th (and determined to be that date [except in El Nino years] in Santa Cruz, California, by daily temperature records for a number of years).
 
2. Before joining this list, I didn't know that the tropical year has different lengths, depending on with respect to what solar ecliptic longitude it's measured. I'd just been assuming that the tropical year is the mean tropical year.
 
The length of the tropical year is of interest to me, especially when proposing seasonal calendars. Having now heard that there are different particular tropical year lengths, with respect to different solar ecliptic longitudes, I would base my leapyear rules on those particular specific tropical year lengths, depending on what solar ecliptic longitude a particular calendar proposal is centered on. For instance, the average solar ecliptic longitude for June 1, for Subjective Seasonal. I believe that Karl said that the tropical year length with respect to that longitude is about 364 + 77/62 days. It's all the more of interest that June 1 is fairly close to a longitude at which the tropical year length is quite stable over many millennia.
 
Mike Ossipoff
 
 
 
 

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