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The Time Keepers

Time keeping is currently stable, though unbalanced, and there is a more efficient layout that would change the way we look at record keeping. Some things in our time-keeping regimen are factual and created due to cosmological reasons (year, day, lunar cycle). But others are not, and thus fabricated by humans to simplify and keep track of passing time (weeks, months, hours, minutes, seconds).

The current ones we use are somewhat unbalanced in their use. Months, as a prime example, are 28, 29, 30, or 31 days. A less obvious one is a quarter of a business year. Many businesses rely on making quarters, but sometimes their quarters will start on the 15th of the month, or something similar. Because of the uneven months that fall throughout the year, the quarters are uneven, and business figures never quite match up the way they ought. Another one is the way hours, minutes, and seconds work. 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute. But then figures smaller than seconds are in powers of 10, and so there are many bases being used to represent the time of day.

But there is a system that can rectify all this, and still retain a clean and easy-to-use format to represent any time of day, as well as the date. The time uses base 12 through and through, and the year is broken up into as-even-as-possible groupings of days.

Making Time

The day is broken up into groups of 12, represented with the units 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 X and E1. Based on the current way to measure time using 24 hours a day, each segment is equivalent to 2 hours (24 hours / 12).

The 2 hour blocks are further broken up into 12 section apiece, each one equal to 10 minutes (2 hours / 12 = 120 minutes / 12 = 10 minutes).

The 10 minute blocks can be broken up further, again into 12 sections, each worth 50 seconds apiece (10 minutes / 12 = 600 seconds / 12 = 50 seconds).

At this moment, we have 3 places of notation, each with a value of 0 to E. With the notation syntax of 0:00 to E:EE, there are 1728 (12^3) possible iterations. Though this format only sports 3 digits, it has more possibilities than a standard military-clock (00:00 - 23:59) using 4 digits. Thus, this dozenal (base-twelve) time clock is more precise at any given minute than a standard clock.

We can break the 50 second blocks in to groups of 12 (each worth 4.1667 seconds) and then by 12 again (the next digit-value equalling 0.34722 seconds), but this is enough for now.

As a final note on keeping time, the dozenal 3-digit version is 20% more accurate than a standard 4-digit military clock and the 5-digit dozenal clock of 0:00:00 is 188% more accurate than a standard military clock of 00:00:00 format, based on the number of possible iterations allowed, and the frequency at which it updates.

At present, the clock moves counter-clockwise, with 0 at the bottom. When both the minute and hour hand are at the bottom, this represents midnight. This is because the hour hand mimics the passage of the sun, rising in the east, peaking at noon, and setting in the west.

The Calendar

When it comes to actual dates of the Calendar Year, a new system has been developed. There are several aspects that make this more fitting for our world. There are four main corners of a year from a strictly cosmological standpoint - the Solstices and Equinoxes. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year, while the Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year, given by the arcs that the sun takes in the sky. The Vernal Equinox and Autumnal Equinox are the points in the year where daylight is equivalent the world over. These four points mark the pillars of the Calendar.

The Calendar starts with the Winter Solstice, or December 21st. This day is called New Day. After that comes Monday, Winter 1st, and the Winter quarter continues for thirteen weeks, ending on Sunday, Winter 91st. The next day is then Monday, Spring 1st, and the Spring quarter continues for thirteen weeks itself, ending on Sunday, Spring 91st. If the year is a Leap Year, there is an extra day between Spring and Summer called Leap Day. The Summer quarter then starts on Monday, Summer 1st and continues for thirteen weeks, ending on Sunday, Summer 91st. Finally, the fourth quarter is the Fall quarter, starting on Monday, Fall 1st, continuing thirteen weeks, and ending on Sunday, Fall 91st. Then the Calendar starts anew with the new year the following day.

Please note that New Day and the optional Leap Day are not days of the week. These are simply extra days that add for a sort of built-in three-day weekend. Thus, the same calendar can be used every year, where the 1st of a season is always a Monday. This consistency is ideal for an efficient and simplified system.

This Calendar is also ideal for businesses. In the modern day, businesses model their quarters around days of the months, and, because the current months are uneven, the quarters rarely line up properly. With the quarters built into the new Calendar, businesses can see their progress more easily.

For short notation, there are three fields of numerical value: Year, Season and Day. The year can be represented either as a 2-digit number, or as a 4-digit number to express its entirety. The season is as follows: 1 is Winter, 2 is Spring, 3 is Summer, and 4 is Fall. The day is simply the number of the day of the current season. Thus, 15.1.3 would be the Third of Winter, 2015. For New Day and Leap Day, the notation can be even more basic. 15.ND can be New Day, 2015, or even 15.N. Leap Day can be 15.LD or 15.L. For a more complete system, and to fit the format of normal days, the season can be 0, and the day can be 1 for New Day, and 2 for Leap Day.

You are now able to read the clock at the top of this page.

Holidays and Festivals: A Proposal

With the new Calendar, certain dates will always occur on the same days of the week. My proposal is that all holidays to be moved to the nearest weekends and celebrated as such. Birthdays too can be celebrated the weekend before or the weekend after.

Terminology

For the calendar, terms are simple - year, season/quarter, week, day, leap day, new day. For the time, I propose 'hours' (1/12th of a day), 'minutes' (1/1,728th of a day) and 'seconds' (1/248,832nd of a day) be changed to new terms.

Footnotes

1. The Dozenal Society has allowed X and E to represent ten and eleven, respectively. X (pronounced 'Dek') is from Roman Numerals and E (pronounced 'El') is the first bit of 'Eleven'.