Talk:Calendar date
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Miscellaneous
I would like to show a minor view of mine on writting of today's dates. I am fully awared with ISO 8601 standard. Recently I prefer to writte dates in these Mayan like form.
For example dates of current week I write:
0 Sunday [2002.02.24] 1 Monday [2002.02.25] 2 Tuesday [2002.02.26] ... 6 Saturday [2002.03.02]
It is strange, yes - but ISO 8601 in a sence goes the same way. Mayan have two weeks with different number of days and I know why they write in such strange form which is, astronomically speaking, perhaps the best and the righteous one. We have only one week, with 7 days, first would be numbered as Mayan do 0. And all in brackets ([]) is noncycleing but linear increasing numbers for years, set of 12 months with selection from {28,29,30,31} and of course in the end - days all numbers in decimal system. Mayan used kindly different number systems. How long will it take we will adopt ISO 8601 in fully. I am sometime nowadays all confused. What do you think?
XJam following ISO 8601 let us write just 2002-27-02 where leading zeroes must be written. ** This is not ISO !! ** *** Yes you gotcha me, of course 2002-02-27 is correct - that is what I was talking about -- confusions, sorry --XJam 6 Saturday [2002.03.02] (0)***
- If you think of it, the Mayan, the ISO, the Chinese, the Japanese simply use the natural way to tell time, i.e. in a natural progression from the longer to the shorter period, naturally, year, then month, then day, then hour, then minute, then second. Even the European notation of Day, Month, Year is natural but just in the opposite order. Only the US tries to be different and put in the Month, Day, Year unnatural order.
So one can start the week on a Sunday, but number the other days of the week by the number of days it comes after Sunday.
Sunday 0, Monday 1, Tuesday 2, Wednesday 3 Thursday 4, Friday 5, Saturday 6.
This looks like a compromise between starting the week on Sunday (actual start) and starting the week on Monday (numbering of non-Sundays).
If one starts with week with a Sunday then a symmetry occurs around the year 2000.
Below for each year, I list the number of days in the part-week at the start of the year, the number of whole weeks within the year, then the number of days part-week at the end of the year.
1997 4 days + 51 weeks + 4 days 1998 3 days + 51 weeks + 5 days 1999 2 days + 51 weeks + 6 days 2000 1 day + 52 weeks + 1 day 2001 6 days + 51 weeks + 2 days 2002 5 days + 51 weeks + 3 days 2003 4 days + 51 weeks + 4 days
This symmetry applies to all years not just those listed e.g.
1900 6 days + 51 weeks + 2 days
2100 2 days + 51 weeks + 6 days
For weeks beginning Monday or any other day of the week, there is no such symmetry around any year at all.
- Uph Karl, very interesting indeed. I must say I do not uderstand your table in full. Can you please give some more explanation on it? What really (2002 5 days + 51 weeks + 3 days) means? Does this mean that current year 2002 has 51 weeks and ('plus what)?
Yes I have understood that correctly. Thank you Karl for clearing this out. This year's 2002 first part-week is:
[2] Tuesday [2002.01.01] [3] Wednesday [2002.01.02] [4] Thursday [2002.01.03] [5] Friday [2002.01.04] and the last day of the 1st part-week [6] Saturday [2002.01.05] --> and all together is 5 days.
Then we have 51 "ordinary" weeks and the last part-week:
[0] Sunday [2002.12.29] (First day of the last part-week :-) [1] Monday [2002.12.30] and finally [2] Tuesday [2002.12.31] --> that gives us 3 days
so 2002 have: 5 + 51*7 + 3 = 365 days.
Nice. --XJam 1 Monday [2002.03.04] (0)
Correct User:Karl Palmen
Strange property of Gregorian calendar, don't you think and hard to calculate days between events in it, too. On my desk working calendar there is written that 2002 has 52. working weeks (fixed day (or closing date) weeks again according to ISO 8601) and 1st working week of 2003 starts on 1 Monday [2002.12.30]. 1st working week of 2002 starts again on 1 Monday and that is [2001.12.31]. In fact I do not like Gregorian calendar a lot, but I must use it. Tzolk'n is much much more thoughtful and who knows more usefull. I do not like Gregorian calendar too because astrologists calculate their strange horoscope and fated tables from it, and they say they're some experts on something that doesn't exist, astronomicaly speaking. (I mean a sky map, which because of precession of equinoxes does not fit with a real one and such). --XJam 5 Friday [2002.03.01] (0)
Astrologers would may also get it wrong if they use the Gregorian calendar literally. For example the start of the sun-sign of Aries is reckoned to occur at at the March equinox and also on March 21, yet in 2096, the equinox will be on March 19. --User:Karl Palmen
- I have no problem with using ISO 8601 for dates and times, even though the usage in relation to days of the week and linking weeks to years seems a bit strange. The purpose of a standard is to get everybody to mean the same thing when they write. I can't say that I understand the references above to the Mayan calendar - but that's the entire problem with it: few people will. It must be added too that the numbering of the weeks and the days in the week has a limited application outside of finance. A day can be completely defined without knowing what the day of the week is. Using the Gregorian calendar has absolutely nothing to do with the validity of horoscopes. I don't need to believe in God and Jesus to accept that we are in the Gregorian year 2002. Eclecticology
- Yes for days there's enough ISO codeing. It is enough although a little bit hard to calculate it by hand. We humans like to calculate by hand(s) which have 10 fingers, so not too long week is just fine for us. It is very human, as we say, why to be symple if it can be complicated and so Mayan combined Tzolk'in and Haab where there are in Tzolk'in 13 numbered days intermeshed with 20 named days and in Haab or vague year is a 365 day period of 18 months of 20 days each, followed by one 5 day period (Wayeb). Now days are harder to calculate.
I've forgotten to say that above record is just my personal view and a little bit of self contentment. I am not trying to change any present or future standards. About Mayan there is not so much to understand in fact. Their calendar is so symple and yet so 'almost' perfect. With the 13th (leading) Mayan's cycle or bak'-tun I just wanted to emphasize their believes in cycleing of time - posible property of real (cosmological) time - which is not implemented in our year's notation. They had used a term similar of our year (Earth's revolution around the Sun, tropical year) in 3rd place of their notation as tun from bak'-tun. For shure they must had been awared in some way of Earth's revolution. Recently I've translated and adopted (now perhaps famous) John Major Jenkins' article The How and Why of the Mayan End Date in 2012 A.D (http://www.levity.com/eschaton/Why2012.html) and I must say his researches in this field persuaded me about general significance of Mayan calendar system of far past and of imminent present time, because we are heading toward such strange years as Clarke's 2001, Clarke's 2010, Mayan's 2012, Clarke's 2061 are. Their calendar, according to our present knowledge of Mayan's astronomy, was derived almost entirely from horizont astronomy mainly by observing the apparent motion of 'planet' Venus and Sun and such.
I agree about validity or non-validity of horoscopes. But they (Greek or Chinese one at most) are 'studied' mainly in Western calendar system (Julian, Gregorian). Mayan also used (mainly Tzolk'in) to do 'horoscopics' and their descendant in Jenkins' 'dream land' Gvatemala still do. But hereby I do not want to say no other words about 'horo-hocus-pocus' because I respect all what Samuel Beckett had said on this topics.
I also agree and salute natural progression from longer to shorter period of any calendar. Yes strange why Europeans like smaller things first. Americans must have heard to put a year on the last place from Indian natives, ha, ha. Legalisation fi di ganja herb - Do you love the music, yeah, reggae music ruffin' inna Japan Salute and out. --XJam 6 Saturday [2002.03.02] (1st ed.)
- Yes for days there's enough ISO codeing. It is enough although a little bit hard to calculate it by hand. We humans like to calculate by hand(s) which have 10 fingers, so not too long week is just fine for us. It is very human, as we say, why to be symple if it can be complicated and so Mayan combined Tzolk'in and Haab where there are in Tzolk'in 13 numbered days intermeshed with 20 named days and in Haab or vague year is a 365 day period of 18 months of 20 days each, followed by one 5 day period (Wayeb). Now days are harder to calculate.
In Japan, all official documents are required by law to use the Japanese imperial calendar date format. For example, the year 2001 is known as Heisei 13 (平成１３年). Similar, in Taiwan, the year 2002 is known as Min-guo 91 (民國九十一年).
- Can you justify this is true? Where did you get this idea? -- Taku 03:04 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)
The British consider words and locutions that originated in England and died out in England "Americanisms". So it is with date formats. Traditionally, the English used m/d/y (see any reasonably old book written in England). Recently (100 years or less) they have begun importing the d/m/y format from the Continent, and so of course they call their own traditional m/d/y format the "American" date format. 131.183.84.166 23:45 28 May 2003 (UTC)
Transition dates near start of calendar:
What about giving an example of one of the dates from the period when the calendar was being adopted and the new year shifted (from March to January), resulting in year formats such as 1680/81, to mean 1680 if new year is counted in March, but 1681 if new year is counted in January ?
Proposed style change
Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/proposed revision 1) proposes "BC" and "AD" (in contrast with "BCE" and "CE") as standard for Wikipedia, 2) apparently encourages linking of years, and 3) encourages linking of units of measurement, among other changes. It also reverses the style of many of the dates used within the guide (such as "February 12" to "12 February"). See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) for discussion. Maurreen 01:46, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)