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Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

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Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#71

Post by Yorrrick »

saraid216 wrote: post #43
ishener wrote: post #5

The article fails to make the distinction between lunar and solar calender. It's just about dividing the solar year to equal months, but we also want to make the month align with the moon, which circles earth for 29.5 days on average. The big problem with the Gregorian calendar, in my opinion is that it so clearly missed the lunar month. it just feels intolerably close, but not quite there... by the way, no need to i…

It's actually unclear to me why we particularly care about how long it takes to orbit the Sun. Axial rotation, sure, the length of a day is important. But outside of that... why do we need particular units like weeks, months, and years at all?

Many people live in places where summer and winter are different, and they happen at the period of a year.

Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#72

Post by krick »

I like French Republican Calendar [1] much more for some reason. Months are 30 day each, no 7-day weeks, 10-day decades instead, so any day of the year is the same day of the "week" and the same day of the month. The rest 5 or 6 days are simply treated as "special days" (sansculottides), so it would be pretty easy to deal with them in any accounting software as well. The whole calendar has very nice spirit to it, each month is named in due to climatic effects of this one (at least it happens so in my location, and weather happens to change exactly according to this calendar, not Gregorian one), and each day of the year also has it's own name (something natural, like tree or fruit, no human names or something, which I find really cool). I really really like that symbolism. Such a calendar isn't just boring list of numbers, but something truly beautiful.

So I was using it for some time for reminders and such, but using calendar nobody else uses is pretty pointless, so I dropped it. Such a pity.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar

Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#73

Post by cgore »

toyg wrote: post #60
cgore wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our current calendar has absolutely nothing to do with Judaism, it is the calendar of Rome with some very minor tweaks. http://www.jewfaq.org/calendar.htm

"The origin of the seven-day week is the religious significance that was placed on the seventh day by ancient cultures, including the Babylonian and Jewish civilisations." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven-day_week "Some Jewish, Christian, and Islamic groups have been historically opposed to the calendar because their tradition of worshiping every seventh day would result in either the day of the week of worship cha…

The seven-day week, yes, the rest of it is Roman in origin: the solar nature, the months, their names, their order, etc.

One of the weird ones is our (English) weekday names: Sunday, Monday, etc. Those are apparently from German, but after their contact with the Romans, and after the Romans adopted the 7-day week. Which means it is after the Christianization of Rome, but before the Christianization of the Germanic tribes. They took the Roman week and put their gods' names in place instead.

Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#74

Post by chinpokomon »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #24
chinpokomon wrote: post #10

I've been a proponent of this reform for a while. Strangely on my way into work this morning I was trying to figure out why a week is 7 days and not some other division. I thought maybe it was religious, but I now think it has more to do with lunar cycles being close to 28 days and that predating any religious foundation. 12 months has the benefit of dividing the seasons into 3 month quarters. However having an uneve…

> Having a 13 month calendar simplifies so much from financial calculations to having consistent day of week/month boundaries that I can't see any real down sides. It seems like that would complicate the business practice of dividing your fiscal year into quarters. I guess each quarter would be 3 months + 1 week but then you don't have quarters starting/ending evenly with months.

Not really. You have 13 months, but you have 4 weeks each month. The first quarter is 3 months and 1 week. Then 6 and 2, and 9 and 3. The final quarter ends at the end of the year.

Today if you pay a monthly fee for something, the daily cost varies month-to-month. Why should things cost the most in February? While it may be true that fiscal quarters won't be aligned with month boundaries, they are more evenly spaced.

Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#75

Post by dajohnson89 »

chinpokomon wrote: post #10

I've been a proponent of this reform for a while. Strangely on my way into work this morning I was trying to figure out why a week is 7 days and not some other division. I thought maybe it was religious, but I now think it has more to do with lunar cycles being close to 28 days and that predating any religious foundation. 12 months has the benefit of dividing the seasons into 3 month quarters. However having an uneve…

Take out Daylight Savinga Time while you're at it, and I'm on board.

Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#76

Post by toyg »

cgore wrote: post #73
toyg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The origin of the seven-day week is the religious significance that was placed on the seventh day by ancient cultures, including the Babylonian and Jewish civilisations." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven-day_week "Some Jewish, Christian, and Islamic groups have been historically opposed to the calendar because their tradition of worshiping every seventh day would result in either the day of the week of worship cha…

The seven-day week, yes, the rest of it is Roman in origin: the solar nature, the months, their names, their order, etc. One of the weird ones is our (English) weekday names: Sunday, Monday, etc. Those are apparently from German, but after their contact with the Romans, and after the Romans adopted the 7-day week. Which means it is after the Christianization of Rome, but before the Christianization of the Germanic tr…

Even more peculiarly, anglo-saxon names actually do not reflect full Christianization of Rome itself: Saturday is still the day of Saturn rather than the Shabbath, and Sunday is still the day of "Triumphant Sun" rather than the "Dominicus" (belonging to the Lord). Which means they originated before the end of IV century AD, when Rome officially introduced these two Christian references in its weekday names (all others were maintained intact).

It has to be said also that Roman calendars were actually "pillaged" from Greek culture and then tweaked until right - a pragmatic approach they followed in so many different cultural and scientific areas when interacting with foreign civilisations. Unfortunately, they didn't go as far as trying to align the 7-day week (of Middle-Eastern origin) with their Greek-ish months, and their legacy ended up being managed by a Church that valued immutability over everything else. So here we are, 1600 years later, still celebrating the months of Julius (Caesar) and Augustus when the weather is the best around the Mediterranean Sea, the month of war-god Mars in the best period to start military campaigns in the same region, and with four months named by numerical positions they've long since changed... and still completely mismatched with 7-day weeks.

Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#77

Post by toyg »

notdonspaulding wrote: post #53
tunesmith wrote: post #30

With all this talk about universal basic incomes and automation taking away jobs, etc etc, there really might be something to the idea of switching to 73 5-day weeks. I wouldn't be in support of taking away Saturday and Sunday ;) but a 3-day workweek of W-F followed by a weekend of Saturday and Sunday could have real possibilities!

I'm not sure what the statement "religious backlash" in other comments on this page are in reference to, but modifying the week length would certainly be the most disruptive to the vast majority of the world's religious people. Less so if you kept "Saturday" and "Sunday" as weekend days-off, but probably still enough to encounter significant resistance.

It's basically what stopped a good reform from being introduced by the League of Nations:

"Thus, once or twice a year there would be eight days rather than seven between consecutive Saturdays. Thus the Jewish Sabbath, which must occur every seventh day, would be on a different weekday each year. The same applies to the Christian Sabbath. [British Chief Rabbi] Hertz realised that this would cause problems for Jews and Christians alike in observing their Sabbaths, and mobilised worldwide religious opposition to defeat the proposal."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hertz#Calendar_reform

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