The perpetual calendar [Math]

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From: António Marques on 22 Feb 2010 07:16

Robert Bannister wrote (22-02-2010 01:15):
> Andrew Usher wrote:
>> On Feb 19, 6:07 pm, Robert Bannister <robb...(a)bigpond.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> 6. This is surely the best possible arrangement that can be made,
>>>> without disturbing the cycle of weeks or that of calendar days
>>>> inherited from the Romans.
>>> If you are going to try to make it sensible, then please give us 13
>>> four-week months with one or two specially named days at the end of the
>>> year to even it out. The first day of each month should be a Monday.
>>
>> Once again, I said that I excluded having days outside the week. And
>> the first day of the week is Sunday, not Monday - that is an
>> incontrovertible fact.
>
> Oh dear. I had thought that you weren't a crank up till now.
>
>>
>> Having 13 months, in addition, would screw up a bunch of things ; in
>> particular, 13 can't be divided.
>
> Why is that so important? Why is not having days outside the week
> important? I seem to have lost the point of having a calendar change.

1) It's ugly.
2) It's religiously unacceptable.

Just use a 364-day year with a leap week. What's troublesome about that?

From: Peter T. Daniels on 22 Feb 2010 07:41

On Feb 22, 1:58 am, Transfer Principle <lwal...(a)lausd.net> wrote:

> Notice that the current USA Labor Day (first Monday in
> September) already occurs exactly 11 weeks and three days
> before Usher Thanksgiving. As Usher points out later, this
> is convenient for college football, which traditionally began
> on Labor Day weekend and ended on Thanksgiving, with enough
> time to play 11 games in between. (The recent practice of
> playing 12 games instead of 11 occurred because in a recent
> year when Labor Day and Thanksgiving were 12 weeks and three
> days apart, colleges scheduled an extra game, then kept on
> scheduling 12 games even when the period between the two
> holidays switched back to 11 weeks and three days.)

It can't have been terribly recent, since it was FDR who changed
Thanksgiving from "last Thursday in November" to "fourth Thursday in
November" -- supposedly to increase the number of shopping days before
Christmas.

From: Peter T. Daniels on 22 Feb 2010 07:44

On Feb 22, 7:14 am, Cheryl <cperk...(a)mun.ca> wrote:
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Feb 21, 4:17 pm, Cheryl <cperk...(a)mun.ca> wrote:
> >> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>> On Feb 21, 10:59 am, Mike Barnes <mikebar...(a)bluebottle.com> wrote:
> >>>> Yusuf B Gursey <y...(a)theworld.com>:
> >>>>> On Feb 19, 11:25 am, Mike Barnes <mikebar...(a)bluebottle.com> wrote:
> >>>>>> But I thought that for most people the whole point of Easter is that
> >>>>>> they get time off work.
> >>>>> not in the US, at least not in my state.
> >>>> So I now understand. Here in England, Friday and Monday are holidays,
> >>>> and school terms fit around them. That's the problem with Easter. I
> >>>> think it's fair to say that many people here would be happy if they
> >>>> fixed the dates of the public holidays (e.g. second weekend in April)
> >>>> and allowed the holy day to shift as it will. I don't if or why
> >>>> disconnecting them would matter to anyone.
> >>> That's because you're stuck with a state religion.
> >>> In NYC, parking regulations are suspended for just about anyone's
> >>> religious holidays.
> >> Hey, we get to take some religious holidays (Christmas Day and Good
> >> Friday) off work even without a state religion! I'm ecumenical; I'd take
> >> ANY religious holidays. I suspect that there's some rule that you have
> >> to be a member of the religion in question in order to not work that
> >> aren't also legal or secular holidays, but that could be fixed by making
> >> them ALL legal holidays. My home province ended up cancelling some of
> >> the religious (ie Christian) holidays from the list of legal days off in
> >> the interests of increased productivity, but some workers still have the
> >> old list embodied in their contracts. Now, of course, some of them get
> >> "Mid-March" and "Mid-July" off rather than religious holidays.
>
> > What "religious holiday" does "Mid-July" accommodate?
>
> I was thinking St. George's Day, but when I checked, it was Orangemen's
> Day.

I grew up in a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian church in NYC, and I recall
Orangemen's Day as being August 5. I didn't learn what it commemorated
until I'd left for college, and was not happy.

The congregation lnog ago became Hispanic, and merged with a
neighboring Presbyterian church, but the building was made a NYC
landmark last year.

> When all these were drawn up, people of both Irish Catholic and English
> Protestant ancestry had to be accommodated, but I'd forgotten that the
> Protestant got two days to the Catholic's single St. Patrick's Day.

From: Cheryl on 22 Feb 2010 08:00

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Feb 22, 7:14 am, Cheryl <cperk...(a)mun.ca> wrote:
>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> What "religious holiday" does "Mid-July" accommodate?
>> I was thinking St. George's Day, but when I checked, it was Orangemen's
>> Day.
>
> I grew up in a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian church in NYC, and I recall
> Orangemen's Day as being August 5. I didn't learn what it commemorated
> until I'd left for college, and was not happy.
>
> The congregation lnog ago became Hispanic, and merged with a
> neighboring Presbyterian church, but the building was made a NYC
> landmark last year.
>

July 12, or Monday nearest. Of course, holidays can and do shift, so
maybe the authorities in New York re-scheduled it.

Since it wasn't a school holiday, or rather, occurred during the shool
holidays, Orangeman's Day was of minimal interest to me as a child. At
that time, some rural communities still had the annual parade with King
William riding on a white horse at the head of it, but that wasn't a
tradition in my home town, and I didn't even hear of it until I was an
adult living elsewhere. By that time, I think the tradition had died out
entirely, but the holiday wasn't taken off the government list until
later. Fortunately, we'd managed to abandon the Protestant-Catholic
violence associated with the event well before we lost the parade led by
the man on the white horse. I don't know how I managed to conflate it
with St. George's Day. Maybe because they're both associated with
Protestants.

I really like July & August, though. We start the last week in June
celebrating St. John the Baptist Day because that's the official
founding date of the city I live in. Then there's July 1, both Canada
Day and the memorial day for the Newfoundland soldiers who died in WW I.
Next comes the mid-July holiday, and then we have to work for a couple
of weeks until our August municipal holiday, which in my municipality is
usually in the first week of August. And my workplace closes for all of
them.

But we still lack a February holiday, unless we have a big enough snowstorm.
--
Cheryl

From: James Hogg on 22 Feb 2010 08:05

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Feb 22, 7:14 am, Cheryl <cperk...(a)mun.ca> wrote:
>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> On Feb 21, 4:17 pm, Cheryl <cperk...(a)mun.ca> wrote:
>>>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>> On Feb 21, 10:59 am, Mike Barnes <mikebar...(a)bluebottle.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Yusuf B Gursey <y...(a)theworld.com>:
>>>>>>> On Feb 19, 11:25 am, Mike Barnes <mikebar...(a)bluebottle.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>> But I thought that for most people the whole point of Easter is that
>>>>>>>> they get time off work.
>>>>>>> not in the US, at least not in my state.
>>>>>> So I now understand. Here in England, Friday and Monday are holidays,
>>>>>> and school terms fit around them. That's the problem with Easter. I
>>>>>> think it's fair to say that many people here would be happy if they
>>>>>> fixed the dates of the public holidays (e.g. second weekend in April)
>>>>>> and allowed the holy day to shift as it will. I don't if or why
>>>>>> disconnecting them would matter to anyone.
>>>>> That's because you're stuck with a state religion.
>>>>> In NYC, parking regulations are suspended for just about anyone's
>>>>> religious holidays.
>>>> Hey, we get to take some religious holidays (Christmas Day and Good
>>>> Friday) off work even without a state religion! I'm ecumenical; I'd take
>>>> ANY religious holidays. I suspect that there's some rule that you have
>>>> to be a member of the religion in question in order to not work that
>>>> aren't also legal or secular holidays, but that could be fixed by making
>>>> them ALL legal holidays. My home province ended up cancelling some of
>>>> the religious (ie Christian) holidays from the list of legal days off in
>>>> the interests of increased productivity, but some workers still have the
>>>> old list embodied in their contracts. Now, of course, some of them get
>>>> "Mid-March" and "Mid-July" off rather than religious holidays.
>>> What "religious holiday" does "Mid-July" accommodate?
>> I was thinking St. George's Day, but when I checked, it was Orangemen's
>> Day.
>
> I grew up in a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian church in NYC, and I recall
> Orangemen's Day as being August 5. I didn't learn what it commemorated
> until I'd left for college, and was not happy.

5 August must have been the celebration of the Battle of Otterburn.

--
James