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« Return to Thread: Part2, Joining list. Calendar reforms.
Part2, Joining list. Calendar reforms.
by MIKE OSSIPOFF
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Starting Days and Month systems:
As I was saying, for a fixed calendar, if we want the easiest day-of-week determinations, then we want year-divisions of 28 days, 14 days or 91 days. The proposals with a 28-day month have 13 months. Ok, but are the public going to accept a year with 13 months? I'm not so sure. I don't think I'd try proposing it. Fourteen days sounds a bit short for a year-division, but landlords, and others who do billing, could bill every other year-division. But I prefer Asimov's 91-day year-division. His World Season Calendar.
Though I'd like a new calendar, a more rational one than our current Roman Calendar, and would help promote any promising calendar proposal that doeesn't use blank days, it seems to me that, to get the full benefit of a new calendar, it would be best to try for a seasonal calendar--a calendar intended to at least make some effort to represent the seasons. I fully understand that the seasons aren't necessarily four equal time-periods, and that the seasonal time-lag varies from place to place, and even varies during the year. But it doesn't seem so unreasonable to define a "season" as a quarter of a year. And the idea is just to make a good _attempt_ to represent the seasons. If you know that the season-time-lag where you live is different from 38 days, than you know where you currently are, in the seasonal year, by correcting the date of the Improved Seasonal Calendar appropriately for your locale.
I suggest the "Improved Seasonal Calendar" as a fixed calendar and also as a non-fixed calendar.
I'd make these changes in Asimov's World Season Calendar, and I'd call it the "Improved Seasonal Calendar":
I'd change the starting date. He goes by the conventional notion that the seasons start on the equinoxes and solstices. Winter, for instance, starts on the winter solstice. That assumes that the seasons lag a month-and-a-half behind the sun's declination. I've read estimates that typically the lag varies from a month to a month-annd-a-half, for different places. So then, for a seasonal calendar, intended to at least make some effort to represent the seasons, I'd assume a lag of 1.25 months. 38 days. Actually, for Santa Cruz, California, on the West Coast, temperature records for various years consistently showed January 28th as the middle of winter (when there wasn't an "El Nino")--a seasonal time-lag of 38 days. So that's what I'd assume for my seasonal calendar proposal.
Since the middle of winter is then on January 28 (in terms of our Roman Calendar), that would be the day of mid-winter in my "Improved Seasonal Calendar". So Winter would start about 45.5 days before that, on, say, December 14th. My Improved Seasonal Calendar would start Winter on December 14th. Each season would be 91 days. But, if the calendar is not a fixed calendar, then the last season, Autumn, would be 92 days.
If the calendar is not fixed, then leapyear would be Winter 92nd. If the calendar is fixed, then of course there would be a leap-week instead of a leap-day. The leap-week would occur as needed to minimize the drift-from-center, correcting for the calendar's drift of 1.24219 days per year.
By the way, as Asimov pointed out, the season-designations would be wrong for places in the Southern Hemisphere. So, for international use, when people in both southern and northern hemispheres are communicating, of course I'd call the seasons 1, 2, 3 and 4. Or A, B, C, & D. Or maybe I, II, III & IV. For local or national use, there's no reason to not say "Winter, Spring, Summer & Fall (or Autumn)"
If the calendar is non-fixed, then I'd add subdivisions of the seasons. Either two, three, or four subdivisions per season. The most familiar proposal would be three. It would closely resemble the months of the World Calendar, except, of course it would be displaced from the World Calendar, season-wise. Other possibilities, for the non-fixed version would be to divide each season into a 45-day division and a 46-day division; or three 23-day divisions and a 22-day division. Of course, in the non-fixed version, Autumn would have three 31-day divisions, two 46-day divisions, or three 23-day divisons, to bring the year up to 365 days. Leap-day would then be added to Winter's last division.
The divisions would have names such as Winter 1, Spring 3, etc. Their purpose would be to have the relatively short payment-periods we're used to, while using the seasons as a medium for locating and naming the months with respect to the seasons. For a fixed calendar, I'd just number the seasons' days from 1 to 91, without the divisions. Then, landlords and companies that do billing could just bill every 30 days, and that would be easy, with the seasons' day-numbering.
It would be easy to determine what day of the week any date falls on.
A fancier version of the Improved Seasonal Calendar would have two refinements:
1) It would take into account the variation during the year of the average seasonal timelag. If we can find a figure for that average lag for summer and for winter, then I'd assume that one applies at the winter solstice and the other at the summer solstice. I'd use some interpolating function to get an estimate of what the lag is at other times of year. Unless there were reason to do otherwise, I'd use a linear interpolating function.
2) The Babylonians did something interesting: They'd made very precise measurements of the Sun's movement along the ecliptic, and they knew that it moved faster during the winter than during the summer. They had a calendar that took this into account. They had a 12 month calendar, which started on an equinox, and in which each month represented the Sun's time in a particular sign of the zodiac, a particular 30 degrees along the ecliptic. I'd borrow that idea from them. The lengths of the seasons would be equal to the number of days that the sun spends in the corresponding quarters of the ecliptic. From when I checked, for instance, it seems to me that Winter would be 89 days long, and Summer would be 94 days long. If the calendar is non-fixed, then the _divisions_ of the seasons, too, would represent equal distances along the ecliptic, and their length, again, would be equal to the time that the sun spends in each division of the ecliptic.
I don't know what to call this version. For now, I'll call it the "Fancy Improved Seasonal Calendar".
It seems to me that, very likely, the Fancy Improved Seasonal Calendar is too complicated to explain, and too lacking in simplicity and regularity, to be popular with the public. So, most likely, I'd instead propose the Improved Seasonal Calendar in the simpler version, the non-Fancy version I described first.
The Improved Seasonal Calendar, whether fixed or non-fixed, is my favorite calendar-reform proposal. Though I like the Fancy version of it, I'd instead probably propose the simpler non-Fancy version for better public acceptance.
Again this posting is getting long, so I'll post it now.
Mike Ossipoff
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail® has ever-growing storage! Don’t worry about storage limits.
http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage1_052009
As I was saying, for a fixed calendar, if we want the easiest day-of-week determinations, then we want year-divisions of 28 days, 14 days or 91 days. The proposals with a 28-day month have 13 months. Ok, but are the public going to accept a year with 13 months? I'm not so sure. I don't think I'd try proposing it. Fourteen days sounds a bit short for a year-division, but landlords, and others who do billing, could bill every other year-division. But I prefer Asimov's 91-day year-division. His World Season Calendar.
Though I'd like a new calendar, a more rational one than our current Roman Calendar, and would help promote any promising calendar proposal that doeesn't use blank days, it seems to me that, to get the full benefit of a new calendar, it would be best to try for a seasonal calendar--a calendar intended to at least make some effort to represent the seasons. I fully understand that the seasons aren't necessarily four equal time-periods, and that the seasonal time-lag varies from place to place, and even varies during the year. But it doesn't seem so unreasonable to define a "season" as a quarter of a year. And the idea is just to make a good _attempt_ to represent the seasons. If you know that the season-time-lag where you live is different from 38 days, than you know where you currently are, in the seasonal year, by correcting the date of the Improved Seasonal Calendar appropriately for your locale.
I suggest the "Improved Seasonal Calendar" as a fixed calendar and also as a non-fixed calendar.
I'd make these changes in Asimov's World Season Calendar, and I'd call it the "Improved Seasonal Calendar":
I'd change the starting date. He goes by the conventional notion that the seasons start on the equinoxes and solstices. Winter, for instance, starts on the winter solstice. That assumes that the seasons lag a month-and-a-half behind the sun's declination. I've read estimates that typically the lag varies from a month to a month-annd-a-half, for different places. So then, for a seasonal calendar, intended to at least make some effort to represent the seasons, I'd assume a lag of 1.25 months. 38 days. Actually, for Santa Cruz, California, on the West Coast, temperature records for various years consistently showed January 28th as the middle of winter (when there wasn't an "El Nino")--a seasonal time-lag of 38 days. So that's what I'd assume for my seasonal calendar proposal.
Since the middle of winter is then on January 28 (in terms of our Roman Calendar), that would be the day of mid-winter in my "Improved Seasonal Calendar". So Winter would start about 45.5 days before that, on, say, December 14th. My Improved Seasonal Calendar would start Winter on December 14th. Each season would be 91 days. But, if the calendar is not a fixed calendar, then the last season, Autumn, would be 92 days.
If the calendar is not fixed, then leapyear would be Winter 92nd. If the calendar is fixed, then of course there would be a leap-week instead of a leap-day. The leap-week would occur as needed to minimize the drift-from-center, correcting for the calendar's drift of 1.24219 days per year.
By the way, as Asimov pointed out, the season-designations would be wrong for places in the Southern Hemisphere. So, for international use, when people in both southern and northern hemispheres are communicating, of course I'd call the seasons 1, 2, 3 and 4. Or A, B, C, & D. Or maybe I, II, III & IV. For local or national use, there's no reason to not say "Winter, Spring, Summer & Fall (or Autumn)"
If the calendar is non-fixed, then I'd add subdivisions of the seasons. Either two, three, or four subdivisions per season. The most familiar proposal would be three. It would closely resemble the months of the World Calendar, except, of course it would be displaced from the World Calendar, season-wise. Other possibilities, for the non-fixed version would be to divide each season into a 45-day division and a 46-day division; or three 23-day divisions and a 22-day division. Of course, in the non-fixed version, Autumn would have three 31-day divisions, two 46-day divisions, or three 23-day divisons, to bring the year up to 365 days. Leap-day would then be added to Winter's last division.
The divisions would have names such as Winter 1, Spring 3, etc. Their purpose would be to have the relatively short payment-periods we're used to, while using the seasons as a medium for locating and naming the months with respect to the seasons. For a fixed calendar, I'd just number the seasons' days from 1 to 91, without the divisions. Then, landlords and companies that do billing could just bill every 30 days, and that would be easy, with the seasons' day-numbering.
It would be easy to determine what day of the week any date falls on.
A fancier version of the Improved Seasonal Calendar would have two refinements:
1) It would take into account the variation during the year of the average seasonal timelag. If we can find a figure for that average lag for summer and for winter, then I'd assume that one applies at the winter solstice and the other at the summer solstice. I'd use some interpolating function to get an estimate of what the lag is at other times of year. Unless there were reason to do otherwise, I'd use a linear interpolating function.
2) The Babylonians did something interesting: They'd made very precise measurements of the Sun's movement along the ecliptic, and they knew that it moved faster during the winter than during the summer. They had a calendar that took this into account. They had a 12 month calendar, which started on an equinox, and in which each month represented the Sun's time in a particular sign of the zodiac, a particular 30 degrees along the ecliptic. I'd borrow that idea from them. The lengths of the seasons would be equal to the number of days that the sun spends in the corresponding quarters of the ecliptic. From when I checked, for instance, it seems to me that Winter would be 89 days long, and Summer would be 94 days long. If the calendar is non-fixed, then the _divisions_ of the seasons, too, would represent equal distances along the ecliptic, and their length, again, would be equal to the time that the sun spends in each division of the ecliptic.
I don't know what to call this version. For now, I'll call it the "Fancy Improved Seasonal Calendar".
It seems to me that, very likely, the Fancy Improved Seasonal Calendar is too complicated to explain, and too lacking in simplicity and regularity, to be popular with the public. So, most likely, I'd instead propose the Improved Seasonal Calendar in the simpler version, the non-Fancy version I described first.
The Improved Seasonal Calendar, whether fixed or non-fixed, is my favorite calendar-reform proposal. Though I like the Fancy version of it, I'd instead probably propose the simpler non-Fancy version for better public acceptance.
Again this posting is getting long, so I'll post it now.
Mike Ossipoff
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail® has ever-growing storage! Don’t worry about storage limits.
http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage1_052009
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