Posted by
Steve Smith on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Time-needs-some-sanity-tp7584207p7584208.html
Gil -
Personally: I vote for a time equivalent of the metric
system. Considering moving from days of the week labeled as
monday-thursday and just as numbers, same for months of the year.
There are situations where we use daily cycles and annual cycles as
the only measure (100 days into the Presidency, or
Tax Freedom
Day) but as the neo-retro luddite that I am, I would like my
calender *more*, not less registered on solar and lunar cycles.
But the beat frequency between diurnal, synodic, sidereal, tropical
cycles aren't convenient multiples. Weeks (1/4 moons), months
(moons), years, are sort of a closest fit to something universally
observable, not requiring coordination, just observation.
I *am* surprised that time is the last bastion of ancient standards
and calculations and the sexagesimal system. 10 offers 2 and 5 as
prime factors, 60 offers 2, 3, 5 ... not a lot more, but maybe
enough to make ad-hoc fractions much easier. If we wanted to add 7
or even 11 into it, we'd be up in the 210 and 2310 base range...
perhaps a bit too much for any but the savants among us?
Given that days and years have some reasonable correlation with 1/4
fractions (daybreak, noon, sundown, midnight, winter, spring,
summer, autumn) I can live with a 12 month year and a 24 hour day
than say... 10 monthlets of 10 weeklets of 3.65 days and 10 HOURs
roughly 2.4 of our current hours long.. .or 100 hourlets of 16
minutes long...
Just wait until we inhabit other planets/stars... our notion of
"standard time" will go to hell (even more completely).
Meanwhile, I vote to not bother changing our clocks... stay on
"standard time". And while we are at it, let's not be too hasty
about declaring Pi to be equal to 3 just because it is easier to
use.
I also vote for a Zombie Apocalypse.
I think I could pass on the flesh eating
former-family-members-you-have-to-coldly-chop-to-little-pieces-cuz-they-are-undead
part, but I *am* still drawn (vaguely) by the presumed simplicity of
a post-apocalyptic world.
It's an illusion, I know, but there is still that imagination that
a primitive, dog-eat-dog (or zombie-eat-human) world would make
every moment a richer experience with less equivocation... but I
think tradeoff is a bad one in the bottom line.
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