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Terran Computational Calendar Introduces Minimonths, Year Bases, and Datemods
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."
Every time /. mentions the Terran calendar I get my hopes up.
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.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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 is reaffirmed
(11) Every old idea will be proposed again with a different name and a different presentation, regardless of whether it works.
Lousy Smarch weather...
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Sounds like the Ethiopian calendar.
12 months of 30 days plus a 13th month of 5 or 6 days (which are all holidays!).
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
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 :)
... I'ld rather go back to Thermidor.
Does anyone really care?
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Now with more temporal delays than slashdot and less comments!
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Plus you don't have to pay bills as often.
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 (includes leap seconds), 44-05-20 22:17:06 TC0 (excludes all leap seconds)
I prefer the Unix-based method from Vernor Vinge's A Deepness In the Sky. Everything is seconds based on the Unix epoch, with SI prefixes for longer periods -- ksecs (00:16:40), msecs (about 11.6 days), gsec (about 31.7 years), etc. With processing power as ubiquitous as it is, converting back and forth when planetary/celestial timing really matters is trivial. Most of our non-analog timing devices already work this way already, and those that don't (LED alarm clocks) are being phased out by devices that do work that way (smartphones). Granted this isn't any more likely to be used than the TCC, but at least it's cleaner.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
Why anyone should use it?
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 observations of the actual physical thing.
And, besides, no matter how elegant this new calendar purports to be ... nobody is going to realistically give a damn about it. Ten days before the UNIX epoch as a calendar start epoch? Wow, a calendar which starts out as a hack to work with legacy software. How apropos.
And how, pray tell, does one refer to previous dates? Do we have the super elegant solution of negative numbers? 'Cause nobody is gonna say "'I was born back in -20, lo those many years ago' just because some guy made up a new calendar.
Maybe we could call it 'Pre New Fangled' and 'After New Fangled'? Apparently that Jesus feller was born way back in 1970PNF.
You're not going to be able to use it for anything, because you'll be perpetually converting it back to something everybody already understands.
No matter how much of a confusing mess the Gregorian calendar is, a new calendar more or less solves no practical purpose. That's not to say it might not be cool. But nobody will ever actually use this for anything other than showing off to other geeks -- and even they might roll their eyes.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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...
BlameBillCosby.com
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 history
( ) good luck trying to move the Fourth of July
(x) the history of calendar reform is horrifically complicated and no amount of further calendar reform can make it simpler
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) sorry, but I don't think it would work
( ) this is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it
It's actually simpler is some respects. Writing two quarters into the current year can be achieved with a datemod: 44TC+2Q. This is equivalent to 44.6.14TC, and to its TC timestamp (an implied year zero and a datemod that use seconds): TC+1404172825
True, but at least any terran computational date configuration is an unambiguous instant in time. And what makes the terran computational calendar unique is its ability to either include or exclude leap seconds with 'year bases' and/or jump forward or backwards a certain number of quarters/months/days/hours/minutes/seconds with 'datemods'.
But it's all about the people.
How about we have a meeting? I'll send you a request in Outlook.
Let's go with Tolkein's Shire Calendar 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?
One problem with having all months evenly divisible by 7 day weeks is that your birthday will always land on the same day of the week. Born on Tuesday, your birthday will ALWAYS be on Tuesday. No hope of ever having a weekend birthday. Never ever. You think people will stand for that?!?
You're stupid, why should I care about you?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
>"7 day weeks is that your birthday will always land on the same day of the week. Born on Tuesday, your birthday will ALWAYS be on Tuesday"
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!
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
This was considered, but ultimately, the terran computational calendar chose to define itself in terms of the 1977 definition of a TAI second:
"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 to account for, even if you are way out somewhere in a different star system, because it is the amount of relativistic gravitational time dialation that exists at mean sea level. So converting terran computational dates into future interstellar ones should be relatively (lol) easy. But, by it's name alone you've already realized that the Terran Computational Calendar is an earth based calendar and not generally expected to be used for interstellar travel.
Talking about a space travel, Barycentric Coordinate Time (TCB) and Geocentric Coordinate Time (TCG) are currently used. The former "performs exactly the same movements as the Solar system but is outside the system's gravity well" and the later "performs exactly the same movements as the Earth but is outside the Earth's gravity well".
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.
Pagans, apparently. Actually, back in the pagan days, there WERE 13 months. The year started in spring, and December was the 10th out of 13 months.
the old months have 37
Because if there's one thing we need more of in calendar math, it's prime numbers.
I use it. There's a nice date converter on the website. And if you want to use it more often, there's currently a py based ubuntu app indicator if you roll like that.
"If by gay you mean the old English definition of 'fun, enjoyable and carefree,' then yes, it's extremely gay." - from the movie Role Models
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.
I use 2014-0531 on everything. Backups are always name.2014-0531-1530JST.bak
And every week is a TwoDays
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.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
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 month this year is Monday, then next year and every year, it will or has been Monday (as is the first day of every month, in point of fact). In fact, the 1st, 8th, 15th and 21st would always be Monday, and Friday would always be the 5th, 12th, 19th and 26th.
I've only ever used this system in unpublished works of fiction, though I find it interesting that this same idea has been explored by others.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
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.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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 same page, in which the representation of a particular moment in time is broadly accepted across a large swath of humanity...by another system in which across that very same swath of humanity, a moment in time can be represented in multiple ways.
This would seem to reduce, not increase, the value of a calendar for all practical intents and purposes.
This proposal is most likely to catch (well, let's be honest, it's never likely to catch) but it's most likely to catch in advanced industrial/post-industrial societies where the resources and level of education to make use of it are in place. So you're proposing to introduce extensive new ambiguity in timekeeping into the population in which there is currently the least ambiguity in timekeeping.
Again, seems ass-backward to me.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
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?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
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 was basically treated as the first month of the civil year at least a few centuries before that (hence the name January, after Janus, who looked both ways toward the old and new years).
So, we're talking about a VERY old tradition here that was basically obsolete through almost all of historic Rome.
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).
It's a bit strange to equate the medieval dating technique putting New Year's on March 25th with the prehistoric Roman New Year's date of March 1st. Basically, after the old Roman tradition had been obsolete for a thousand years or more, some Christians decided that March 25th should be New Year's, since it was the day of the Annunciation, i.e., the conception of Jesus (9 months before Christmas). This kept in line with the idea of "The Year of Our Lord" (anno Domini), where we would date the years back to the time Christ was conceived -- a tradition which was first used at some point in medieval times.
So yeah, while some European countries through the medieval period and renaissance put New Year's at March 25, it wasn't really for anything related to the rationale for the original Roman practice. In fact, England didn't adopt this practice widely UNTIL the 12th century CE or so, which it then kept until the 1700s.
Oh, and by the way, even in countries (like England) where March 25th marked the beginning of some "year," there were often still other civil years that began on January 1st, depending on the legal or religious application involved. At the same time, and in the same country, there could be different "years" numbered beginning on January 1st, March 25th, December 25th, Easter, various points in September or November, and other times. (For some details on the situation in medieval England in this regard, see here.)
Yeah, I love ISO 8601 too: it's easy to use because it's standardized. But extremely strict standards arent always the best in every situation.
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 (TAI = International Atomic Clock). UTC works well for dates after 1977, but exact dates before that are iffy especially before 1972 when leap seconds were treated differently. In addition to that, UTC makes it a little hard to work with leap seconds when it comes to UTC. I haven't created an complete implementation of UTC myself, and I wouldn't want to. The terran computational algorithm is relatively simple to implement, even with it's dynamics.
Standardizing the terran computational calendar would be much easier than standardizing UTC, 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.
Sigh and which constant do you suggest? - The second that all clocks defer to, is an SI unit. It IS based on a scientific constant, something to do with a particular cesium isotope. That "constant" is not an absolute constant in the same way the rotation of the Earth is not an absolute constant. We know that because we have recently built scientific clocks that keep time more accurately than a cesium atom. As I understand it, it appears we have now run out of natural time-ticks that are more constant than our "artificial" time-ticks.
Hours, minutes, days and years are not SI units, they are convenient units derived from measuring time in SI seconds. Personally I'd much rather have an alarm clock that may vary by a second either way in the morning but doesn't require a maths degree to setup at night.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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.
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.
So there is a chance to get a low id number. I thought this site was a prank but if it still exists I may consider moving. OC the asshats that make any discussion impossible (like the ones discussing their dirty visions and Linus's weight gain here) may be tempted too, which is unfortunate.
Barycentric Coordinate Time (TCB) and Geocentric Coordinate Time (TCG) are currentlly in use for space travel purposes. And each is tied to the 1977 definition of a TAI second
"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), however, the former TCB "performs exactly the same movements as the Solar system but is outside the system's gravity well" and the later TCG "performs exactly the same movements as the Earth but is outside the Earth's gravity well". And since the second is about the length of a single heartbeat, I say we should stick with that definition....as long as we're still human...for artifical intelligence: yeah I don't know...maybe they'll still use the caesium atom since it's orbital period is so stable. Oh, and TAI also doesn't account for leap seconds. And by applying a year base of 0, the terran computational calendar doesn't account for them either.
So there you go sir, the scientists beat you to it 37 years ago.
I found this comment to be interesting. It describes how a timestamp could be separated metrically into secs, ksecs (00:16:40), msecs (about 11.6 days), gsec (about 31.7 years). So a UNIX timestamp of 1401510007 could be written as 1:401:510:007 and you'd have a close idea of what time it is...if you're used to it, I guess.
Maybe, unless you have some sort of machine to detect your own change in relitivistic mass due to your speed and the amount of gravometric distortion caused by nearby stars and planets, in which case, you could probably do pretty well in syncing up your clocks, or at least you'll know what time it will be if you ever decide to return to earth.
Well, if a calendar from KOI-3284.01 works their own orbital periods into their calendar, I would definitely hope they'd name it something like 'The KOI Pond Calendar'.
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.
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 "fiscal year" that might begin in September, for example, you'd say "Fiscal Year 2013/2014" on a report. You wouldn't say "the 37th Fiscal Year since the founding of our company on September 1st" and intend it to span multiple civil calendar years.
But the fusion of the concept of the "new year" holiday with some particular "year counter" is relative modern. It didn't take place in most European countries until the 1500s (and, as previously discussed, not in England until the 1700s, though there were plenty of people who adopted it partially earlier, labeling periods from January through March with two different year dates).
Basically, January 1st has been the date the "new year" begins since very early Roman history. Even in countries that we claim adopted a different date for "new year," we don't really mean that for the most part -- they just had a different date for incrementing the "year counter" (particularly the "anno Domini" year counter). Most countries in Europe still referred to January 1st as the first day of the new year, and if they ever had a calendar or table of dates for the year, it would begin with January, not some other month.
The date when you incremented your "year counter" varied, generally depending on the date you were using as a reference. Prior to the last 500 years or so, chronicles often used regnal years for dating, for example, saying something like "June 6th in the 3rd year of our king Henry," where the "3rd year" would be incremented on the date of Henry's coronation or acceptance of the throne.
The "anno Domini" dating was similar -- it dated to the "year of our Lord," which began when Christ began... generally either on his birthdate Christmas (December 25th) or on the date of his conception (March 25th). Similarly, A.U.C. dating for ancient Rome (which was not often used in ancient times) often incremented the year beginning on April 21st, which was taken to be the legendary date of the founding of Rome.
In any case, none of these different dates for incrementing the "year counter" changed the fact that for the last 2500 years or so, January 1st has been "New Year's Day" in almost all circumstances.
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.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
13 months per year? 13 brings bad luck
Go on. Make time. All year bases are belong to us.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Why not either add or remove a dash and be ISO compliant?
It doesn't matter what you care about, you'll be dead soon.
says the anonymous coward....
True it's vague but it's easy to remember!
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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 (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 named.
- Choosing the winter solstice as the start of the year. I can understand wanting to sync with an orbital event, but astronomy (and astrology before that) settled on the vernal equinox as the zero point long ago.
- Choosing a start point of the year that is not aligned with Jan 01. Most civic calendars start with this date. The 1977 TAI/UTC redefinition was coordinated with this instant.
- Nothing new, really. We already have accumulated seconds time standards. We already have time standards adjusted for the Earth's rotation. We already have notations of a base instant plus offset. The only advantages I see to TC is fixed length Lunas, and the seconds field never exceeding 59.
By the way, the TC website is broken. Try entering 2014-01-01 0:0:0 into the converter. It flips to 2013.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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 information we have is Macrobius, writing centuries after Julius Caesar and the beginning of the empire.
To put things into perspective, even the Julian calendar is discontinuous before AD 12 or so, decades after the death of Julius Caesar.
(Romans didn't do math, they conquered other people to do the math for them.)
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'
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
...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.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Oops! My bad. The converter is fixed now . Had to use javascript's getUTCFullYear instead of getFullYear. It apparently makes a difference when months and days are at their origin like your 2014-01-01 0:0:0 example. Thanks for reporting the bug! Here's a jsfiddle to demonstrate the difference.
Lunas: Yeah, that might be a good idea. However, I think naming them 'Lunas' might give people the impression that this is a lunar calendar, and that would be bad because it definitely doesn't accurately tract the cycles of the moon in any way shape or form. The calendar currently only uses the term Luna in the datemod section in order to define L = 28 days because M = 60 seconds. Hmmm... Good thought though.
Choice of year schronization:
seasons: I've heard people say that the equinox is a more stable constant so it definitely has that going for it. The solstice was chosen because it is the darkest point (but only in the northern hemisphere). The new moon is at the darkest point and so is the day. I'm not completely convinced that the terran computational calendar should break with that standard, but maybe, the equinox would definitely be a more neutral location. But if we are staying on the side of neutrality then which equinox?
january 1: If you're going to create a whole new calendar, I feel like keeping with a January 1st start date would be very confusing because you might expect the date to be a UTC date when it's totally not at all the same. But there'd be lots of confusion in ANY case. I know that TAI/UTC/UNIX uses January 1st, but besides that, do you know of any good reason to use January 1st as a start date other than convention?
Thanks again.
Yes, it could applications in science and industry for sure.
It has the option of being a little complicated if you need it to be, but it definitely doesn't have to be. Would you say that 44-5-21 16:51:5 TC+7H is complicated? Or just that it would be hard for people in general to get used to because we're so used to our current system. And in that case, that's true about switching bewteen any calendar (which is still always a valid point).
So are you saying that you don't believe in relativity and, therefore, gravometric distortion? Those cleaver little scientists do there best to average the atomic clocks out ( by taking into account their altitudes and what not) resulting in an algorithm that spits out the number of SI caesium seconds measured at mean sea level.
The Jewish calendar changed in 1513 BCE.
"It was a Tuesday."
From what I've seen on the subject, you're well away from evidence-based archaeology and deep into the realm of Biblical literalism.
It also marked a break with common regional tradition and a start of calculations based on national and cultural identity
There were no "calculations," or even any need for calculations, before the Babylonian Captivity and Diaspora. The Israelites were among several cultures that relied instead on terrestrial, ecological indicators for the start of spring (e.g. "seeing if a groundhog sees its shadow"). The Hebrew name of the Paschal month literally refers to the barley crop that was to be inspected (as per Exodus). The beginnings of months were reckoned empirically, as per current Islamic practice.
It was only after a non-negligible number of Jews lived too far away from the Temple (when there was a Temple) that the need for a computational calendar to maintain social cohesion (i.e. celebrating the same holidays on the same day) among the Diaspora presented itself. The modern Hebrew calendar relies on some decidedly Chaldean math that they likely picked up during the Captivity.
I know of no reason for Christians to keep track of any intercalary months, as Veadar (literally "and Adar [again]") ends by the time of any point of calculation for Easter (or more accurately, the memorial of Christ's sacrificial death)
If for no other reason than because Christians must be able to reckon the date of Easter months in advance in order to set the beginning of Lent, etc. Predicting the first full moon of spring (which defines the Paschal moon) requires some means of keeping track of lunations to know which new moon thirteen days preceding marks the proper start and to be able to count backwards the requisite numbers of days and weeks for the related movable feasts.
Predicting and setting the date of Easter requires knowing how many lunations pass between one Paschal moon and the next and how long each of them are. The Alexandrian computus settled upon by the early Church has always, necessarily, acted as a perpetual lunar almanac for the entire year (e.g. the Paschal moon is always the fourth of the year, and always 29 days long). The Gregorian method simply maintained as much of the tradition as Clavius saw feasible.
So they just call the next Sunday after that date "Easter Sunday"
The Ecumenical Councils determined that the theology of Easter demanded that it fall on a Sunday moreso than insisting that it be on Nissan 16, maintaining the symbolism of Jesus remaining dead through Saturday ("resting on the Sabbath") and rendering Sunday an "eighth day." Sunday is "the Lord's Day" (literally, in most European languages) specifically because it is the day of the week of the Resurrection.
It's not so much about precise intervals as it is about validating triggers.
On the contrary: for both the Jewish and Christian calendars it is more about the intervals than the triggers.
The defining astronomical events for the respective calendars and holiday schedules are necessarily instants (e.g. lunar opposition in Libra), and any given instant will fall on a different calendar date depending on the observer's longitude. The result would be, for example, Christians in Asia and the Americas observing Easter one week apart from each other, fragmenting the community.
There are two ways around this: declare a favored meridian ("lunar conjunction in Aquarius, Beijing standard time"), or to measure the intervening time with a standardized integer count of whole days. After all, lunar opposition doesn't actually occur the same amount of time after lunar conjunction, let alone exactly 1 123 200 s later. (Jews and Christians count mean lunations)
Choice of year schronization: seasons: I've heard people say that the equinox is a more stable constant so it definitely has that going for it. The solstice was chosen because it is the darkest point (but only in the northern hemisphere). The new moon is at the darkest point and so is the day. I'm not completely convinced that the terran computational calendar should break with that standard, but maybe, the equinox would definitely be a more neutral location. But if we are staying on the side of neutrality then which equinox?
Well, I would argue for the spring equinox. It has long been used as the start of the year. The Romans used it as such (which is why September, October, November, and December are numbered so. They are the 7th to 10th month reckoning from a March start). It was used by the Celts, the Babylonians, Mayans, Germanic tribes, and a host of others. Stonehenge, Woodhenge, various "medicine wheels", even the Polynesians and Australian Aboriginal People had stone circles to kept track of the Equinoxes and the path the Sun made through the constellations.
By the way, the reason that the equinox is easier to determine than the solstice is this: On the equinox days, the sunrise is exactly due East and sunset is exactly due West. For the solstice, you have to measure the apparent altitude of the Sun, which varies by only a 60th of its apparent diameter from one day to the next near solstice time, and watch for the maximum (or minimum) altitude.
As far as starting at the darkest point, that's also not entirely true. I've already covered years, though I will mention that the Mayans used the winter solstice as their starting point. Lunar calendars generally start with either a full moon, or with the earliest visible crescent (consider the flags of the nations where lunar calendars predominate). This is because the new moon is nearly impossible to see, due to the Sun. As far as days, it has for the longest time been considered to be two step cycle, a twelve "hour" day and a twelve "hour" night (the hours were not of equal length). The day started at sunrise, and ended at sunset, though some cultures started the day at sunset rather than sunrise. In the early days, Roman timekeeping also started at sunrise. Time was kept using sundials and water clocks. Due to a quirk of Roman law, petitions before the courts needed to be made before midday (ante meredium), As the Roman empire spread across Europe and the near east, two things happened. Clocks became better, and noon became more important than sunrise. By the 4th century BC, Roman timekeeping had evolved to the current 12 hour day/12 hour night cycle with noon and midnight being 12:00.
january 1: If you're going to create a whole new calendar, I feel like keeping with a January 1st start date would be very confusing because you might expect the date to be a UTC date when it's totally not at all the same. But there'd be lots of confusion in ANY case. I know that TAI/UTC/UNIX uses January 1st, but besides that, do you know of any good reason to use January 1st as a start date other than convention?
Other than widespread convention, supported by numerous standards bodies and government decrees... well, no. However, I will throw this suggestion to you: If you're going to create a whole new calendar, and if keeping a Jan 1 start date is going to cause confusion anyways, then why not capitalize on that and use the spring equinox as your start point. I'm confident it will cause a lot less questions.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
However, besides keeping track of time through the phases of the Moon, one can also keep track of time by the path the Moon takes through the sky. Using the course of the Moon to keep track of time results in using what modern astronomers call a sideral month, which is 27 days 7 hours and 43 minutes long. Every 27 days the moon returns to the same position in the sky it was 27 days before. The scholar Vaster Guðmundsson believed that this was the form of month the Norse used, and used it in his theoretical reconstruction of the ancient Scandinavian calendar (Guðmundsson 1924, p.88). It is possible then that the Anglo-Saxons also did the same. However, as Bede draws a comparison to the Greek and Hebrew calendars, we may want to assume that the Anglo-Saxons used a synodic month (a month measured from a phase of the Moon to the next time that phase of the Moon occurs). There are other clues in Bede's account, that indicate this was so, and I will touch on those later. Bede then goes on to name the months of the old Anglo-Saxon calendar and further gives the corresponding Roman month.
This source seems to suggest that the January 1st was a 'political compromise':
According to Kevin Tobin Julius Caesar wanted to start the year on the vernal equinox or the winter solstice, but the Senate, which traditionally took office on January 1st, the start of the Roman civil calendar year, wanted to keep January 1st as the start of the year, and Caesar yielded in a political compromise.
So our current calendar isn't really synchronized with anything: just when some ancient Roman big whigs got together every year. So, that's definitely not fit for the terran computational calendar start date.
As for the equinox, what year do you think we should sync that to? I'll see how that might work with terran computational algorithm....:
vernal equinox 1970: 6825600 seconds (79 days) after the UNIX Epoch.
Hmmm... not as round as -10 days, but maybe... What about 1977?
vernal equinox 1977: 228528000 TAI seconds (2645 TAI days) after the UNIX Epoch & 88 days after the 1977 TAI redefinition... easy to remember I guess. But then, how would leap seconds be handled? If they aren't handled then the day slowly drifts from midnight losing a full hour after about 4-5000 years (which is a pretty long time, so maybe leap seconds shouldn't really be accounted for). And maybe the terran computational calendar should simply keep in sync with TAI and then define year bases in some other way to handle leap seconds?
Calendar Epochs, in my opinion, are the most difficult things to pick when designing a calendar. I've had tons of trouble with it over the years.
And, as far as the beginning of units goes, I still like the thought of them changing when everything is in it's most dormant state.
Can you or anyone think of any other neutral accurately measurable Epochs?
Sigh, and why is the second the only thing you can think of?
Are all future generations required to use a base time unit that is a throwback to our ancient past? We might as well keep using miles, ounces, and degrees Fahrenheit as well. They are all as equally scientifically valid as is the second.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
No, they did not beat me to it. They found a way to define the second, based on Earth conditions. I am asking for something that is actually not "the second", and based on some specific scientific point. I'm not a scientist, so don't know what could be used as that basis, but I'm sure there would be a lot of ideas if the question was put to the scientific community.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
That's what this 'calendar' essentially says. Let's just call it what it is, a simple algorithm for a few celestial body movements. It's rail-minded development applied to the solar system, with only a nod to the Gregorian lunar-based system. (28-day months, or approximately one lunar rotation) Also, and let's be honest here, the whole "timemods" idea is just a gadget. It's not practical outside of the inner-workings model. I mean c'mon... calendars are supposed to work for everyone.
All that doesn't mean it's a bad idea.
On the contrary, it's a great start. But if it's to become a great system, worthy of usurping the Gregorian calendar, then it has to embrace the natural marks of celestial time frames... not just one solstice per year.
This system then retains the single greatest advantage of the Gregorian calendar; division by the most factorials. (!12=1,2,3,4,6,12 -vs- !13=1,13) And now it has more frequent course corrections. Consider this programmatically with the above suggestions, and the system is still computationally simpler than our legacy Gregorian system. So there it is, an accessible system that everyone can use.
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
Calendar Epochs, in my opinion, are the most difficult things to pick when designing a calendar. I've had tons of trouble with it over the years.
And, as far as the beginning of units goes, I still like the thought of them changing when everything is in it's most dormant state.
Can you or anyone think of any other neutral accurately measurable Epochs?
You've got basically four choices for setting an epoch:
- an astronomic event, like a conjunction or stellar alignment
- a politically/culturally convenient moment
- an arbitrary fiat declaration
- or a compromise.
Considering that the apparent point of the Terran Computational Calendar is to measure the motion of the Earth, an astronomic event is probably your best bet.
However, I think the more important question is the one raised by Peter on the website: "What is missing from the site is motivation, what advantage is there to this calendar when compared to the well known ones?" People have proposed 13 months of 28 days before. What problem are you trying to solve?
To me, the primary advantage of the Terran Computational Calendar is the system of basetime+datemod. The basetime is always in the UTC/Zulu time zone, whereas in ISO8601, the base is in local time unless designated otherwise. Sadly, the fact that it is not in phase with the normal calendar makes it unusable to me from a practicality standpoint.
Good luck with it though. I've learned a ton doing the research for my comments.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
i totally agree with you , i have spent a lot of time , thinking about time . and learning about it , books , artikles , and unfortunetly talked to people about time ! i found that a relative large % of people believe that TIME is something manmade , i kid you not ! when i countered their believe by stating that iv never seen a seed grow into a tree intantly , or a baby grow ( become ) an adult without any passing of time , it was suggested that i am crazy . maybe so . but how many people take time into consideration ? ie , did some overtime shifting stock , from A to B , after a month was told to take to take it about twice as far ! a week later was ordered to see the manager , he wanted to know why it is taking me longer , i was unable to explain to that uni educated fool of a manager that it takes more time cos of the greater distance . he on the other hand used the brocken record technique , ever 5 or so minutes , he would say i do not care about that , why are you slower ! over the years i have learned that he was not an exaption , but the rule . time after time different managers , have proven to me that TIME does not enter their thoughts . nor does a geodisic , that word means the shortest possible distance beetwen two points . ie the shortest distance from A to B is a straight line , but if there is a wall between a and b one has to go around it if one wants to get to b . this takes longer as well . for the most part i now work on this very interesting subject alone . finally to the people who believe you were beaten , someone else thought of it before you . CARL SAGEN in his great book COSMOS wrote about ( his term ) spontanious discovery , he is of the opinion that provided a person on their own discover something , nothing should diminish that persons achivement !! food for thought :)
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the power of men in charge of words over men in charge of machines surpasses all wondering S WEIL