Socialist calendar?

[bezdomni]

After the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism, do you think it would be wise or even perhaps necessary to adopt a new calendar?

I personally have many problems with the Georgian calendar.

1) The months are needlessly confusing and difficult to associate with the proper numeral. (i.e.; September, the 9th month has its root in latin for "seven").

2) Christian-centric, revolving around Easter and being put into practice by the Catholic Church.

3) Leap years seem pointless and irrational.

4) Days of the year are not divisible by days in a week.

5) Days in a year should not be dynamic unless the Earth is orbiting the Sun at a slower rate.

6) The Georgian Calendar is less accurate when "translated" into other Calendars...especially over long distances of time.

There are probably other things that I hate about the Georgian Calendar. Does anybody else share these grievances?

Certainly we could have a better calendar under sociaism.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

Metric

[bezdomni]

Is there a metric calendar?

[Anarchovampire]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30, 2007 12:09 am
Is there a metric calendar?
Yes, it doesn't work.

The problem with metric time is nature doesn't conform to it.

Q: How long is a year?
Short Answer: 365 days
Right Answer: 365.25 days (hence leap year)

September/October are both 2 off because July and August were added later by the cooresponding Roman Emperor.

365 is not very divisible by very much, trust me I've tried... We could make 73 5-day weeks, but that leaves the year (divided naturally into four by the equinoxes and solsitices) hard to divide into a good number of months...

When it comes to what day falls on what number, that is not important... the days give us abritrary division of the week so we know when all the Christians are at mass (and the party begins). As long as the year begins with January 1st we are all good.

There was an idea to divide a day into 10 hours, and a minute would be 1/100 of an hour... and a second would be 1/100 of a minute... but I don't know if that adds up right... :wacko: Or how different things would be for us. That would be metric time of the day (and the day's divisions are abosutely wacked).

If anything needs fixing, it is the hour/minute/second thing... where the hell did 24/60/60 come from?

[Dr Mindbender]

Year 0 will start with the date of the revolution, surely? I dont think we should start changing units such as days, seconds, hours etc. these units work well as theyre based on the Earth Sun system and have nothing to do with religion so changing them would be pointless.

BTW should those who continue to use the Georgian calender be reprimanded?

[Qwerty Dvorak]

If anything needs fixing, it is the hour/minute/second thing... where the hell did 24/60/60 come from?
Exactly, we should work to metricize it. minutes and hours are just weird, days, seasons, years etc. make sense for obvious reasons. Seconds should obviously be kept too, as they are SI units.

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29, 2007 04:28 pm
The problem with metric time is nature doesn't conform to it.

Q: How long is a year?
Short Answer: 365 days
Right Answer: 365.25 days (hence leap year)
Well, let me see:

(365.25 days per year)(24 hours per day)(60 minutes per hour)(60 seconds per minute) = 31,557,600 seconds per year.

Suppose we redefine a minute to be 100 seconds (a decasecond). There are then 315,576 minutes per year.

Suppose there are 100 minutes per hour.

Suppose there are 10 hours per day (there are 1000 minutes per day, or 100,000 seconds per day).

If we keep the number of seconds per year constant, then there are 315.576 "days" per year.

Just some basic calculations here, not trying to make a point ;)

[which doctor]

I think we should get rid of the current conception of the "week" with such staples as weekends (where we don't work) and weekdays (where we do work). Every attempt should be made as to blur the lines between work and play.

As far as the rest of the calendar, I don't really have a problem with it. I don't see why leap years are unnecessary. Is there a better way to account for the 365.25 days it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun (or whatever goes on) ?


BTW should those who continue to use the Georgian calender be reprimanded?
Of course, preferably in the form of reeducation at gulags.

[Anarchovampire]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30, 2007 01:07 am
I think we should get rid of the current conception of the "week" with such staples as weekends (where we don't work) and weekdays (where we do work). Every attempt should be made as to blur the lines between work and play.

As far as the rest of the calendar, I don't really have a problem with it. I don't see why leap years are unnecessary. Is there a better way to account for the 365.25 days it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun (or whatever goes on) ?


BTW should those who continue to use the Georgian calender be reprimanded?
Of course, preferably in the form of reeducation at gulags.
I don't think I can agree with any of that... the idea of a resting day and a working day is perfectly acceptable, if not something we should strive for. We (I) are trying to free the proletariate, not turn them further into cattle! The idea of work and play being the same is so, so very... very... fascist...

And the idea of 'reeducating people' because they stick to the gregorian calendar? Horendous!

Frankly the calendar is fine... what a petty thing to be worried about... there are much bigger things requiring change!

[which doctor]

don't think I can agree with any of that... the idea of a resting day and a working day is perfectly acceptable, if not something we should strive for. We (I) are trying to free the proletariate, not turn them further into cattle! The idea of work and play being the same is so, so very... very... fascist...
It's more about eliminating current notions of work, than eliminating notions of play. Work is something that should become play. The negative aspects of it, especially the compulsory aspect, should be gotten rid of. The proletariat will not become cattle, they will each become artists with their own life as their canvas.


And the idea of 'reeducating people' because they stick to the gregorian calendar? Horendous!
It was sarcasm, a joke, aimed at how ludicrous the question was in the beginning.

[Anarchovampire]

And the idea of 'reeducating people' because they stick to the gregorian calendar? Horendous!
It was sarcasm, a joke, aimed at how ludicrous the question was in the beginning.
This is why I hate forums... we need sarcasto-font... <_<



don&#39;t think I can agree with any of that... the idea of a resting day and a working day is perfectly acceptable, if not something we should strive for. We (I) are trying to free the proletariate, not turn them further into cattle&#33; The idea of work and play being the same is so, so very... very... fascist...
It&#39;s more about eliminating current notions of work, than eliminating notions of play. Work is something that should become play. The negative aspects of it, especially the compulsory aspect, should be gotten rid of. The proletariat will not become cattle, they will each become artists with their own life as their canvas.

I don&#39;t think that work and play should be indistuingishable. I believe that the entire purpose is not to make work a game, but instead bring pride back into what you do. I feel that especially in the US there is no pride for workers... they are made to feel insuperior to the rich because they have no money, because so much is denied to them. But the entire country&#39;s existance rests on their backs. I believe the movement should be about pride, because in the realistic end, people will still have to work, and thus will still have to play... and the current work/play thing is okay... but it is the money problem and the rich problem that require fixing...

[The Author]

Originally posted by [email protected] May 29, 2007, 08:05 pm
After the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism, do you think it would be wise or even perhaps necessary to adopt a new calendar?

I personally have many problems with the Georgian calendar.

1) The months are needlessly confusing and difficult to associate with the proper numeral. (i.e.; September, the 9th month has its root in latin for "seven").

2) Christian-centric, revolving around Easter and being put into practice by the Catholic Church.

3) Leap years seem pointless and irrational.

4) Days of the year are not divisible by days in a week.

5) Days in a year should not be dynamic unless the Earth is orbiting the Sun at a slower rate.

6) The Georgian Calendar is less accurate when "translated" into other Calendars...especially over long distances of time.

There are probably other things that I hate about the Georgian Calendar. Does anybody else share these grievances?

Certainly we could have a better calendar under sociaism.


Well, during the French Revolution, a new calendar had been used for a while, and this is what the current page of Wikipedia has on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolutionary_Calendar

As a sidenote, if anybody was curious where the terms "18th Brumaire" and "Thermidor" came from, it originated from this calendar.

During the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union, an experimental calendar had been employed for a short while, and then changed back to the Gregorian (New Style) calendar because it supposedly "made family and social life inconvenient and proved very unpopular" (to quote whoever wrote that passage on the Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_revolutionary_calendar

Adopting a new revolutionary calendar sounds like an interesting idea. The problem is, would the hours for the working class in terms of labor and vacation time be better under this new calendar?