2019-W01-1 (South-Solstice WeekDate)
2018-W52-1 (ISO WeekDate)
2019 South1 Week 1 Monday (6-Seasons -3 wk Offset)
2019 South1 Week 1 Monday (6-Seasons 0 Offset)
2018 December 24th (Roman-Gregorian)
2018 December 25th (Hanke-Henry)
3 Nivȏse CCXXVII (French-Republican)
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Let me mention my favorite alternative-calendar proposals--my own alternative-calendar proposals. ...two of them:
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They’re both seasonal calendars, and they both start their year on the Monday closest to the South-Solstice. Today (Roman-Gregorian December 24th, 2018) is such a Monday, and is the first day of the calendar-year for both of the calendars that I propose.
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Here’s the more briefly-described minimal seasonal calendar:
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South-Solstice WeekDate Calendar:
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As I said, it starts its year on the Monday closest to the South-Solstice (…by the standard that I specify in another section below). From that year-start day, it numbers the weeks, and states the date by the week-number and the day-of-week number (…where the 1 to 7 numbering starts with Monday.)
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By the South-Solstice WeekDate calendar, today (Roman-Gregorian December 24th, 2018) is:
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2019-W01-1
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(The first day (Monday) of the first week of 2019)
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South-Solstice WeekDate, as I said, is the minimal seasonal calendar.
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Other than the year-start rule, South-Solstice WeekDate is identical to the widely-used ISO WeekDate.
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(ISO WeekDate, using a different version of Nearest-Monday, starts its year on the Monday that’s closest to Gregorian January 1st.)
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Now, as for my more elaborate astronomical-terrestrial seasonal calendar-proposal:
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I might as well start with the name for that proposed calendar. I call it 6-Seasons -3 wk Offset.
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Maybe not euphonious, but descriptive.
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First a few descriptive comments that tell what was intended to be achieved with this calendar (…after which, the complete and concise definition of the proposed calendar):
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I prefer a seasonal calendar. …a calendar with months that are seasonally-named. More specifically, it’s an astronomical-terrestrial seasonal calendar, by which I mean that it starts its calendar-year near a cardinal ecliptic-point (solstice or equinox…specifically the South-Solstice), and its month-naming is about our terrestrial seasons (named in terms of solar-declination).
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It’s a “month-start uniform” calendar, by which I mean that every month of every year starts with the same day of the week (Monday).
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That also means of course that every year starts on the same day of the week, which means that one printed calendar can be used for every year, and that regularly-annual events needn’t be re-scheduled for the new year due to different correspondence between dates and weekends. A calendar with this latter property is called a “fixed-calendar”.
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Nearly all alternative calendar proposals are fixed-calendars.
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6-Seasons -3 wk Offset designates the day-of-the-month by specifying the week-of-the-month and the day-of-the-week. …so that, as with the WeekDate calendars, the date itself tells you what day-of-the-week that date is. I’ve found that that date format is by far the most convenient one for a calendar with months.
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For example, today, 2018 December 24th, is, in this proposed calendar:
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2019 South1 Week 1 Monday.
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(“South” because, when it’s Winter north of the equator, the solar-declination is south declination)
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South1 is the first month of the year in this calendar, and this is this calendar’s 1st day of 2019. As I mentioned above, the calendar year is defined as starting with the Monday that starts on the midnight that’s closest to the South-Solstice.
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(…actually, though it’s pretty-much the same thing, it specifies an _arithmetical approximation_ of the South-Solstice, which I describe in another section below)
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As I’ll describe below, “South” is this calendar’s name for “Winter, north of the equator”. I’ve named the seasons for the solar-declination that they’re the result of. Winter north of the equator is the result of the southmost solar-declination, and so I call that season “South”.
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Of course, naming the seasons by solar-declination, instead of the conventional season-names, is chosen because, if the seasons were named for their names north of the equator, then the names would be meaningless south of the equator.
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This calendar recognizes 6 seasons instead of just 4. Many seasonal calendars try to shoehorn the seasonal-year into 4 seasons, and it doesn’t work very well.
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There’s a lot of agreement that 6 seasons are more realistic.
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March isn’t really very Spring-like, but it’s also not plain Winter either. It definitely heralds the arrival of Spring, even if Spring hasn’t arrived yet. So I call March “Pre-Spring”. Pre-Spring, in my calendar, closely coincides with our Roman-Gregorian March. Of course, symmetrically, the calendar also has a Pre-Autumn.
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(..but of course those are instead called Pre-Northward and Pre-Southward, in keeping with the naming of seasons for solar-declination….about which more below.)
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There’s a widespread consensus, and has been for some time, that the South season (Winter north of the equator, and Summer South of the equator) arrives with the beginning of December.
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…and, likewise, that the North season (Summer north of the equator, and Winter south of the equator) arrives with the beginning of June.
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My astronomical-terrestrial seasonal calendar starts its named seasons consistent with that consensus about December and June, and in keeping with what I said about 6 seasons, with Pre-Spring and Pre-Autumn.
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Year-Start Rule:
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This calendar uses a version, a variation, of the general class of year-start rules that I call “Nearest-Monday”.
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It’s designed to 1) Start every year on a Monday; and 2) keep the year-start as close as possible to some “intended-time”, which, for this calendar is the South-Solstice.
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…actually an arithmetical-approximation to the South-Solstice. …just as our Gregorian leap-year rule is intended to arithmetically approximately track the March Equinox, so as to accurately place Easter with respect to that equinox.
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Specifically:
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The year starts with the Monday that starts on the midnight that’s closest to the (below-specified) “intended-time”.
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Here’s what the intended-time is:
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The South-Solstice. But, just as our current Gregorian leap-year rule is intended as an arithmetical approximation to track the March Equinox, so as to place Easter as accurately as possible with respect to that equinox--so I choose, for the intended-time, an arithmetical approximation of the South-Solstice, for the purpose of starting this calendar as near as possible to that approximate South-Solstice. Here’s the arithmetical approximation:
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Because, roughly every 365.2422 mean-solar-days the Sun returns to the same ecliptic-longitude, and the seasonal-year returns to the same seasonal-time:
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…So, every 365.2422 days, the end of that 365.2422 day period is the intended time, for the purpose of starting a year with the Monday that starts on the midnight that’s closest to that intended-time.
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…where the first 365.2422 day period, in that sequence of end-to-end 365.2422 day periods, starts at the South-Solstice (Winter-Solstice north of the equator) of the Gregorian calendar year 2017.
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That’s this calendar’s year-start rule. It’s an arithmetical rule intended to approximate the South-Solstice for years after 2017, for the purpose of starting the year on the Monday closest to that solstice.
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Other than the year-start rule, South-Solstice WeekDate is identical to ISO WeekDate.
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(ISO WeekDate, using a different version of Nearest-Monday, starts its year on the Monday that’s closest to Gregorian January 1st.)
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With the same year-start rule, both calendars, South-Solstice WeekDate, and 6-Seasons -3 wk Offset, start their 2019 calendar-year today, on Roman-Gregorian December 24th.
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…which is the Monday that’s closest to the South-Solstice, as described above.
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The Month-System for the 6-Season -3 wk Offset Calendar:
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If they were named only for the latitudes north of the equator, the 6 seasons would be called:
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Winter, Pre-Spring, Spring, Summer, Pre-Autumn, Autumn.
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But, named for the solar-declination that causes the seasons, they’re called:
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South, Pre-Northward, Northward, North, Pre-Southward, Southward.
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Here are the month-lengths (in weeks) in each season. Each numeral after a season-name is the length (in weeks) of one of its months :
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South 544, Pre-Northward 5, Northward 44
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(Of course, symmetrically, North, Pre-Southward and Southward follow the same pattern.)
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Here are those seasons’ month lengths (in weeks) written in a single-row, without the season-names:
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544 5 44
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In order for the South season to start (approximately) when December starts, the South season is defined to start 3 weeks before the calendar-year begins. (As I said, the calendar year begins on the Monday that starts on the Midnight that’s closest to the (approximated) South-Solstice.)
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…hence this calendar’s name: 6-Seasons -3 wk Offset
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In each season, the months are named by consecutive numbering. In each month, the weeks are named by consecutives numbering.
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But, because the South season starts 3 weeks before the calendar-year starts, then, unavoidably, the South season is split between two calendar-years. …and the South1 month described above is likewise split.
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So the first 3 weeks of the South season (the part of the South season in the old year) are designated as a month called “Early South”. The remaining 2 weeks of the South season (the part of the South season in the new year) are designated as a month called “South1” (because it’s the first South season month that’s in the new year).
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Of course, as individual months, Early-South and South1 each has its own numbering of its weeks. Of course the next (5th and last) month of South is South2. …followed of course by Pre-Northward, a season with only one month, and designated as a month.
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Other than that, way of dealing with the split-season, the seasons and their months are named as described above.
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Yes, the splitting of a nominal-season between two calendar years causes a bit of naming un-neatness and structural-asymmetry. …an unavoidable price for starting the calendar-year near the South-Soltice and also complying with the consensuses about the South and North seasons starting with December and June, and about 6 seasons with March as Pre-Spring.
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As I said, these named seasons comply with the consensus about the South season beginning when December starts, and the North season beginning when June starts. …and the consensus about there being 6 seasons, with March being Pre-Spring.
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What? This calendar doesn’t have the month-system simplicity that other alternative-calendars have, and is too drastically different, to be adopted? Of course. As I said, I only propose it for some hypothetical future time (which will probably never arrive) when people demand complete departure from any unnecessary copying of how things were done in that past.
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That’s why I call it “Science-Fiction.
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In fact, of course _any_ calendar-reform at all is science-fiction. Practically no one is interested in an alternative calendar, and, when the subject is mentioned, practically everyone expresses strong opposition to changing the calendar.
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Anecdotal report: I spoke to someone who doesn’t want a new calendar, and she said that the only alternative calendar that could be acceptable to her at all would be Hanke-Henry. …the calendar whose each quarter has months of 30,30, and 31 days, and which starts its year on the Monday closest to Gregorian January 1st. Among the alternative fixed calendars with regularized months, Hanke-Henry is the minimal-change calendar proposal.
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But, though Hanke-Henry is currently being proposed, and has a website, and has had some favorable media-mention, of course practically no one has heard of it, and, as I said, practically no one is interested in changing the calendar when they hear of the subject.
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I should add here that, if it were desired to have the 30,30,31 quarters that Hanke-Henry uses, but to not make the year-start dependent on the Gregorian year (as Hanke-Henry does), then Nearest-Monday could still be used in a different version:
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Just use the arithmetical rule that I describe above for year-start for my 3 calendar-proposals.
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…but start the sequence of end-to-end 365.2422 day periods on the January 1st of any previous year whose date/season correspondence you want the new calendar’s seasonal year to stay close to.
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In conversations at forums, including this one, people who are favorable to changing the calendar have unanimously expressed preference for one of the ones that’s more radically-different than Hanke-Henry is.
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…including ISO WeekDate, Asimov’s World-Seasonal, Eastman’s International-Fixed Calendar, and the French Republican Calendar of 1792.
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But of course I wouldn’t expect even _them_ to like the less-simple month month system, and the bigger changes, of 6-Seasons -3 wk Offset.
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But, most likely, South-Solstice WeekDate would be acceptance-competitive with ISO WeekDate, Asimov’s World-Seasonal, French-Republican and Eastman’s International-Fixed.
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…though nearly everyone strongly opposes changing the calendar.
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So what’s the point of discussing a calendar that’s un-adoptable anytime soon? For one thing, that can be said of _all_ of the alternative calendar proposals. If you’re going to write fiction, it might as well be good fiction, fiction that you like.
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Anyway, it’s of interest what an astronomical-terrestrial seasonal calendar would be like if it actually recognized and modeled the seasonal consensuses that I described (South season starting with December, and North season starting with June, and there being 6 seasons including a Pre-Spring (approximately March) and a Pre-Autumn.
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Anyway, it’s alright that there’s no chance of changing the calendar, because there’s nothing wrong with our current international standard calendar, the Roman-Gregorian calendar.
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Roman-Gregorian is seasonally accurate—For any date, that date always closely coincides with nearly the same solar ecliptic-longitude. …and therefore the same seasonal time-of-year. What drift-rate there is, is slow enough to not be problematic (probably not even noticeable) in a person’s lifetime.
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Though Roman-Gregorian doesn’t have the conveniences that the alternative calendar proposals have, everyone is completely satisfied with Roman-Gregorian.
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It’s been claimed that the lengths of the Roman months require the rhyme “30 days hath September…” , but that isn’t true. Actually the Roman months alternate almost perfectly between long and short months. The only exception to that alternation is the adjacent July & August and December and January. …the extreme hot and extreme cold pairs of months.
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February is different from all of the other months, with its shortness and its leapday, but February is unique and notable anyway, as the first month that shows signs of approaching Spring. …and therefore can be said to deserve its calendrical uniqueness.
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This concludes my definition and discussion of my 2 alternative-calendar proposals, South-Solstice WeekDate and 6-Season -3 wk Offset; and my Nearest-Monday year-start rule proposal; and these comments about alternative-calendars and calendar-change in general.
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Michael Ossipoff