The perpetual calendar
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From: Cheryl on 19 Feb 2010 14:00 Andrew Usher wrote: > On Feb 19, 11:52 am, Halmyre <flashgordonreced...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > >>> But, the whole point of Easter is that it has a full moon! You might as >>> well scrap the whole thing otherwise. Or are you suggesting that we >>> only take holidays at Easter every four years or so, when your �settled� >>> date just happens to correspond with the right lunar phase? >> We don't have Christmas only when there's a bright star in the east. >> >> It's like saying "I was born on a Wednesday, so I'll only celebrate my >> birthday when it falls on a Wednesday". > > The reason I fix Christmas to a Sunday has been my observation that > arranging a family Christmas is substantially more convenient when it > falls on a weekend than in the middle of the week. Given that > Christmas is the most important holiday in the year, should we not all > get at least a 3-day weekend, which we have for lesser holidays? > > Andrew Usher The thing is that depending on your job, local holidays (eg whether Boxing Day is included) and the fact that New Year's Day comes so closely after Christmas Day, judicious use of annual leave days can give much more than three days in a row off if Christmas Day itself is mid-week. I would have thought that the summer holidays were far more important, at least to families with school-aged children, and in the US, Thanksgiving has an astonishing degree of importance. -- Cheryl
From: António Marques on 19 Feb 2010 14:28 Zhang Dawei wrote (19-02-2010 17:40): > António Marques wrote: > >> How can you even *think* that is the case?? How can you even >> *notice* the holidays shown are US-specific? Obviously the US >> holidays are there to illustrate how it works, not to be used >> universally. Likewise the numerals and month names. Sheesh. > > I can simply think it is the case because the website gives no > indication at all that the holidays are there *merely* as an > illustration, and the way it is described suggests a definite proposal > of those dates (as well as the other holidays taken from a limited > selection of other countries) to be holidays. Furthermore, given the > lack of appreciation from some of the world's geography, it is not > unreasonable to suppose that one should take what is proposed in that > website at face-value. If they were there *merely* as an illustration, > then that should have been made clearly known. So, it is not obvious > at all, and your complaint that I have somehow been deficient in not > engaging in mind-reading here is unwarranted. > > In fact, there should be no country-specific holidays shown at all if > the intent is to try to persuade as many people as possible, from as > many countries as possible, round to thinking this kind of calendar is > a good thing. Instead, a better tactical move would be to always use > generic names, holidays, and so on (like the "Mid-Quarter days"), with > a note stating that additional holidays could be added, according to > each country's requirements. > > So, it remains a failure if its intent is merely to illustrate the > concept because it fails to explicitly say that it is just an > illustration, and it fails to mention the country-specific > customizations of the holidays explicitly. Furthermore, if the overall > aim is persuade people from different countries round to accepting the > concept, the above slip ups are compounded into a tactical error > brought about by this by seeming to insist on just a small limited > number of specified country's holidays, which will not persuade people > from different countries to accept the proposals. A word of advice: when your interpretation of something makes no sense at all, and yet a tiny change in one of your assumptions may make all the nonsense go away, be prepared to revise your assumption. Communication only works thanks to the ability of both parties to infer the strictly unstated. It's only natural that unnecessary disambiguation be omitted. That can lead to misunderstading at times, but it's the price to pay for efficiency. Another one: when you come across some idea/proposal that appears to have some obvious flaw, which however can be left out with no impact at all on the rest, feel free to leave it out and just evaluate the rest.
From: jimp on 19 Feb 2010 14:21 In sci.physics Andrew Usher <k_over_hbarc(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > On Feb 19, 11:52 am, Halmyre <flashgordonreced...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > >> > But, the whole point of Easter is that it has a full moon! You might as >> > well scrap the whole thing otherwise. Or are you suggesting that we >> > only take holidays at Easter every four years or so, when your “settled” >> > date just happens to correspond with the right lunar phase? >> >> We don't have Christmas only when there's a bright star in the east. >> >> It's like saying "I was born on a Wednesday, so I'll only celebrate my >> birthday when it falls on a Wednesday". > > The reason I fix Christmas to a Sunday has been my observation that > arranging a family Christmas is substantially more convenient when it > falls on a weekend than in the middle of the week. Given that > Christmas is the most important holiday in the year, should we not all > get at least a 3-day weekend, which we have for lesser holidays? > > Andrew Usher Less than around 30% of the world population cares about Christmas or Easter or think that "Christmas is the most important holiday in the year". -- Jim Pennino Remove .spam.sux to reply.
From: António Marques on 19 Feb 2010 14:38 Halmyre wrote (19-02-2010 17:52): > On 19 Feb, 09:12, John Atkinson<johna...(a)bigpond.com> wrote: >> Halmyre wrote: >>> I just wish they'd settle on a date for Easter and be done with it. >> >> But, the whole point of Easter is that it has a full moon! You might >> as well scrap the whole thing otherwise. Or are you suggesting that >> we only take holidays at Easter every four years or so, when your >> “settled” date just happens to correspond with the right lunar phase? > > We don't have Christmas only when there's a bright star in the east. > > It's like saying "I was born on a Wednesday, so I'll only celebrate my > birthday when it falls on a Wednesday". Christmas is a feast that was established late, based on arbitrary convention, and of relatively minor religious standing (the feast, not the event it commemorates). Easter is the central feast of Christianity, would be an end in itself if nothing else, and of which all the particulars have the highest religious significance. (Regardless of whatever pagan festivals coincide with it in date or outward meaning.) Chocolate bunnies and eggs, you can put them everywhere you like, but that's not Easter.
From: Evan Kirshenbaum on 19 Feb 2010 15:15
Andrew Usher <k_over_hbarc(a)yahoo.com> writes: > On Feb 19, 11:49 am, Evan Kirshenbaum <kirshenb...(a)hpl.hp.com> wrote: > >> > I think it was two years ago that the first night of Passover was >> > on Holy Thursday (or vice versa), which precisely reproduced the >> > historical occasion. >> >> Oh, that's what you meant. I though that you were talking about >> Passover and Easter actually occurring on the same day. But if >> Holy Thursday is taken to run from midnight to midnight (rather >> than sundown to sundown), I don't think that that's possible, since >> the Hebrew calendar doesn't let Pesach fall on a Friday (with the >> seder on the preceding Thursday night). > > In Christ's time, there was no such rule, clearly. Right. They would still have been depending on observation of the new moon to establish Rosh Chodesh, the first of the month, and ordering a leap month by fiat when it seemed to be necessary to keep Passover in the spring (Wikipedia says, plausibly, that this happened when the barley wasn't yet ripe at the beginning of what would have been Nissan (originally "Aviv").) I think that by then there may already have been rules that bumped certain months by a day to keep certain holidays (e.g., Yom Kippur) from falling on certain days (which is the actual reason that the modern calendar happens to never have Nissan 15 falling on a Friday), but they would have kicked in on the specific months in question (e.g., Tishrei for Yom Kippur). -- Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------ HP Laboratories |If all else fails, embarrass the 1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |industry into doing the right Palo Alto, CA 94304 |thing. | Dean Thompson kirshenbaum(a)hpl.hp.com (650)857-7572 http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ |