[ale] [OT] Date change proposal

Calvin Harrigan charriglists at bellsouth.net
Mon Aug 11 16:25:01 EDT 2008


Jim Kinney wrote:
> This may seem to come out of left field (as do many of my ideas...) but 
> I would like some feedback on a proposal to renumber the calendar year.
> 
> The current scheme is based on an event that is controversial and not 
> exactly well defined time-wise. Further is is oriented around a time 
> period that is longer than a solar year. Having the year numbering 
> system based on an event that is central to one religious culture 
> denigrates all others.
> 
> I would like to propose a new calendaring scheme based around an event 
> that represents a human milestone achievement. Granted is tied to the 
> accomplishments of a single country but it is clearly a global, human event.
> 
> In 1969 of our current counting practice, humans first set foot on a 
> non-terrestrial object, the Moon.
> 
> Maybe I'm just a science nut but that is a milestone of human 
> achievement that would make a better marker for calendaring than a 
> nebulous date range of 32 years not well known in the past and not 
> acceptable to some other cultures.
> 
> -- 
> -- 
> James P. Kinney III
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale

I had a few rambling thoughts along these lines a couple weeks ago.  I 
was thinking about metric time.  (Ducks!)

The second being the base count, sorta like the meter or gram.  Starting
at the beginning of the common era.  Anything before the common error 
would be a negative number.

The new second should be based perhaps on how long the earth takes to go 
around the sun, then days can be based on that time divided by 365.5. 
(Hopefully not too many rounding errors).

lets make some stuff up...

1 year = 31579200 (actual seconds in a year) not round enough, lets 
redefine to 32000000
1 Month = 3200000
(only 10 months in my year  :-)  Sorry two of the -auarys, -bers, gots 
to go...
4 weeks in a month -
1 week = 800000 seconds
Ad Nauseam...
or...

1 day = 86400 seconds, lets round to 100000 new seconds
1 day = 100000 seconds (100 kilo seconds)
1 week = 700000 seconds (700 Kilo-Seconds)
1 month = 28000000 seconds (2.8 megaseconds)
1 year = 336000000 seconds (33.6 megaseconds)

Needless to say trying to fit the lunar/solar cycles in some sort of
metric based system that correlate well together is not an easy task, 
but anything worth having isn't.

Calvin...




More information about the Ale mailing list