Tuesday, 16 April 2024
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
We had fun with this topic on the second January random thread, so let’s give this a try. Post your new calendars, improvements to the existing calendar, new systems of timekeeping, or disquisitions on other ways people have kept track of time in the past.
Date: February 3, 2011
Categories: Life, Nonrandom Craziness, The Universe
I’ll start by stealing Piggy’s idea of basing a calendar on six-day weeks, and simplifying things a little:
– 12 months, each 30 days (5 weeks) long.
– An extra “intercalary” holiday (not given the name of a weekday) every three months, except for the last month of the year.
– Two intercalary holidays at the end of the 12th month.
That makes 365 days. In leap years, I’d add another mid-year intercalary day at the end of the sixth month.
Tidy, don’t you think?
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Yes, quite.
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As someone who has an office job, the idea of a four-day work week and a two-day weekend really appeals to me.
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I had a feeling you’d like my alternative calendar, Robert. I did consider forming my calendar like your simplified version, but I decided against it for several reasons, all of which have to do with societal and cultural norms and values in my almost wholly unimagined nomadic people.
In any case, I don’t like the Gregorian calendar. It’s messy.
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Back in the realm of seven-day weeks, a long time ago I fell in love with the idea of a calendar with 13 28-day months. Every month, the numbers would fall on the same days (and there would always be a Friday the 13th!). That makes 364 days, so you’d just have to add one intercalary day at the end, or two in leap years.
Now, however, I favor the Achelis calendar: 12 months divided into four quarters, in each of which the months have 31, 30, and 30 days. Having even quarters is useful for businesses and government agencies. We’re not nomads anymore.
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I came up with that same 13-month calendar at one point. But the Achelis calendar makes more sense. Just one question though: How does that calendar deal with leap years?
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It adds a second intercalary day after June 30.
I have to admit that I love Ms. Achelis’s calendar. It’s so elegant!
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Hmmm. And Weird Al said that Weasel Stomping Day was on June 31st. Now I know what he meant! 
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I’m not exactly certain whether this belongs here or not, but it’s pretty close, so… *shrugs*
For a school project I’m sort-of making up a new time-keeping system, set in dozenal. I use X for dek and E for el, because it looks prettier. I actually use a backwards 3 for el, like the Greek letter, but I can’t get it on here. Decimal numbers will be in (). If you have any suggestions about the names (I’m horrible about naming things), please tell me.
Each day is split into 20 hours (24 hours). Each hour is split into 10 (12 parts (equal to five minutes) called zen. (do/zen?) Each of those is split into 6 parts called loren.
10:00 am is X:00:00 am.
12:23 pm is 10:04:04 pm (Or thereabouts.)
If it’s okay, I’ll explain it a bit more fully later.
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I’d say this is exactly the sort of thing that belongs here. Thanks!
Is the “backwards three” symbol you described a Greek epsilon? ϵ
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Yes. I couldn’t remember if it was eta (is that even Greek? I have no idea.) or epsilon, so I decided not to say anything.
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That’s epsilon.
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Theta looks like a backwards capital E.
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No it doesn’t. It looks like this: θ. A capital sigma looks like this: Σ. The only symbol I can think of that looks like a backwards E is the number 3.
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That is indeed a sigma. I’m tired.
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In symbolic logic, backwards upper-case E means “there exists,” and upside-down upper-case A means “all.” I find them useful for note-taking.
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Wow, this was an unexpected but extremely convenient coincidence! I had just decided to start making and collecting alternate calendars, so yay! Now you can give me ideas, and I can make all of your ideas into quasi-realities to hang on my wall! It’s completely a win-win situation! If you don’t mind, that is: if anyone does, please just say so, and I won’t make yours.
So far, I haven’t thought any systems up myself, but I’ve been finding so many ideas without even trying that I don’t think I’ll have to (though I may want to at some point). Muse just published an ultra-convenient article that gave me a few to use (I won’t mention them here for the people who haven’t read it yet; go to the Muse discussion thread to see what they are if you haven’t already.), and I’d also want to use all the systems invented here and on the Random Thread.
Robert, the system you thought of is almost exactly like one that I found elsewhere on the Internet, except that one was in dozenal, so I think I’ll combine them, if you don’t mind. I’ll give the months your food names as well (January, Breadruary, Marcharine, Apricotil, etc.)…
Anyway, I’m glad this is a thread.
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Hmm…
I want to create a universal calendar, possibly used for interstellar space travel. But I need a unbiased and non planet specific unit…
Space enthusiast MBers? Got any ideas? (It should be specific enough, but large enough so I can have a meaningful measure of the time light takes to cross that distance.
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Maybe you could measure it by the length of time it takes light to travel a given distance. For instance, if you reverse-engineered light years, you’d call one universal year the amount of time it takes light to travel 9.4605284 × 10^15 meters. You’d probably want to use a nice, round number for it, though. Maybe 1 × 10^16 meters? It depends on exactly what applications you have for it.
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That’s what I was thinking, though meters are currently defined as the distance light travels in 1/299,792,458th of a meter, so it would be circular.
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Of a second, you mean?
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You’d probably be best off with something derived from chemistry, like a vibrational frequency or atomic wavelength.
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If you’re using your calendar for space travel anywhere near the speed of light, relativistic time distortions would play havoc with it. I don’t think there’s any way around them.
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But couldn’t you have your ship’s computer compensate for it and set the clocks accordingly?
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More calendar reform, which I think should go hand in hand with holiday reform.
First off, I think people should celebrate their “K Days” (thousands of days on Earth) in addition to their birthdays, just as we do on MuseBlog. Any excuse for a party, I say.
Next, Columbus Day — keep or scrap? Many people think it should be jettisoned, because of awful things Columbus did either directly or indirectly. On the other hand, his impact on history was huge and may still be worth commemorating. Perhaps we just need better specifications for what sort of holiday Columbus Day should be.
If the reformed calendar includes Columbus Day, one way I’d mark it would be by reading from Columbus’s writings, such as his ships’ logs. There are some good passages in them. (For example, one entry notes that his sailors had caught a mermaid, though not a pretty one. Today we’d call it a manatee.)
Or why not broaden the day to “Mariners’ Day” to commemorate sea voyages and voyagers in general? There would be plenty of material for a holiday like that.
Just some thoughts.
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Piggy, I started to make your calendar, but I’m not sure what the numbers look like beyond 11, except that it’s in base 12. What are they from then on?
In the meantime, I’ll start on a Lincolnshire shepherding calendar. Once I finish them all, I’ll send them in. It’s really fun; I’ll have quite a collection once I’m done. The only problem will be finding wall space for them. It’s pretty full of pictures of nudibranchs and tardigrades and hippogriffs and, well, that sort of general thing. What’s sad is that this computer didn’t recognize any of them.
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SFTDP, but I meant send pictures of them in, not the calendars themselves. I also changed my mind about when; whenever I finish a calendar, II send pictures of it, rather than waiting to finish them all, which will take ages. Also, what sort of place is it where people use this calendar? You might have mentioned it already, since my mental image is a desert, but I could be completely wrong. I’d like to know so that the pictures I add will be close to accurate.
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Numbers above 11 work in the same basic idea as the base 10 system. So, if the symbols were 0123456789AB, then eleven would be “B” and twelve would be “10”. Twenty-three is “1B” and twenty-four is “20”. As for the people: they’re nomadic tribes in a grassland/savvanah/prairie area, following some sort of large mammal-like creatures to hunt and gathering berries and roots as well. One important aspect of their culture is a thin strip of red fiber that they wear around their wrist, neck, or head, depending on what they’re doing. (I’ve done some testing, and I’ve figured that the loop would be big enough to go around their head twice or wrist six times. Is also sometimes used for Cat’s Cradle, because really, who could resist the temptation.)
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Alright, thank you! I didn’t see a symbol for zero on the muserglyphics thread, though; what does it look like?
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Question for those who have read Nation by Terry Pratchett: Can any of you remember Daphne’s exact quote about what sheep were and how they said maa instead of baa? I’d like to put it on my Lincolnshire Shepherding Calendar.
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Oh, and I know I’m posting way too many times in a row, but since I plan to use this calendar, how do they check things off?
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They as in the grassland nomads, that is. SFTQuaP.
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SFTQuiP, but what are their holidays? Just in case I’ve forgotten anything, is there something else I’d need to know to make a calendar?
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The only real “holidays” are the four festivals. The first day of the week (Soldes) is sorta akin to our Sunday or Sabbath (day of rest, religion, etc.). Other than that… I guess just don’t let it look too modern? I don’t know. I think you have it pretty comprehensively covered. Um… the name of the world is Alterra, if that has any relevance. That’s the only proper name I’ve come up with so far, excepting one city that’s quite a ways north of the grasslands.
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Bib- I forgot to put zero, didn’t I? It’s the same as our alphabet–an empty circle. I assume 12 is also addressed to me, so: I don’t know if I understand the question?
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On a calendar, people often put checks by the days that have passed; what would they use for that?
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I think that would be up to whoever was using the calendar. I personally put a big X on the day; some people draw a single diagonal line across; others, like you said, put a checkmark. I don’t think standardization for that sort of thing would be necessary.
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