Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: Time needs some sanity!

Posted by Parks, Raymond on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Time-needs-some-sanity-tp7584207p7584282.html

Now that I'm back at my desk, I refer you to the French Republican Calendar - here's an article on wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar

TL;DR - 100 seconds = 1 minute, 100 minutes = 1 hour, 10 hours = 1 day, 10 days = a week (French décade), 3 weeks in a month, and twelve months in a year.  That adds up to 360 so the five or six days to approximate the solar year were added at the end of the year.  Every fourth year was when six days were added.  The years started with the autumnal equinox (roughly 23 September).  The months were given new names base on nature.

The wikipedia article has a conversion table that tells me as I write this it is 9:81:55 of Primidi, decade 6, of Brumaire in Paris.

Ray Parks

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On Nov 3, 2013, at 1:22 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote:

That system is essentially what was used in France during their Revolution.

 

From: Steve Smith [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Sunday, November 03, 2013 10:28 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [FRIAM] Time needs some sanity!
 

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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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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