Terran Computational Calendar Introduces Minimonths, Year Bases, and Datemods 209
First time accepted submitter TC+0 (3672227) writes "Inspired by comments regarding its first incarnation, the Terran Computational Calendar's recent redefinition now includes dynamic support for 'leap duration', 'year bases', and 'datemods'. Here's the new abstract from terrancalendar.com (wikia mirror) captured at 44.5.20,6.26.48 TC+7H:
Synchronized with the northern winter solstice, the terran computational calendar began roughly* 10 days before the UNIX Epoch. Each year is composed of 13 identical 28-day months, followed by a 'minimonth' that houses leap days (one most years and two every 4th but not 128th year) and leap seconds (issued by the IERS during that year). Each date is an unambiguous instant in time that exploits zero-based numbering and a handful of delimiters to represent the number of years and constant length months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds that have elapsed since 0TC (the calendar's starting point). An optional 'year base' may be applied to ignore erratic leap duration. Arithmetic date adjusting 'datemods' can be applied to define things like weeks, quarters, and regional times."
Synchronized with the northern winter solstice, the terran computational calendar began roughly* 10 days before the UNIX Epoch. Each year is composed of 13 identical 28-day months, followed by a 'minimonth' that houses leap days (one most years and two every 4th but not 128th year) and leap seconds (issued by the IERS during that year). Each date is an unambiguous instant in time that exploits zero-based numbering and a handful of delimiters to represent the number of years and constant length months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds that have elapsed since 0TC (the calendar's starting point). An optional 'year base' may be applied to ignore erratic leap duration. Arithmetic date adjusting 'datemods' can be applied to define things like weeks, quarters, and regional times."
Umm .... (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, sure, you're invented your own calendar. I'm sure it's awesome.
But nobody will use it.
But, hey, some people speak Klingon at parties in the hopes it will impress their friends.
Seriously, do you expect people to use this? Or is it purely an intellectual exercise?
I'm afraid I don't see the point.
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Re:Umm .... (Score:5, Funny)
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If we wait long enough, the earth will eventually tide-lock to the moon anyway. That'd help.
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Disregarding that a year is one orbit around the sun, if you consider a year that is 1/13th of the current one, we would all fry.
This redistribution of orbital motions is trickier than I thought.
The beauty of year bases... (Score:2)
Re:The beauty of year bases... (Score:4, Funny)
By default, the Terran Computational Calendar accounts for IERS issued leap seconds. But, Leap seconds can actually be ignored by applying a year base of 0. Therefore, the following two dates are the same instant in time: 44-05-20 22:16:41 TC [terrancalendar.com] (includes leap seconds), 44-05-20 22:17:06 TC0 [terrancalendar.com] (excludes all leap seconds)
And if you use Steven Wright's calendar, you can ignore sevens.
And the benefit is... (Score:2)
what, exactly? Calendars are synthetic tools used to synchronize human activity. That is their one and only value. They do not exist in nature; nature synchronizes with itself without our intervention.
But we need a shared, common way to refer to particular dates in time so that we can refer to records and events retrospectively and arrange for future events prospectively—together, in a coordinated fashion.
So your proposal replaces one time measurement system on which everyone is more or less on the sa
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It's not pretty because it evolved from an astronomical model. When timekeeping was being invented, we weren't entirely aware that's what we were modeling.
Um... no. We knew exactly what we were modelling - the apparent motion of the heavenly bodies.
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Our sysadmin proudly showed off his latest scripts to log system and network load balances. Only problem, a single typing mistake made them use ddate instead of date, which made for interesting logs:
Date: Today is Sweetmorn, the 5th day of Confusion in the YOLD 3180
Celebrate Syaday
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This is what people probably said to Gene Roddenberry: "OK sure you invented a language for the fictional race of people in your fictional TV show. I'm sure it's awesome. But nobody will use it."
1. Some people will use it and like it.
2. Widespread adoption is not the only redeeming quality a creative endeavor can have.
Seriously, do you expect people to use this? Or is it purely an intellectual exercise?
3. You're probably one of those people that doesn't get the point of philosophy also.
I'm afraid I don't see the point.
4. Then don't use it.
Re:Umm .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, but let's be honest ... it's like speaking Klingon. It's cool, and maybe a fun intellectual exercise, but in the grand scheme of things more of a hobby than anything.
Sure, I get that ... but I'm desperately trying to see the point. It's like building a framework for building calendars. OK, does this come up much? (Hell, maybe it has applications in converting between calendars for all I know)
Now you're just being an ass. I may be a cynical old man, but I'm a well read cynical old man.
Oddly enough, not a problem.
That doesn't change the fact that the practical applications of this, on the surface at least, seem rather limited.
Feel free to use it. Have your own secret handshake with the 12 other guys who will. You can have annual conventions and everything. :-P
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So say a little over 10 years ago at 34TC [terrancalendar.com] you wanted to schedule a task for EXACTLY 10 years in the future, you can write that date as 44TC34 [terrancalendar.com] and not have to worry about the 3 additional leap seconds that have occured during that time.
Another nice thing
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Another nice thing about the calendar is that it's easy to calculate the amount of time that occured since the beginning of the year. So basically 44.5.20,19.40.4 TC [terrancalendar.com] means that 5*(28*24*60*60)+20*(24*60*60)+19*(60*60)+40*(60)+4 = 13894804 seconds have past since the beginning of the year.
Is that really the case you want to optimize for?
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(28*24*60*60) = 1 month
(24*60*60) = 1 day
(60*60) = 1 hour
(60) = 1 minute
This is easy to remember and makes sense, right?
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"calculate the amount of time that occured since the beginning of the year"
We can already do that.
Re:Umm .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Every novel idea was once just some crazy man's dream.
What I don't see the point of is not just announcing you don't see the point, but returning to defend your lack of insight.
It's obviously easier to calculate date offsets, and the consistent zero based counting reduces the chances of having the idiocy of JavaScript's zero based month. If you wanted to see a point, its right there.
At some time in the future, we will replace the irregular system we have now, with something reasonable. Like metric. And there will be holdouts who refuse to change.
But what gets adopted does so because people use it, and people use it because it makes sense. First to one, then two, and then People magazine.
Of course it could be some crazy asshole's stupid idea, in which case you could just ask the crazy asshole, or read his web page, and learn the point.
To dismiss the idea, and actively avoid the point, while announcing your ignorance is a waste of typing. Especially while claiming to be well read. I guess that just stopped before this summary hit the front page?
I don't see this changing anything, and it is statistically unlikely to be the next timekeeping solution, so I'm not defending its worth nor utility. But butting into a conversation with, "I really don't see the point" is just the kind of smarmy, closed minded nonsense that gets your opinion discarded. No need to thank me for reminding you.
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It's obviously easier to calculate date offsets, and the consistent zero based counting reduces the chances of having the idiocy of JavaScript's zero based month. If you wanted to see a point, its right there.
At some time in the future, we will replace the irregular system we have now, with something reasonable. Like metric.
It didn't work during the French Revolution, and it won't work now.
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Almost the entire world has now switched to metric. The US is the only holdout of any importance.
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Many systems have already adopted metric time. Time is stored as the seconds since some epoch, with decimal fractions.
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And yet the Klingon language was not a failure because it's goal was never to achieve widespread adoption among the general public. The fact that there even were people trying to teach their kids a fictional language is remarkable.
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Basing a calendar on the orbit of a planet when you might not be around the planet would be sort of silly. The calendar is created to standardize time such that when someone eventually leaves this solar system they have some time to use that isn't based on something they can no longer measure.
Earth time is handy if you are on earth but it's terribly inconvenient off it, partially because they are constantly applying corrections to that time to compensate for things like the planets rotation changing. You mi
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Basing a calendar on the orbit of a planet when you might not be around the planet would be sort of silly.
Then why are we using base 28 and base 13 to organize the days into larger units? If we're trying to be independent of Earth's natural periods, why not make it all base 10 or base 2 or whatever you want, and be done with it?
The calendar is created to standardize time such that when someone eventually leaves this solar system they have some time to use that isn't based on something they can no longer measure.
Except it's fundamentally based on trying to reconstruct a 365-day-ish year with something close to a lunar cycle month -- otherwise, why use these stupid groupings?
They may be a bit premature but eventually we'll need something like this for the people that (hopefully before we destroy ourselves) leave the solar system.
Just a bit. Ya think?
Look -- in case you are unfamiliar with the long history of calendar reform, there are plenty of V
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Because women aren't going to bleed at a different rate on a different planet.
I'm guessing you were probably making a joke, but this is actually a serious question, with (so far) little evidence to suggest what may happen.
Most spaceflight missions with women have had lengths less than one menstrual cycle. The few women who have spent longer periods on the space station have not been the subject of detailed studies on their cycles, due to privacy concerns. Given that various body chemistry changes take place in space (and possibly in environments with other differences in gravity)
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Privacy concerns? I can't see that being an issue, somehow.
TAI SI seconds and gravitational time dialation... (Score:2)
"the duration of 9192631770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom" measured at the geoid (mean sea level)
Therefore, for the terran computational calendar, we actually know how much relativistic gravitational time dialation [wikipedia.org] to account for, even if you are way out somewhe
Re:Umm .... (Score:4, Funny)
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On a venn diagram there is no intersection between "speak Klingon at parties" and "friends"...
Ah! So that's why none of my friends can speak Klingon. It's mathematically impossible for them!
It's like Swatch .beat Internet time all over (Score:2)
Complicated totally unfamiliar representation of date and time for the "information age"? I think i'll take flawwed, but understood and good enough over that any time.
rfc 1925 2.11 [ietf.org] is reaffirmed
(11) Every old idea will be proposed again with a different name and a different presentation, regardless of whether it works.
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Complicated totally unfamiliar representation of date and time for the "information age"?
Why is it unfamiliar, it is almost the same as current representation:
YY.MM.DD,HH.MM.SS TC+7H
RFC3339 is
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS+07:00
And that May 31st corresponds to 5.20. is logical, as there are fewer days in their month.
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You do realize... this means there are now /multiple/ ways to represent the same date?
I'll agree it's not decimal time, but it's still a repeat of the same crazed idea of a time representation without support for the local timezones.
Computers can process it, but the average human is n't going to accept "datemod, designator."
Not to mention; Y.M.D ... is itself is irregular... most people expect and insist on the standardized date notation:
MM/DD/YY.
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The conventional calender it stupid, but it is well-established stupid that everyone understands. Mostly. I don't think most people could tell you the rules for leap years in full.
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m/d/y is by no means internationally accepted. It seems to be mostly an american thing. The UK (and I think most of Europe) uses d/m/y and I'm sure it varies around the world. I much prefer YYYY-MM-DD anyway. It squares with how we do time and is an ISO standard. m/d/y is just nonsense whichever way you slice it.
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Yup, it looks like it is only the USA that uses m/d/y exclusively
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]
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'designator' just means things like UTC (which you should be familiar with).
People don't even use UTC. When converted into seconds; UTC is useful for an internal storage representation, that is it, nothing more.
Nobody says they'll meet me at such and such tomorrow at 18:46 UTC.
The thirteenth month (Score:2)
Ethiopian Calendar (Score:2)
Sounds like the Ethiopian calendar.
12 months of 30 days plus a 13th month of 5 or 6 days (which are all holidays!).
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Sounds like the Ethiopian calendar.
12 months of 30 days plus a 13th month of 5 or 6 days (which are all holidays!).
Yea, my kids Ethiopian. Trying to keep track of the holidays is a nightmare. They're on a different day every year. Yet I have to honor his culture or something so I have to get out a slide rule to figure out when Christmas is every year.
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This is basically what the ancient Germanic peoples had as well, at least as recently as the Anglo-Saxons. Tolkien used it as the basis for his Elvish calendar.
12 months of 30 days each, 2 extra days for midwinter (Yule) and three or four extra days at midsummer (Litha).
Backup rotation (Score:3)
That is remarkably similar to what I used to use for a backup tape rotation once upon a time:
27 daily tapes labeled d1-d27
13 'monthly' tapes labeled m1-m13
1 year-end tape labeled appropriately
It was easy to manage since there was never any question which tape was 'next' or safe to reuse. Robotic tape libraries, software with better tape management, and eventually disk-to-disk backup make it obsolete, but I always did think that a 28x13+1(or2) calendar would be much more sensible than what we have now.
Not that I was ever silly enough to think that the world would adopt just because it makes more sense :)
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Do you know how many gods you will anger by reducing their days of worship?!?!
Given a choice... (Score:4, Funny)
... I'ld rather go back to Thermidor.
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It's curious that the metric system took over while the metric calendar didn't.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org]
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The metric system rationalizes and reforms a whole bunch of physical phenomena.
You cant do that with dates & times. They're intrinsically arbitrary and irrational. The current system is set up to account for human needs so it likely the best compromise that's possible. Even the metric system had to bend a little and have centimeters for common use.
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Does anyone really know what time it is? (Score:2)
Does anyone really care?
Cheers,
Dave
Meh (Score:3)
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A good candidate for an intersteller calendar. So to make the current date (1401510007 UNIX) more readable you could write it as 1:401:510:007.
Shouldn't that be ::1:401:510:7?
Yet another calendar (Score:2)
And I thought daylight savings was complex (Score:3)
Jesus (I believe the man existed, but not that he was a deity), do we have to complicate the Earth date system more???
Systems already break because it's complicated enough, and I have to set the times on microwave ovens and regular ovens often enough. We understand 12 months of varying lengths with a base 24 day cycle, isn't that enough. 221788790 seconds from the winter solstice???
A minimonth??? Seriously.
Time and dates are already defined for the inhabitants of the planet. And it works. Don't mess with it.
Next thing you know there will be pressure on the US to accept a non-English measurement system...
You advocate a ________ approach to calendar refor (Score:2)
You advocate a
( ) overly simplistic
approach to calendar reform. Your idea will not work. Here is why:
( ) having months of different lengths is irritating
( ) having one or two days per year which are part of no month is stupid
Specifically, your plan fails to account for:
( ) humans
( ) rational hatred for arbitrary change
( ) unpopularity of weird new month and day names
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) nobody is about to renumber every event in his
I also have an alternate calendar (Score:3)
How about... (Score:2)
Let's go with Tolkein's Shire Calendar [tolkiengateway.net] instead. Twelve 30 day months and the leftover days are split evenly between summer and winter, with leap days coming after Mid-summer's Day. It has the added bonus of new and strange month and weekday names. What more could you ask for?
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What more could you ask for?
I could ask for a calendar based on the moon, and years based on the solstices. At least that would make sense.
Forever Tuesday (Score:2)
Hah! Your solution fails! (Score:3)
I devised my own calendar and the main feature is every day is 84 hours long, and all of them are Tuesdays!
My new calendar solution > yours!
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And what of those people born on the Febuary leap? They have to make do with celebrating on a nearby but incorrect date as a consolation birthday.
Obligatory griping (Score:4, Interesting)
Synchronized with the northern winter solstice,
By their nature, solstices are notoriously difficult to determine empirically. Theoretically there is an instant when the the sun's declination reaches its minimum, but practically you'll have hours or even days of a change in declination that is too small to measure. Popular surviving calendars either rely on an equinox instead (Christian, Jewish), or pad several lunations after the solstice just to make sure (Chinese).
the terran computational calendar began roughly* 10 days before
Whose ephemeris?
Each year is composed of 13 identical 28-day months
Two figures that generally have nothing to do with natural phenomena. While it's true that a little more than one-third of all tropical years contain 13 synodic months, those months average to around 29.5 days each. There are cultures that care about the synodic month exclusively, and there are those that care about both the synodic month and the hebdomadal week, but I know of no major religion or regionally dominant culture that cares about only the hebdomadal week.
followed by a 'minimonth' that houses leap days (one most years and two every 4th but not 128th year)
We limit calendars to arithmetical processes because accuracy must be balanced with ease-of-use for human beings, and we tend to prefer powers of ten because that makes the arithmetic easier for humans. If you're going to insist on powers of two in your calendar, you're effectively requiring people to reach for some sort of computer to perform the algorithm for them (except for those rare few who enjoy performing long division). And if you're already doing that, there's no longer a reason to limit your calendar algorithm to arithmetical (or even algebraic) processes to begin with; just have a computer chew on the transcendental functions directly rather than limiting it to an arithmetical approximation to begin with. Shoehorning in a power of 2 is a compromise that satisfies nobody.
and leap seconds (issued by the IERS during that year). Each date is an unambiguous instant in time
Coordinated Universal Time and it's system of coordinated leap seconds is older than POSIX, and yet even today POSIX still can't get leap seconds right, insisting that each and every day is exactly 86 400 s long (which is a big part of why we're having our current Leap Second Holy War to begin with). IT has been kicking that can down the road for about 40 years. Why will an adoption of your calendar suddenly change that?
that exploits zero-based numbering
Programming languages can't agree where to start an array, but to my knowledge nobdoy is currently using a calendar with a "day 0" or "month 0" (let alone a "zeroth day" or "zeroth month"). Insisting on "zero-based numbering" doesn't solve anything, but rather dumps IT's own internal issues with counting onto the rest of the world.
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Personally I like the simplicity of standardized units and I'm still happy that the 28 day month is still in between the sideral (~27.3) and synodic (~29.5) periods of the moon.
True, but the synodic is far and away the most influential on human affairs, including factors such as natural nighttime illumination, tides, and our reproductive cycle. The synodic month is the one that can be determined even with overcast skies.
Omitting a leap day every 128 years was not chosen because it was a power of 2, but because it is literally THE MOST EFFICIENT METHOD that exists to keep a year synchronized with the same point,
I'll grant that it's probably more precise than the Gregorian algorithm for the next few centuries (though I'm going by the numbers for the northward equinox rather than the southern solstice specifically), but it's not more efficient in decimal math. Determining
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and a computer will probably do it for them automatically, and a lot of people won't even have to worry about it at all during their lifetime
Which is why I raised doubts that a computer would be programmed to do it correctly to begin with (it will only be on the minds of programmers near that 128-year threshold), and doubts that it would be remembered at all ("Just let the machine do it").
Each... quarter are of constant length
Of dubious value, as tropical seasons are not of equal (or uniform) length, and the beginning and ending dates of your quarters will be non-obvious.
Each time measurement unit begins at 0
Every single law and contract mentioning "the first of the month" will need to be rewritten to be unambiguous, si
I devised a remarkably similar calendar. (Score:2)
What I came up with was almost identical; the year started and ended with the Winter Solstice, and consists of 13 months of 28 days. Where mine differs, though, is that instead of a "minimonth", I choose to exclude the extra day or two from any week, month or year; a period of time I call "Offset". These days being excluded from a week means that any given day on the calendar will always be the same day of the week from one year to the next. That is to say, under this calendar, if the first day of the first
But Does It Support Subsidized Time? (Score:3)
I don't care about Mini Months or Year Bases as much as the ability to have Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, TrialSized Dove Bar or Perdue Wonderchicken. I want opportunistic branding to penetrate every orifice of my life.
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Lets have a real time measurement. (Score:2)
If we can identify a zero point, we should just calculate all technical time in seconds past that date. There is already a Julian Day. I would call it the Julian Second. It is now 212,268,345,960. That is not much good for daily activities but perfect;y fine for any electronic system Trivial to write for phone, computer or whatever.
No one cares about your shitty dissertation (Score:2)
This wreaks of silly dissertation for a PhD student who didn't have anything actually useful to write about. Either way, just keep it, you've provided nothing useful other than change 'because you think we should all change'
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Our calendar is complicated because it's based on actual astronomy and real things like how long it takes us to go around the sun and stuff like that.
It's the culmination of thousands of years of real time keeping. Noon means more than 12pm ... it means when the sun crosses the meridian.
The Gregorian Calendar has its awkward bits. But they're based in a large number of years of observ
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Maybe we could call it 'Pre New Fangled' and 'After New Fangled'? Apparently that Jesus feller was born way back in 1970PNF.
Oh yeah, that's a good point. I know when Bach was born, and I know when the hundred years war ended, so I can kind of relate those two events in history. I sure don't want to memorize all those dates again in another calendar system.
For that matter, it was a pain to learn the month names the first time. Is it really necessary to do it over again?
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The Jesus date is somewhat vague. If he even existed at all. Accepting for the sake of argument that the biblical account of his birth is true (If not, the only reason to use him is tradition), we can be sure that he wasn't born at the start of 1CE - because Herod the Great, of baby-slaughtering fame, died in 4BCE.
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You're stupid, why should I care about you?
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that's nice, dear. go back to bed.
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I like 10 months. December can be the tenth month again.
The even numbered months have 36 days, the old months have 37.
In a leap year December has 37.
36 or 37 days? Are you crazy? I've already got too much month at the end of my money.
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the old months have 37
Because if there's one thing we need more of in calendar math, it's prime numbers.
Re:Thirteen months, who's on crack? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, back in the pagan days, there WERE 13 months
Embolismic months are not constant, but are inserted because there is a difference of about 11 days between 12 synodic months (~354 days) and one tropical year (~365 days). An embolismic month ends up being added approximately 7 years out of 19, by different algorithms according to different cultures. And even if you were intended to include Jews (and their occasional "Adar II") among your categorization of "pagans," even Christians keep track of embolismic lunations in reckoning the date of that faith's holiest day (in the Gregorian Calendar, May 30 is the first day of the seventh lunation out of thirteen in AD 2014). The only major religion that absolutely, positively insists on a year of 12 months for all purposes is Islam.
The year started in spring, and December was the 10th out of 13 months.
It was the tenth of ten months; the early Romans likely reckoned winter as extracalary. January and February (and Mercedonius/Intercalaris) were added later, probably when what passed for Roman astronomy became relatively more sophisticated. And it wasn't only "pagans" that insisted that March was the first month. The last major hold-out, the United Kingdom of Great Britain, didn't change until AD 1752 (AUC 2505). And not all "pagans" were or are Roman.
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It was the tenth of ten months; the early Romans likely reckoned winter as extracalary.
Yes, the very early Romans. Roman legend has the first king after Romulus added in January and February. While it may not have been that early, it likely predated the Republic. The 10-month calendar was probably obsolete long before 500 BCE.
January and February (and Mercedonius/Intercalaris) were added later, probably when what passed for Roman astronomy became relatively more sophisticated.
Yep -- though, contrary to popular belief, it probably wasn't Julius Caesar who moved the beginning of the year to January. The official year (which was named by the two consuls) was moved to January at least a century before Caesar's calendar reform. And January wa
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There still are diffent start points. People talk about the financial year, and the school year, as these follow cycles offset from the regular year.
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There still are diffent start points. People talk about the financial year, and the school year, as these follow cycles offset from the regular year.
This is a good point, and it highlights something I should have made clear in my earlier post.
There's a difference between when we celebrate the "new year" (i.e., have a party, and consider a new year to begin) vs. when we increment the "year counter" based on some arbitrary starting point.
Today, these are basically always taken to be the same thing -- we increment the year counter on January 1st, and there is no alternative (unless you don't use the Gregorian calendar). When you have your company's "f
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Then was the republic of Rome. Then, several centuries later during the empire of Rome, Emperor Julius added July. Followed a couple of decades later by Emperor Augustus with August. Giving us the current 12 month calendar, with the twelfth month being called "tenth".
Nope. July used to be called Quintilis (the 5th month) and August used to be called Sextilis (the 6th month). The numbering was always from March as the 1st month, even though that numbering became obsolete before the Republic. Julius and Augustus didn't ADD any months -- but the months were renamed in their honor. There was never an "8 month + winter" Roman calendar.
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This was during the time of the kingdom of Rome.
We have essentially zero contemporary sources of information about pre-republican Rome and its calendar. The best we have are comments essentially made in passing by people writing in the late republic and early empire (e.g. Virgil), centuries after the fact, and these observations often contradict each other. Anybody speaking of chronology much before the middle of the republican period literally doesn't know what they're talking about.
Even with the republican calendar itself, probably the best source of
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I use 2014-0531 on everything. Backups are always name.2014-0531-1530JST.bak
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Why not either add or remove a dash and be ISO compliant?
Re:One more reason to get off this rock (Score:5, Interesting)
Seasons and duration of day are logical and meaningful things to base your units of time on. Nuclear decay and EM wavelengths are a rather illogical basis, as these things don't have a practical use or observation in the common life of humans in general. Days and seasons, on the other hand, have an apparent and obvious cycle, which can be observed without need of special equipment. Furthermore, they have an immediate and profound affect on our environment. This is the difference between light and dark, between heat and cold, between growth and recess. These cycles dictate when we can grow food, and how long we have to complete tasks. It therefore makes a great deal of sense that we would want to keep track of these things. The only failing, is that the larger units aren't always comprised of a whole number of the smaller units, as they are based on difference cycles, which are not actually related to eachother.
Now, on the other hand, if we lived on a starship or perhaps a space station unassociated with any particular planet, your timekeeping method could reasonably be arbitrary. You might choose to base it on the crew's mode average circadian rhythm, perhaps. In those circumstances, you would have eliminated the conditions that have inspired our current timekeeping system.
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True, but at least any terran computational date configuration is an unambiguous instant in time.
While that may be true, the converse isn't: An unambiguous instant in time can have an number terran date configurations. now= yesterday with a datemod of 86400, for example.
TC is cute and all, but it's just another way of writing UTC. I'll stick to ISO 8601, thanks.
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Besides the fact that the terran computational calendar's time of day is often in sync with UTC and that TC can account for UTC's IERS issued leap seconds, it has little else to do with UTC and a lot to do with the 1977 TAI redefinition [wikipedia.org] (TAI = International Atomic Clock). UTC works well for dates after 1977, but exact dates before that are iffy especially before
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Besides the fact that the terran computational calendar's time of day is often in sync with UTC and that TC can account for UTC's IERS issued leap seconds, it has little else to do with UTC and a lot to do with the 1977 TAI redefinition [wikipedia.org] (TAI = International Atomic Clock).
Yes and no. TC timekeeping is kept in sync with the Earth's rotation, as evidenced by its use of leap days, thus it is kept in sync with UTC (which is also synced to Earth's rotation). The difference is that leap seconds are held until the 13th Luna, rather than dispersed throughout the year.
... but we all know that's it's adoption on any grand scale any time soon is unrealistic. But... I'm not convinced that grandscale adoption is really it's true purpose.
The more I look at it, the more I like it. However, I do see a few issues:
- The terms month and mini-month should be abandoned in favour of the Luna. "Month" has too much cultural baggage. Lunas should not be name
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This concept is not entirely new, in fact it is very old. Is this not what we have Rabbis for?
This software probably has it all arbitrarily wrong. Maybe not, was this written by a Rabbi? Many of them are off too. This has been a point of some discussion over the years, but the calendar remains, perhaps not the seconds in all cases, but it is not unheard of.
Now there is a secular calendar having a crack at it, good luck with that, let me know how it all turns out. Starting with the solstice is going to be a
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...someone would come up with a calendar standard that measures fractions of a second from approximately the big bang, and on into the heat death of the universe. It's not like bits are expensive, or an add with carry is only an instruction found with some CPUs.
Be nice to have something we don't have to replace over and over again, and which could be used in all manner of scientific and historical endeavors.