Happy 2010th rotation around the sun since Christ!

[TheEgoist]

Well, wasn't he born in 4BC, supposedly? I say we invent a new calendar. The Jews have one of their own, and they're pretty successful!

What date shall we start at?

The birth of Aristotle?

The death of Socrates?

The publishing of Atlas Shrugged?

The signing of the Constitution?

My birthday?

The first episode of "I Love Lucy"?

[brian0918]

All of the above!

(I can see software developers collapsing in a cold sweat at the thought of coding that)

[Robert J. Kolker]

Y'shuah bar Yosef, the Carpenter's Kid was probably born around 7 B.C.E. if you assume the Star of Bethlehem was a conjunction of the major gas planets Seturn and Jupiter.

Bob Kolker

[Robert J. Kolker]

Well, wasn't he born in 4BC, supposedly? I say we invent a new calendar. The Jews have one of their own, and they're pretty successful!

What date shall we start at?

The birth of Aristotle?

The death of Socrates?

The publishing of Atlas Shrugged?

The signing of the Constitution?

My birthday?

The first episode of "I Love Lucy"?

The defeat of Xerxes at the Battle of Salamis. The West was saved on that day.

Bob Kolker

[D'kian]

The Big Bang! This would be the year 15,000,002,010, or 13,000,002,010 or something like that.

Seriously. Le'ts leave the year alone, otherwise we'd have to re-write all the dates in all the hsitory books, current documents, IDs, airline tickets, etc etc etc. What for?

What I do favor is changing to the World Calendar. Briefly, it's divided into four trimesters of 91 days each, for a total of 364 days. Between Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 there's a World Day, which would be a holiday substituting New Year's Day. Every four years (except in years ending in 00 unless they are divisible by 4) a leap day would be added between the second and third trimester, which should also be a holiday.

The advantage is the weekdays are fixed, so it is a perpetual calendar. It keeps the weeks we use, the months we use (though altered in duration) and the years we use. It's so logical it doesn't stand a chance.

[John Link]

This is the first I've heard of the World Calendar. I found these:

http://www.theworldcalendar.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Calendar

John Link

P.S. It looks quite interesting, but I don't like that my birthday would always be on a Monday!

Edited December 31, 2009 by John Link

[EC]

Yea 2010 isn't this supposed to be a space odyssey or? And still, what about the flying cars? We were supposed to have them like ten years ago? The future sucks; we need to make it better.

[Thales]

Yea 2010 isn't this supposed to be a space odyssey or? And still, what about the flying cars? We were supposed to have them like ten years ago? The future sucks; we need to make it better.

You can thank all of regulation and tax loving statists for keeping us down. So, next time you see one of their big happy smiles as they proclaim the sweetness of government controlled X, just punch them really hard in the mouth. That should get the point across.

Happy New Year!

[SapereAude]

You can thank all of regulation and tax loving statists for keeping us down. So, next time you see one of their big happy smiles as they proclaim the sweetness of government controlled X, just punch them really hard in the mouth. That should get the point across.

Happy New Year!

HeHe.. that's what I've been thinking all along but alas, if I get arrested it is easy for them to take my liquor license away.

That said, despite its being arbitrary I like New Years... bars do very very well on New Years.

So Happy Whatever ya'll!

I'm gonna go count the money I made off of the arbitrary frivolous indulgence of my statist liberal pdx comrades....

[A is A]

We should all go to a lunar calendar to get rid of the blue moons which are very confusing since they are not blue.

Edited January 1, 2010 by A is A

[Steve D'Ippolito]

The Big Bang! This would be the year 15,000,002,010, or 13,000,002,010 or something like that.

Seriously. Le'ts leave the year alone, otherwise we'd have to re-write all the dates in all the hsitory books, current documents, IDs, airline tickets, etc etc etc. What for?

True....

But I have to admit I find intriguing the idea of simply adding 10,000 to the year. We'd end up with a calendar closely corresponding to the geological Holocene Era, there would almost certainly never be any negative numbers associated with human civilization (though we were around as a species long before that, and agriculture *may* have started before 10000 BC).

It would certainly be easy enough for someone reading my passport to say, "oh, yeah, they really mean 11,964, not 1964" until it gets renewed. Or for anyone reading a history book published before the change to add the 1. It gets a little trickier for "BC" dates because you can't quite do the straightforward subtraction. The year 10,000 wouldn't be the year 0 on today's calendar, since there isn't one, but rather 1 BCE. So Julius Caesar would have been assassinated in 44BC = (10000-44+1) = 9957.

What I do favor is changing to the World Calendar. Briefly, it's divided into four trimesters of 91 days each, for a total of 364 days. Between Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 there's a World Day, which would be a holiday substituting New Year's Day. Every four years (except in years ending in 00 unless they are divisible by 4) a leap day would be added between the second and third trimester, which should also be a holiday.

The advantage is the weekdays are fixed, so it is a perpetual calendar. It keeps the weeks we use, the months we use (though altered in duration) and the years we use. It's so logical it doesn't stand a chance.

Well, you can thank the religious nutters for hitting us with the inflexible rule that every week must be exactly 7 days, with no filler days not part of the regular week. Can you imagine the orthodox folks going ape because one "Lord's Day" turns out to be eight days after the previous one because of an intervening "World Day"? You are supposed to rest and keep holy as the sabbath every seventh day and keep it holy, not once in a while make it eight days! (Never mind the fact that Sunday isn't actually the day in question! Don't bother them with facts!)

I wouldn't want to do what's mentioned though--"World Day" is just *begging* to get taken over by the multiculturalists. In fact I suspect the person who made the original proposal was one himself (or an outright blatant internationalist hoping for a socialist world government). Leave it named "New Years Day" (if at the beginning of the year) or "Year's End" if at the end, and that's better.

Also your leap year rule isn't quite correct... years divisible by 400 should be leap years (as 2000 was, though you are correct in implying that 1900 and 2100 wouldn't be).

[D'kian]

True....

But I have to admit I find intriguing the idea of simply adding 10,000 to the year. We'd end up with a calendar closely corresponding to the geological Holocene Era, there would almost certainly never be any negative numbers associated with human civilization (though we were around as a species long before that, and agriculture *may* have started before 10000 BC).

That's not so bad. If it were going to be the very last change, then fine. But probably it won't. So why not best agree right now to no changes at all in counting the years? However you count them it's arbitrary anyway.

Well, you can thank the religious nutters for hitting us with the inflexible rule that every week must be exactly 7 days, with no filler days not part of the regular week. Can you imagine the orthodox folks going ape because one "Lord's Day" turns out to be eight days after the previous one because of an intervening "World Day"? You are supposed to rest and keep holy as the sabbath every seventh day and keep it holy, not once in a while make it eight days! (Never mind the fact that Sunday isn't actually the day in question! Don't bother them with facts!)

Why, Orthodox and conservative Jews do rest on Saturday! They must be doing something wrong

But you're right. Religious nuts have complained about the extra days interfering with their weekly holy days. As if that mattered, right? I mean, if God cannot grant an extra day per year, why can't He exactly? If He's anal retentive then he's not perfect, therefore he's not God

I wouldn't want to do what's mentioned though--"World Day" is just *begging* to get taken over by the multiculturalists. In fact I suspect the person who made the original proposal was one himself (or an outright blatant internationalist hoping for a socialist world government). Leave it named "New Years Day" (if at the beginning of the year) or "Year's End" if at the end, and that's better.

New year's Day would be fine, too. Even better, we could call it Reason Day, in honor of the now rational calendar.

Also your leap year rule isn't quite correct... years divisible by 400 should be leap years (as 2000 was, though you are correct in implying that 1900 and 2100 wouldn't be).

Right. I goofed. All 00 years are divisible by four anyway. So I'll offer the explanation:

The Earth year is just under 365.25 days long. The old Julian calendar reckoned the year as being 365.25 days long exactly, therefore a leap day every four years. But this makes the seasons move out of phase with the calendar. Therefore a new correction was needed, which came in the XVI century from the Vatican. And that's the calendar we use now, known as the Gregorian calendar in honor of the Pope at the time, Pope Gregory XIII.

the Gregorian reform was more complicated than that. It involved erasing 10 days off the calendar in order to bring the seasons back into phase with the year.

What I don't know is how and when the year changed from starting in March 1st to January 1st. A year starting in March makes more sense, although the most sense would be for the year to start at the vernal equinox, which is when the season cycle starts. But it's way too late to change that.

[softwareNerd]

What I don't know is how and when the year changed from starting in March 1st to January 1st. A year starting in March makes more sense, although the most sense would be for the year to start at the vernal equinox, which is when the season cycle starts. But it's way too late to change that.

The way I understand it, the year ended in December (the tenth month), but did not start in Jan/Feb. Those were an ex-calendar wintry gap period.

[D'kian]

The way I understand it, the year ended in December (the tenth month), but did not start in Jan/Feb. Those were an ex-calendar wintry gap period.

All months have retained the Latin origin of their names. Thus September, October, November and December, in Latin, indicate the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth months. I'm not clear on all the month's names. FWIW, July and August are named either after Julius Caesar, or Roman emperors in general, as many used the title Cesar Augustus. January is named after the god Janus. I don't know what March, April, May and June are named for.

Anyway, in a 12 month year, Sept. through December do indicate the 7th through 10th months, something that is no longer the case. Also we could do better than to name months after numbers, but all attempts to change the names of the months have been dismal failures.

Oh, BTW, the current calendar is a secular tool. Calendars always have been, even though all have religious origins. A calendar's most important use, and the reason they were needed in the first place, is to track the seasons (thus the importance of the Gregorian reform).

Of course any moron can tell when winter gives way to spring, but without a calendar it's hard to estimate how far away spring is if you're still in winter. The calendar allows you to plan ahead and schedule your work accordingly. This is very important for farming, where all activities are seasonal.

The reason calendars originated through religion is simple: the priests where the ones with the leisure to watch the skies. You determine the length of the year by keeping track of constellations, measuring the angles made by sunlight, etc. All calendars are determined astronomically, after all. But the use is secular anyway.

I mention this because some of my gentile acquaintances often refer to Jan 1st as "our New Year," as opposed to the Jewish New Year holiday. They seem to think Jews keep time differently for all purposes, not just for holidays. In any case I don't observe Jewish holidays beyond accepting a few dinner invitations from family once a year.

[Robert J. Kolker]

I mention this because some of my gentile acquaintances often refer to Jan 1st as "our New Year," as opposed to the Jewish New Year holiday. They seem to think Jews keep time differently for all purposes, not just for holidays. In any case I don't observe Jewish holidays beyond accepting a few dinner invitations from family once a year.

The Hebrew calendar is quasi-lunar. A strictly lunar calendar with 28+ days per month (corresponding to the reoccurance of the full moon) would become out of phase with the seasons at the rate of 11+ days a year. Since Judaism has several harvest related festivals, it is necessary to keep Passover in the Spring and Suchot (the late harvest festival) in the Fall. The way the Jewish sages managed to reconcile a lunar calendar with a solar years was to intercalate an extra month every 2.5 years (on the average). This is done by adding a second month of Adar every two and three years (averaging out to 2.5. 2.5 x 11 gives 28 which is just about the length of a month). So the Hebrew calender is a lunar calendar with a solar adaptation. The Muslim calendar is strictly lunar so the Muslim Festivals "roll" through the solar year since a strictly lunar year is 354 days long. Note the loss of 11 days per solar year.

Bob Kolker

[Robert J. Kolker]

We should all go to a lunar calendar to get rid of the blue moons which are very confusing since they are not blue.

If we did, then eventually we would have the Fall harvest in the First Month. The seasons would "roll" through the lunar year at the rate of 11 days per year.

Bob Kolker

[Maximus]

I say we use the founding of the city of Rome, or ab urbe condita, making it MMDCCLXIII a.u.c.

[Steve D'Ippolito]

The year formerly started on March 25th, not March 1st, close to the vernal equinox. At least, in Great Britain and her colonies, which at the time included what became the US. (realizes D'kian lives in Mexico, which being tied to Spain at the time no doubt had different customs). Had George Washington had a birth certificate, it would have read February 11, 1731. Due to moving the start of the year and dropping 11 days out of the calendar in 1752 (England, being Protestant and not inclined to heed Pope Gregory, delayed the switch, and the difference was 11 days by the 1700s), his birthday "magically" moved to February 22, 1732.

August was formerly Sextilis (from Latin for "six"); it got renamed after Augustus Caesar. July was renamed after Julius Caesar; I don't know offhand what it's previous name was (other than it wasn't some form of "five").

[A is A]

March = Mars, god of war

June = Juno, protector of the state

[Maximus]

July was renamed after Julius Caesar; I don't know offhand what it's previous name was (other than it wasn't some form of "five").

Quin[c]tilis.

[Steve D'Ippolito]

I stand corrected, then--it was a form of five.

[PatriotResistance]

Well, wasn't he born in 4BC, supposedly? I say we invent a new calendar. The Jews have one of their own, and they're pretty successful!

What date shall we start at?

The birth of Aristotle?

The death of Socrates?

The publishing of Atlas Shrugged?

The signing of the Constitution?

My birthday?

The first episode of "I Love Lucy"?

What has always intrigued me is what is the position of the earth-sun at midnight Dec. 31 in relation to the rest of the galaxy? IOW, an arrow starting at the sun and pointing through the earth would point where? The center of the Milky Way? 180 degrees from that? Some other direction? Any astronomers out there know? Does it change over the years/centuries?

Bob

[Steve D'Ippolito]

It changes, all right--even if I "correct" your question to ask about the "First point of Aries". The explanation is a bit lengthy though.

Recall that the earth "floats" in space, travelling around the sun in an elliptical orbit. There are distant stars in the sky which define a "fixed" reference frame (for all practical purposes). As we travel around the sun, we see it apparently move against these background stars in a great circle, this line is known as the zodiac. The zodiac is essentially unchanging.

The earth spins on its axis, as well... so what we see on earth is stars spinning around two poles in the sky (one below the horizon), one pole near the star Polaris, the other below the horizon (for us northern hemisphere types). We therefore define a north celestial pole (near polaris), a south celestial pole (near nothing in particular), which are directly overhead at the north and south poles, and stay there. We can draw another line lying between these two poles in the sky, calling it the celestial equator. A person standing on the equator would see everything on the celestial equator pass directly overhead in the course of one earth rotation relative to the stars (which is one quite the same as "one day" but that's a different story!). This axis direction is *almost* unchanging, over the course of a human lifetime it won't change much at all. More on this later. For the moment consider it not changing.

Okay... so these two motions interact in a rather funky way. If the earth's axis were perpendicular to its orbital plane, the zodiac and the celestial equator would be the same... but they aren't. Instead, the pole is canted about 23 degrees off the perpendicular. Since it's direction (almost) doesn't change, at one point in the earth's orbit, the north pole is tilted toward the sun, at the other end, it's tilted away. Those two times of the year are the beginning of (northern hemisphere) summer and winter. At this point the sun appears to be 23 degrees north (or south) of the celestial equator, as seen from earth. When the pole is tilted neither towards nor away from the sun, then, as seen from the sun, it's tilted to one side or the other, and these are the equinoxes. As seen from earth, the sun is now on the celestial equator and moving north of it (start of spring) or south (start of fall) (again, northern hemisphere seasons). The upshot of all this though, is that the celestial equator and the zodiac are tilted with respect to each other. Look at a globe; they generally have an equator and a tilted line running all the way around crossing the equator at the international date line and just south of the bulge of Africa; that's exactly how this relationship looks (that's what those two lines are illustrating).

If you project a line from the earth, through the sun, at the instant north hemisphere spring starts, you end up marking where the zodiac and the celestial equator intersect; this spot is called "the first point of Aries" because it *used to* be in the constellation of Aries. (This is a far more useful line than the December 31 line that Bob wanted to know about--which would tend to jerk about anyway because our calendar year doesn't match up with one revolution of the earth around the sun--that's why we have leap days and even that doesn't quite average out!) Now, it's time to go back to the earth's axis. It does move--it precesses. It maintains a 23 degree tilt, but draws a circle in the northern sky (and the south pole draws an opposed circle in the southern sky). This takes about 25,000 years. It's why Polaris wasn't the pole star for the Egyptians and ancient Greeks (a dimmer star named Thuban might have served), and why Vega (a very bright star) will be in 12000 years.

If the poles move so will the celestial equator. Though it will maintain its tilt relative to the zodiac, the places where it intersects (which mark where the sun will be on the first day of spring or fall) end up moving. Presently the "spring" intersection is in Taurus, not Aries, and it's moving into Aquarius (which is the origin of all that retardedness about the "Age of Aquarius").

Since our calendar is designed to synch up with the sun going through that intersection--to keep in synch with the seasons--and the intersection itself is moving very, very slowly (a bit more than a degree a century), a calendar year (averaged out for leap days) is not quite the same as the time it takes for the earth to go around the sun, as seen from the stars. That number is about 365.256 days, whereas First Point of Aries to First Point Of Aries (beginning of spring to beginning of spring) is closer to 365.2425 days). So the first point of Aries is moving in the direction that makes our seasonal year shorter than the year with respect to the stars, by about 8/100ths of a day. So you have two different things you can think of as a "year", one a full circle about the sun (with reference to the stars) known as the siderial year, which is the "true" amount of time it takes for the earth to go around the sun, and the tropical year, the amount of time it take to run through all four seasons. Our calendar is set up to try to stay in synch with the tropical year.

Hope that was clear (diagrams would help, I know).

[D'kian]

The year formerly started on March 25th, not March 1st, close to the vernal equinox. At least, in Great Britain and her colonies, which at the time included what became the US.

Did it start inw hat now is March 25th, or what was then March 25th? Accounting would be hard if he year ended mid-month.

(realizes D'kian lives in Mexico, which being tied to Spain at the time no doubt had different customs).

Actually I've no idea what Spain did, what Colonial Mexico did, and less than no idea what the various extant native cultures at the time did. It was my understanding the Romans began the year on March 1st.

Anyway, if you want more confusion ponder a Martian calendar.

[Steve D'Ippolito]

What was then March 25.... which would now be April 7 (the difference between Julian and Gregorian calendars has been 13 days since 1900).