I don't think it's really off-topic, because, with sundials, we're interested in the EqT, which is given in terms of the calendar's dates.
Though Gorman is a comedian, he's obviously given the matter some serious consideration, and I perceive some serious interest in calendar-reform. But I have a few disagreements with his proposal: *1. Blank Days:* Gorman proposes a "fixed calendar", a calendar that will be the same for every year. I have no objection to that. After all, so far as we know (except for each year setting a new record for increasing global warming) what we can expect from each year, nature-wise, is really the same. So, why should two successive years have different calendars, with different dates having different days-of-the-week? So far so good. There are two ways proposed for achieving a fixed calendar: *1. Blank Days:* A fixed calendar must have a number of days that's a multiple of 7, That's what enables each calendar to start on the same day of the week, allowing every date to have a day-of-the-week that doesn't change from year to year. So Gorman would make one of the 365 days a "blank day", a day that isn't a day of the week. Then the days-of-thes-week would resume after that day. so the year would have only 364 days that are days of the week. That being a multiple of 7, each year will start on the same day of the week, as desired. Problem: I'm sorry, but it doesn't make any sense for the day after a Saturday to be anything other than a Sunday. ...or for there to be an intervening day between a Saturday & a Sunday. Speaking for myself, I completely reject "blank-days". And I'm not the only one. Elizabeth Achellis, over several decades, up to around 1955, proposed a fixed calendar with blank-days. The League of Nations, and later the U.N. were giving serious consideration to it, and it might have been accepted, except for the strong opposition to the blank-days, A compromise was offered to Achellis: A leap-week (described in the next section below), to achieve a fixed calendar. She wouldn't accept that compromise, and her proposal was indefinitely tabled around 1955, and never got anywhere since. You could say that the blank-days were the Achilles' heel of Achellis' calendar proposal. *Leap-Week:* So a 364 day common (non-leap) year achieves a fixed calendar, because 364 is divisible by 7. What about the 365th day? Well, we could deal with it the same way we deal with the fact that the 365 day year is shorter than the 365.24217 day Mean Tropical Year (MTY)...by occasionally lengthening a year, to periodically compensate for the length-mismatch. So we'd deal with the short common year just as we do now. So, what we do is have a 364-day common year, and (by using a leap-year rule that I'll talk about later), when that 364-day common year gets about half a week out-of-step with the seasons, we add a leapweek, to set that displacement back. Gorman didn't talk about the leapyear-system, and we can presume that he meant to use the existing Gregorian leapyear system, which would be fine, for a leapday calendar such as he proposes. But for a leapweek calendar, which is what I (and many others) propose, a new leapyear system is required. No problem. I'll get to that after I discuss my disagreements with Gorman's proposal. Summary: A fixed calendar should be achieved via a leapweek, instead of by blank-days. If Achellis had agreed to that, we might be using her calendar right now. *2. Thirteen Months:* Really, the only reason for a reform calendar to have months, is for continuity & familiarity with our current Roman-Gregorian Calendar. For example, Elizabeth Achellis's *World Calendar *had, in each quarter, months with the following lengths: 31,30,30. Having 12 months, with 30 or 30 or 31 days, means that the calendar is familiar, looks familiar, and it means that the dates in the new calendar have really the same seasonal meaning as the dates in the old calendar. Achellis' 31,30,30 quarters achieves that. But there are other proposals of a calendar with 30,30,31 quarters. The advantage?: 1. The 30,30,31 calendar's months' start-days never differ by more than a day, from those of our current Roman months, when both month-systems start on the same day. Achellis' 31,30,30 quarter system can differ by at least twice as much. 2. The 30,30,31 quarters divide the weekdays most equally between the months of the quarter. So, if you're going to have months at all (and that's for continuity & familiarity), then you want 12 months, of 30 & 31 days. Preferably the 30,30,31 quarters. With 13 months of 28 days, the dates wouldn't have anything like the seasonal meaning that they do now. Continuity, familiarity, and the justification for having months at all, would be lost. The 30,30,31 quarter system is an improvement over our current Roman months, because the months are much more uniform. That allows much meaningful & accurate monthly statistics. But suppose you want something more radical (as is Gorman's 28X13 system): In that case, just don't have months, because their continuity & familiarity purpose would be lost anyway. Use the WeekDate system. No months. Weeks are numbered. Here's today's date in the (currently internationally widely-used) ISO WeekDate calendar: 4 Saturday That means Saturday of the 4th week. Actually, because not all countries and languages call the da ys of the week by the same names, here is how the ISO (International Standards Organization) words today's date. 2017W046 The "W" indicates that the WeekDate system is being used. The "04" denotes the 4th week. The "6" denotes the 6th day of that week. (The ISO WeekDate Calendar uses a week (and therefore a year) that begins on a Monday, probably so that the weekend won't be split in half.) The ISO WeekDate Calendar is, as I said, widely used internationally, by Companies & Governments, for their planning of business & governmental dates & events. ...making it easy to plan them in advance once, and then leave them, because it's a fixed calendar. Of course the resulting dates then have to be eventually translated into Roman-Gregorian dates. ...but they wouldn't have to, if we adopted the ISO WeekDate calendar as our civil calendar, worldwide. ISO WeekDate has the great advantage of use-precedent. ...lots of it. I personally like the ISO WeekDate as the best calendar-reform proposal. But, recognizing that many people wouldn't want to give up the months, and would want to keep them for familiarity & continuity, the 30,30,31 month-system could be a good alternative proposal, if ISO WeekDate isn't accepted. But it has been argued that ISO WeekDate is so convenient, and already so widely-used, that it could easily edge-out the Roman-Gregorian Calendar, from the bottom up, by increasingly wide use, if companies & government start using it so much that the public start finding it convenient to use it too. So those are my two disagreements with Gorman's proposal, and my alternative suggestions. But I should comment on the leapyear rule. Actually, the ISO WeekDate Calendar deals with that in a really easy, natural, simple & obvious way. Each ISO WeekDate year starts on whatever Monday is closest to the Gregorian January 1st of that year. So, for example, this year, 2017, the Gregorian year started on a Sunday. So the nearest Monday to Gregorian January 1st was January 2nd. That Monday, Gregorian January 2nd, is the day on which ISO WeekDate 2017 started. As I said, today, in the ISO WeekDate Calendar, is: 4 Saturday (or 2017W046) That way of defining the start of the ISO WeekDate year (the Monday closes to Gregorian January 1st) is called the Nearest-Monday year-start system. Note that the Nearest-Monday year-start system doen't have to mention leapyears or leapweeks at all. It's *effectively* a leapweek calendar, because some of the years have 53 weeks instead of 52. But the simple Nearest-Monday year-start rule doesn't need to mention leapyears or leapweeks. Not only is it used with the ISO WeekDate Calendar, but of course it could also be used with a 30,30,31 quarters calendar too. Calendar reform advocates propose all manner of different leapyear systems. But there's nothing wrong with the Nearest-Monday year-start system, and conversations have suggested to me that Nearest-Monday would be the favorite way to make a fixed calendar. In fact, with Nearest-Monday, the maximum displacement of dates with respect to seasons, is barely more than the ideal minimum that could be achieved by the fanciest leapyear system. I also propose a fancier, deluxely-adjustable system, but I won't try your patience with that here, because Nearest-Monday is entirely good enough, and is the system with obviously by far the best acceptance-potential. Michael Ossipoff. On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 3:38 PM, Dan-George Uza <cerculdest...@gmail.com> wrote: > A bit off topic, but I enjoyed this quite a lot! > > https://youtu.be/EcMTHr3TqA0 > > Dan > > --------------------------------------------------- > https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial > > >
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