Topic 1 Post

astronomy

A rational calendar

Daylight Savings

Daylight Savings Time is so artificial, it’s never even lined up with the fall equinox around Sep. 21. You used to set the clock back in Oct, now Nov 🤦🏽‍♂️

Also shifts solar peak and peak heat an hour off noon and 2 pm (thermal lag). Weird distortions.

Oddly, start of DST (second Sunday in March) is roughly aligned with spring equinox 🤔

Pope Greg’s Drunk Astronomy

Just scrap it, time and clocks should align with our local star. The year should end on winter solstice, none of this drunk-pope crap :D

Using an errant Catholic calendar is especially hilarious because they threw an inquisition against Galileo. Point at random on a map, you’d land on a civ a thousand years before Jesus that knew the shortest day of the year :D

India, Babylon, Greece, Egypt, Persia, hell, maybe even the Mayans could supply a better calendar.

Why February has 28 days

A Roman king…

decided to give February the short stick… when the Romans honored the dead… stuck with an unlucky [even] number of days…

The earliest Roman calendar had only 10 months… agricultural society… wasn’t much need to keep up with… months during the winter… [Discover]

Jan-Feb were timeless.

Designing a rational solar calendar

~365 days only divides evenly by 5 months × 73 days, or vice versa. Lunar ~30-day month is more convenient.

12 × 30 = 360, leaving 5 days. We assign these to alternate months, since the actual lunar cycle is 29.5 days.

So months 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 are 31 days. Others are 30 days. Feb isn’t weirdly short.

Solar year is actually 365.25 days. So we still have leap years. Month 12 has 31 days every 4 years.

Year starts at winter solstice, mid-year is summer solstice. Equinoxes are ends of months 3 and 9. Now it all lines up (25 / 50 / 75%).

Repeat this exercise for moon and Mars :)

Naming it

Using my rational solar calendar, but giving its parts goofy names: “Now in the year of our Lord 7E7, on the eleventy-first of Kevin…”