Hard News: Event Season
194 Responses
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BenWilson, in reply to
You may not wish to bother, but our ancestors did. :-)
I'm discussing rationalizing the calendar. Explaining it was already done. "Because History", which is incidentally also an explanation for sexism. There's really only 2 things we couldn't feasibly discard - the solar year and the solar day. The fudgy not-even approximation to moon cycles becomes meaningless extremely fast, so that anyone wanting to know where the moon will be in advance simply has to look it up in a table or do a lengthy calculation anyway. But we've got a system that gives a very accurate approximation to when the seasons will be in the solar year, and that is of importance to nearly everyone, second only to the day/night importance. It means we can plan things years in advance, with a very good chance knowing what the weather will be like, without needing to be astronomers, and a great many fixed festivals will have predictable weather.
Not that I think we should change the calendar. What the divisions within the year are is completely arbitrary, so the historical division has an advantage simply because it involves no change. The length of a week is an extremely strange artifact with huge importance to daily life of humans. Somehow the way we work and rest got dictated by the moon? How often is the moon really relevant in your life? Is there anything else you plan according to the moon for any non-superstitious reason?
I say this because there are plenty of other examples of such artifacts in our measurements, but we have often rationalized them and gained quite a lot of advantage by doing it. It's worth considering, anyway, why we need to have the entire way that we work and rest dictated by moss growing on trees or by tides, or hiding from werewolves, or whatever it was all for once upon a time.
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I think we should have hours and minutes that change duration as a function of season and time of day, such that sunset is always 1800 and sunrise 0600.
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BenWilson, in reply to
LOL, Nah, we should make them metric. 10 hours per day, 10 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute.
ETA: Also, rename them to second, centond, millond. If we had 10 days per week, and 10 weeks per month, we'd be reaching the limits of what we could do with it.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
over arm spin…
the solar year and the solar day
wharrabout them galactic days, as well?
turn, turn, turn...found via Stuff
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
hours and minutes that change duration as a function of season and time of day
Flexitime?
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bmk, in reply to
LOL, Nah, we should make them metric. 10 hours per day, 10 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute.
ETA: Also, rename them to second, centond, millond. If we had 10 days per week, and 10 weeks per month, we'd be reaching the limits of what we could do with it.
Yes, I've wanted this so long. It's so annoying the moment you have to multiply/divide something involving time. I used to regularly have to do this and when for example you have to work out how long 20 * 7m34s is - it's a real pain having to divide 34 by 60 first so that you can perform the multiplication.
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Lilith __, in reply to
I’m discussing rationalizing the calendar. Explaining it was already done. “Because History”, which is incidentally also an explanation for sexism.
Yeah the calendar's just like sexism. Obvs.
If you subtract electric light from our lives, moon phases become a very obvious marker for time passing. I don't think the 12-month year and 7-day week are hurting anyone, are they?
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BenWilson, in reply to
I don’t think the 12-month year and 7-day week are hurting anyone, are they?
The 12 month year much less than the 7 day week. The month is not much of a milestone at all, mostly just marking a pay cycle in it's annoying irregular way. But 12 is a convenient number, being divisible by the first 4 natural numbers, and 6. The 7 day week, though, who knows? If you can't even consider what life might be like with a different system, then sure, don't have a discussion about it. Let tradition dictate not only the way you work, but also the way you think. Personally, I like to consider how things could be different sometimes. It entertains me, and sometimes other people.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
Here's the whole caboose:-
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Farmer Green, in reply to
I don’t think the 12-month year and 7-day week are hurting anyone, are they?
No . The 7 day week thing is irrelevant and mostly ignored by farmers, as is the concept of weekend. Same with months ; only seasons count for anything, as the Celtic festivals indicate. The next one is the start of summer , Beltane , in early November. It will be duly noted with a glass or two ; more likely Lindauer Brut than Dom Perignon though.
And the BIG bonfire. -
Lilith __, in reply to
If you can’t even consider what life might be like with a different system, then sure, don’t have a discussion about it. Let tradition dictate not only the way you work, but also the way you think. Personally, I like to consider how things could be different sometimes.
If you come up with a new way, then perhaps we can discuss it.
Not sure why you'd think I was a traditionalist, in anything. But I don't see why this particular thing needs changing.
And I don't like being patronised, thanks. If you want to convince me of something, make a decent argument for it.
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BenWilson, in reply to
No . The 7 day week thing is irrelevant and mostly ignored by farmers, as is the concept of weekend
Sure, but farmers are not everyone, not even close.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
That’s true at this time, in this country. Very few grow their own food , or even know how to do so , these days.
We’ve come a long way in 100 years in this country.
But that is one of the great pleasures of being a farmer; you can ignore those artificial and arbitrary things, and just go with the natural rhythms. -
BenWilson, in reply to
If you come up with a new way, then perhaps we can discuss it.
I came up with several suggestions already. Let's keep this discussion in good faith, please.
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Lilith __, in reply to
I came up with several suggestions already.
Where? What are they? Sincerely puzzled.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
these days.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
farmers are not everyone, not even close.
That’s right , and yet most everyone in Godzone depends on them for food . It’s not a comfortable relationship really is it?
Once upon a time , urban folk depended on them for housing timber and clothing fibre as well. Fossil fuels stepped up. -
Farmer Green, in reply to
Yep; this 365 1/4 days to get around the sun is the problem. 360 days and 4 seasons of 90 days each (say) would be so much easier . . . 36 ten day weeks in the year. It’s only the stupid clocks that have to change. And chuck out daylight saving while we’re at it.
Now we’re talking. -
BenWilson, in reply to
Ten day weeks. Or, for that matter, any other number than seven. When I challenge the number seven, that’s suggesting it could be pretty much any other number, although numbers that are prime are better. 12’s a good number, has 5 factors.
That’s right , and yet most everyone in Godzone depends on them for food . It’s not a comfortable relationship really is it?
Seems OK to me. Not a job I want to do, but I’m glad someone’s doing it, and this country is quite good for certain kinds of farming.
ETA Numbers that aren't prime, sorry.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Yep; this 365 1/4 days to get around the sun is the problem.
Surely we've screwed around enough with our planet without adjusting its orbit to make our calendars more rational as well?!
And chuck out daylight saving while we’re at it.
No argument from me there. One of the added bonuses of living in China is not having to deal with that nonsense. And getting up in time to get my wee one to kindy by 7:30 so I can be in class at 8am is so much easier when dawn comes around 4:30am.
As for calendars and weeks and months and days and stuff, the French revolutionaries tried rationalising all that. Got them real far.
There are many calendars out there, from the purely lunar like the Islamic one - this year Muslims in the southern hemisphere had it sweet with Ramadan being in mid-winter. I imagine not eating or drinking from dawn to dusk is a hell of a lot easier when there aren't quite so many hours between the two - to the more or less solar but with obviously lunar influences (like months - at least the Chinese are honest and use the same character (月/yuè) for both, though I should admit that it's easy to specify whether it's moon or month you mean (月亮/yuèliang/moon, 月份/yuèfèn/month). I'm not expert, not by a long shot, but it seems to me that the Chinese calendar traditionally lacked weeks, weekends, sabbaths, and all that. There are festivals, of course, some religious, some agricultural, some some kind of obscure mixture of things lost in time, but that have left some interesting stories. Today is Mid-Autumn or Moon Festival, the day in the year that the moon is supposed to at its roundest and may, perhaps, be as close to earth as it gets in its orbit. Those curious about the story may wish to google Chang'e. I guess there's a harvest element to the festival, but it's hard to know in urban China and my in-laws never bothered to say much about it. The Chinese calendar also features 24 Solar Terms which mark seasonal changes, including the start of each season, but also smaller changes within the seasons.
Ben, somehow I think an awful lot of sailors, fisher people, surfers, divers, and other coastal workers/dwellers/players would disagree quite strongly with your insistence of the irrelevance of the moon and tides. And didn't somebody already point out that 7 is a quarter of 28, and therefore a convenient breaking-up of the cycle of the moon.
Farmer Green, I'm intrigued by your earlier statement that farmers and foresters still work by, or at least take into account, the phases of the moon, but I haven't had time to look into it more.
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Lilith __, in reply to
7 is a quarter of 28, and therefore a convenient breaking-up of the cycle of the moon
The lunar cycle is actually 29.5 days, so it doesn’t break evenly. The Romans had months alternating 29 and 30 days, but that doesn’t quite fit evenly into the solar year either. In the time of the Roman Republic weeks were 8 days long, but this proved even more awkward, and they eventually went back to 7 days, as the Jews and Babylonians had before them.
I rather like that the solar year doesn’t break down into an even number of solar days, etc. Nature’s not simple. :-)
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I'm not sure if it's opening a can of worms to mention this, but women's menstrual cycles are on average 28 days. Time isn't just about the fertility of plants and animals, but also our own.
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...and throw in the side effects of the moon slowly moving away (3.7cm a year apparently)
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Farmer Green, in reply to
I was going to mention it and thought to also talk of other animals having similar cycles , so that in fact it was about fertility more than anything else. When you consider that cows have a 21 day cycle , you wonder if the moon has always taken 29.5 days for that particular one of its cycles.
(The ascending/descending cycle is 27.3 days long) -
Farmer Green, in reply to
farmers and foresters still work by, or at least take into account, the phases of the moon,
It is certainly a fairly small minority ; the rest just get their hay wet, or wonder why their transplants don't take readily, or why the rain didn't soak in and the tractor slid off the race.
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