Re: Why we should reform the Calendar

[Michael Ossipoff]

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 

What is the Real Time?

[Richard Langley]

An episode of the BBC World Service program "CrowdScience". A couple of 
inaccuracies/exaggerations but worth a listen.

"It sounds like a simple question – what is the time? But look closer and you 
realise time is a slippery concept that scientists still do not fully 
understand. Even though we now have atomic clocks that can keep time to one 
second in 15 billion years, this astonishing level of accuracy may not be 
enough. The complexity of computer-controlled systems, such as high-frequency 
financial trading or self-driving cars which rely on the pinpoint accuracy of 
GPS, could in future require clocks that are even more accurate to ensure 
everything runs ‘on time’.

"But what does that even mean? As Anand Jagatia discovers, time is a very 
strange thing. He visits the origins of modern time-keeping at the Royal 
Observatory in Greenwich and meets scientists at the National Physical 
Laboratory who have been counting and labelling every second since the 1950s. 
He meets Demetrios Matsakis, the man who defined time and visits the real-life 
‘Time Lords’, at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in 
Paris to find out how they co-ordinate the world’s time and why the leap second 
is ‘dangerous’."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04q778b

-- Richard Langley

-
| Richard B. LangleyE-mail: l...@unb.ca |
| Geodetic Research Laboratory  Web: http://gge.unb.ca  |
| Dept. of Geodesy and Geomatics EngineeringPhone:+1 506 453-5142   |
| University of New Brunswick   Fax:  +1 506 453-4943   |
| Fredericton, N.B., Canada  E3B 5A3|
|Fredericton?  Where's that?  See: http://www.fredericton.ca/   |
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[no subject]

[illustratingshadows--- via sundial]

Diese Nachricht wurde eingewickelt um DMARC-kompatibel zu sein. Die
eigentliche Nachricht steht dadurch in einem Anhang.

This message was wrapped to be DMARC compliant. The actual message
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Jack
thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.
Simon 

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android 
 
  On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 23:12, Jack Aubert wrote:   
HI Simon,

  

I like to use the “time of solar transit” version of the EOT from your 
spreadsheet because I can never remember with any confidence if I am correcting 
the watch or the dial.

  

Jack Aubert

  

  

From: sundial [mailto:sundial-boun...@uni-koeln.de] On Behalf Of Simon Wheaton 
Smith
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2017 8:08 PM
To: Kenneth R clark 
Cc: sundial@uni-koeln.de
Subject: Re: Looking for minutes and seconds correction for whole year for 
Equation of Time plaque

  

Last email from me today...

  

here is the 4 year EOT from my main book

  

Simon

  

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 5:21 PM, Kenneth R clark  wrote:


I had an error message from AOL Sorry for no subject line and my files were not 
sent.

Let me retry with this account.

  

Hi everyone,

  

 I am working on my Equation of Time plaque for my aluminum cross sundial.  
All the instructions and graphics and EQT will be on an 8 ½” diameter ½” 
aluminum plate.  I do not want to use the standard graph found on many sundials 
but instead a chart for the whole year, mins and secs, to add or subtract total 
correction to get watch time.  I do not have much room for detailed 
instructions.

  

 I looked at difference sources for the chart and would like to verify the 
most accurate times to use the four year leap year cycle for a church at 
40.1526N, 76.6038W.   I have looked at the Solar Noon calculator, Sonne and 
Shadows-(cannot input decimal degrees?)  Are there other sources or spreadsheet 
programs?

  

 I like to convey that sundials are accurate.  I envision that a person 
will wait till the shadow is on a line and the person will know what time it is 
suppose to be even though this type of sundial may not be design for precision.

  

 I made a quick drawing.  There will be some type of sun image at the top 
and a logo at the bottom for the location.  The chart in the center is from 
another project that I did just to see how it would look and if the printing is 
large enough to read.  I would have to change the inputs to standard time for 
the whole year.  I have also attached a picture of the sundial.

  

 I just want to know if I am using the right times and would appreciate any 
comments or suggestions.

  

Thanks very much

  

Ken Clark                                                                       
                                                                                
                                                                Elizabethtown, 
PA


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-- 

Simon Wheaton-Smith

www.illustratingshadows.com

Phoenix, AZ

W 112.1, N 33.5
  
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RE: Why we should reform the Calendar

[Dave Bell]

Hear, hear!!

 

From: sundial [mailto:sundial-boun...@uni-koeln.de] On Behalf Of Dan-George Uza
Sent: Saturday, January 28, 2017 12:38 PM
To: sundial@uni-koeln.de
Subject: Why we should reform the Calendar

 

A bit off topic, but I enjoyed this quite a lot!

 

https://youtu.be/EcMTHr3TqA0

 

Dan

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Why we should reform the Calendar

[Dan-George Uza]

A bit off topic, but I enjoyed this quite a lot!

https://youtu.be/EcMTHr3TqA0

Dan
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RE: The thread being discussed Equation of TimeRE: New Question The link has a real nice representation EOT

[Ray]

HI Group,
The link in the message from clar...@aol.com below has this link on
the page also

An Intrinsic Representation of the Equation of Time - 2014-2017 - a .pdf file.
This example is for Greenwich - contact me (ke...@karney.com) for a
version for your own locality
and the Nodebox 1.9.7 python code - Flame EoT.py

I would like to include the graph of EOT in a sundial I did email the
author above and was wondering if perhaps the mathematics behind it
had been included in a Delta Cad Marco I could make use of.  I hope
the author Kevin Karney does reply with the graph.
Ray
Rochester NY USA
N043.18550, W077.59415


From: clar...@aol.com
To: rkell...@comcast.net, sundial@uni-koeln.de
Cc:
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2017 12:13:05 -0500
Subject: Re: Looking for minutes and seconds correction for whole
year, for Equation of Time plaque
 Thanks Bob and everyone else for their input.  The EQT really
does change way into the future.

  I am leaning towards Kevin Karney website:
http://www.precisedirections.co.uk/Sundials/index.html using a
“Victorian EOT” table adding or subtracting minutes.  I could set it
into the future 2050 and after that I am sure I will not be around or
if the sundial is still standing.

Thanks,

Ken Clark


 Elizabethtown, PA
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