Old Theodian calendars
This article contains the previous official calendars of the Technocratic Republic of Theodia.
Universal calendar
- Days
A day was decided to be the length of the daily circadian rhythm of humans (approximately one modern Earth-day). Previously, it was set to equal current length of an Earthling day; but, as things are at the moment, there is little practical difference between them. A full explanation of how Theodia divides a day can be found here.
Theodians, especially in the context of the Kalendar, tend to use the linear representation (0.0 to 0.Ʒ̠) instead of the circular representation (0.0Ͳ to 3.Ʒ̠Ͳ) for time. This is de facto the same time-format used in the past two calendars.
- Weeks
The current Kalendar has 12 days to a week, though this 12-day week is a repeated pattern of 3 days, with the first two being work-days, and the last 1 being a sabbath-day. This allows for a ratio equivalent to that of a 4-day work-week without added sabbaths. It has slightly less productive days per year than the 7-day week, but feels faster, and allows for events recurring on alternating days to meet an equal number of times each week. Its frequent breaks help prevent people from becoming extremely sleep-deprived, as every 3 days they have a chance to sleep in; it's overall less disruptive to habit than a 2-day weekend; and Theodian numerals, no matter whether spoken or written, have highly distinguishing features every 3 digits, making it a very natural week-order. As well, its being quadrupled to 12 from 3 means that in date-notation, the twelfths place tells you the week-number. Resultantly, there are no specific names for Theodian weekdays; rather, only for the *type* of day.
A 6-day subweek was also considered, but very narrowly lost out to the 3-day subweek. A 6-day subweek would have been intermediate between the two most common natural week-lengths (7 and 5), while being more divisible; and so would have been a very comfortable change from either of those.
The Gregorian weekday for each sabbath (there are 4 per week) repeats in the following pattern: Friday, Monday, Thursday, Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday, Tuesday; which means that every 21 days, a Gregorian day-of-the-week occurs on the same type of Theodian day-of-the-week. This may be relevant for those who wish to observe a religious activity on a particular Gregorian day-of-the-week. The Unitarian Universalist Church of Theodia, however, has no preferred Gregorian day-of-the-week.
- Years
A year is to be 12 weeks, or 144 days. Although this year is decoupled from any particular planet's cycles, calendars can, of course, still indicate the dates of the various seasons and holidays and such, thus still catering to the planet's idiosyncrasies. Keep in mind that these things aren't even always specific to an entire planet; different latitudes of a planet, for example, can have vastly different seasons etc, meaning that current calendars are already imperfect for some significant portion of their described planet.
Due to temporal relativity, not everyone everywhere would necessarily be on the same day using any one single calendar. Theodia considers this an acceptable drawback, since any differences in dates would reflect real differences in time, such that someone with a year of 2500 really would be living in the past relative to a person with a year of 3000. Think of it as being like time-zones, but on a much larger scale.
Lastly, due to the nature of this system, there is no need for leap-years.
- Epoch
The epoch currently used in Theodia is equivalent to 1961-04-12, the day when humanity first took to the stars, and the first moment that the above-mentioned issues with time ever became remotely relevant.
The UNIX epoch was also considered, due to its widespread use in technology and such; but it was ultimately decided to use the above date, due to its symbolic nature. 1969-07-20 was also considered, being the first time any human ever set foot on another planetary body.
Years using this epoch are, in English, typically written with the moniker 'AE', or "Ascendant Era". AE±0 is equivalent to UTC 1969-07-20, and each new 'ascendant' year begins 144 days after the start of the last; meaning that the formula to convert from AE to CE, in terms of days, is (yAE * 144) + 715978, and that the formula to convert from CE to AE, in terms of days, is (x - 715978) / 144, where x represents the total number of days that have transpired since UTC 0001-01-01. AE, contrary to CE and BCE, has a year 0, and rather than having different monikers for dates before and after the epoch, it uses 'AE' exclusively. Dates before the epoch are denoted with a negative sign (-), and dates after the epoch with a positive sign (+). Note also that 'AE' always occurs before the year, rather than after. The current year in AE on Earth was decimally AE+138 as of UTC 2016-01-23.
If it is ever possible to do so, an epoch at the beginning of the universe, should time be unlooped; or an epoch at the beginning of any other number of watershed events (such as the date of the birth of the first modern human); may be considered preferable.
- Formatting
The following depicts the officially correct formatting for a Theodian date. Like the ISO date, they are little-endian. The following examples are all equivalents to the ISO date 2016-01-23 19:30.
- Format: (
AE±)yy.wd(hmm)- Note: Components in parentheses are optional.
- With optionals:
- Example:
AE+Ʒ6.Ʒ5990 - Spoken: Ascendant Era plus eleventy-six point eleven five nine nine oh
- Example:
- Without optionals:
- Example:
Ʒ6.Ʒ5 - Spoken: eleventy-six point eleven five
- Example:
A neat thing about this is that each individual place has a specific meaning. So, everything to the left of the radix-point is the year, the first place to the right is the week-number, the next place to the right is the day, the next is the hour, the next is the minute, etc. This makes any math involving time incredibly simple compared to how it is with the ISO's system, because no conversion is ever required.
Halved calendar
- General
In the second half of 2015, Theodia adopted a new calendar for the whole planet of Earth, which divided the year into two halves, each of 180 days (160 in dozenal), with the first half starting around the winter solstice, and the second half starting around the summer solstice. Because 365 cannot be evenly divided by 2 (the number of halves), there was a buffer of intercalary days between each half. The buffer was to last 3 days at the winter solstice, and 2–3 days at the summer solstice (depending upon whether it was a leap-year). Each half was further subdivided into 3 parts of 60 days each (50 in dozenal), called 'seasons'. This very closely approximated the starts and ends of the 6 ecological seasons throughout Earth; for, although astronomical seasons are centered on the solstices, there is a lag in temperature which causes the ecological seasons to be delayed by up to 50 decimal days or so (but usually less than that; the delay in this Kalendar was set at 30 days.). The three seasons in the first half were, respectively, hibernal, prevernal, and vernal; and the three seasons in the second half were, respectively, estival, serotinal, and autumnal. The Kalendar had its major divisions centered on the solstices because (1) Theodia's calendars have conventionally located intercalary days at the major breaks of the year, and Theodian culture has traditionally celebrated its biggest holidays during these breaks in the Kalendar; (2) the further north and south one goes, the more significant the solstices are, and Theodia's then-intention of being located in Greenland (the extreme north) made this highly relevant; and (3) the solstices provide a convenient astronomical definition for the start and end of a year.
Like in the Gregorian Calendar, there was a leap year every 8 halves (4 years), with certain exceptions—but the different epoch used by the Theodian calendar caused these leaps to occur on different years.
With this calendar:
- WB: The winter break usually begins 1 day before the winter solstice, and ends 1 day after it, such that it lasts 3 days. It does not belong to a half.
- H1: The first half begins the day after the winter break
- S1: The first season starts on the same day as the first half
- S2: The second season starts 60 days after the start of the first season
- S3: The third season starts 60 days after the start of the second season
- SB: The summer break lasts 2 days (3 in a leap-year), one of which usually contains the summer solstice. It starts the day after the last day of the third season. It does not belong to a half.
- H2: The second half begins the day after the summer break
- S4: The fourth season starts on the same day as the second half
- S5: The fifth season starts 60 days after the start of the fourth season
- S6: The sixth season starts 60 days after the start of the fifth season
- Days and weeks
The Halved Kalendars used the same day- and week- structures as the Thirded Kalendars.
- Epoch
330CE was used throughout 2015. It's the year that Emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople, representing an end to Roman power in the west, and shifting the focus of the western and middle-eastern worlds for over a millennium. It also commemorates many other things Constantine did which ultimately represented an end to the classical world and a start to late antiquity. These include his acceptance of and conversion to Christianity, which represent a much larger trend of the world in late antiquity towards increasing religiosity. As well, the year 330 is close to halfway between the Crisis of the Third Century, which set the Empire on the path to destruction, and the crowning of Flavius Odoacer as the first King of Italy, the traditional date for the end of the western Roman Empire; and so is for this reason also a fitting symbolic date for the beginning of late antiquity. A date representative of the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the beginning of late antiquity in the West was seen as a befitting epoch, as it marks the moment when Rome went from one of the three great empires of the world to becoming a ghostly influence over, at first, the West and the Near-East; and, later, the lion's share of the world. It used the moniker 'BE', "Byzantine Era". It otherwise uses conventions identical to those of AE.
- Formatting
There are three main date-formats for the Kalendars: full, med, and short. Like the ISO date, they are little-endian. Note that each individual parameter is optional.
- Full:
- Format:
BE±yyyy_Ss_Ddd_Chm.s - Example:
BE+27Ʒ0_S2_D08_C64.3 - Spoken: Byzantine Epoch plus two-thousand seven-hundred eleventy zero, Season two, Day zero-eight, Clock sixty-four point three
- Uses: For archiving and sorting
- Format:
- Med:
- Format:
Yyyy_Ss_Dd_Chm - Example:
Y7Ʒ0_S2_D8_C64 - Spoken: Year seven-hundred eleventy, Season two, Day eight, Clock sixty-four
- Uses: General-purpose
- Format:
- Short:
- Format:
yy_s_d_hm - Example:
Ʒ0_2_8_64 - Spoken: Y eleventy, S two, D eight, C sixty-four
- Uses: Texting, note-taking, etc.
- Format:
Thirded calendar
- General
From 2012 to 2015, the official calendars divided their years into 3 'Thirds', each of 120 days (X0 in dozenal), with T1 starting around January 21. Because 365 cannot be evenly divided by 3 (the number of Thirds) or 4 (the length of a week at this time), there was a thirdless buffer between each third lasting 2 days (however, on non-leap years, the year-break buffer was only 1 day). The year-break was situated around the autumnal equinox due to its intermediate position between mid-latitude and tropical seasons, in an effort to optimize productivity.
Thirds eventually replaced quarters primarily due to (1) the fact that Thirds can be made a little more mathematically even than quarters in base-12, where Earth-year division is concerned; (2) the feeling that the quarterly system made the long-time unit too fine; (3) the Third's easier representation of the leap year interval in dozenal; (4) and inspiration from openSUSE, which has a development cycle of 8 months (~2 thirds). Originally, the thirded calendar began on the Autumnal equinox, but, along with minor tweaks to the start dates of all the thirds, it was, in early 2014, changed to have its new year in January.
Like in the Gregorian Calendar, there is a leap year every 12 Thirds (4 years).
With this calendar:
- T1: The first Third begins aproximately on the autumnal equinox.
- T2: The second Third begins 122 days after T1 starts.
- T3: The third Third begins 122 days after T2 starts.
- Day
Each day was divided into 10twelve (12ten) hours, each of 10 minutes.
- Week
The Theodian Fiscal Calendar has four days per week, with three of them workdays, and one of them a weekend. This creates a system which has slightly more workdays per year, but much more frequent breaks. It is also very dozenally sane, being both 4 and 3+1. There are exactly 30 weeks in every Third.
- Starday: The first day of the workweek, derived from 'start-day'.
- Humday: The second day of the workweek, derived from 'hump-day', which is a nickname for Wednesday.
- Enday: The last day of the workweek, derived from 'end-day'.
- Rezday: The Theodian weekend, derived from 'rest-day'.
- Epoch
Thirded Kalendars used the Western Epoch, abbreviated WE, in lieu of the usual Common Era. 0WE was, after much deliberation, placed in the Autumn of 492CE, and was later changed to 476CE, the traditional date of the fall of the western Roman Empire. The idea with it was to pick a year that was approximately the center of the European Dark Ages, so as to give the epoch more intrinsic meaning than CE has for non-Christians. Whereas CE/AD are based approximately at the time of Jesus of Nazareth's birth, counting the years since it occurred (about 2,000); WE attempts to count the years since the last total collapse of Western society (the Dark Ages), which is about 1,500 so far. It uses virtually identical conventions to BE, except that WE's moniker follows the date, and the + and ± signs are only used in a particular format (see below). The formula to convert from CE to WE is year - 476.
Naming WE 'World Epoch' was considered, since much of the world was in shambles at the time. Another tweak of WE which was considered is the SC/BC dichotomy (Since Collapse / Before Collapse), but the relation of now to the Dark Ages was deemed too strong under these postfixes, and it loses the benefits of using a static postfix.
An epoch which was proposed but never used was the Theodian Epoch, abbreivated TE, which places the epoch at Theodia's founding in 2010CE. It was considered advantageous over RE (used in the quartered Kalendars), but not as universal as WE.
- Other calendars
In addition to the above (the EN (Earth-North)) calendar, there was also a ES (Earth-South) and a TU (Time-Universal) calendar. The former was essentially an inverted version of the EN Calendar, and was functionally equivalent in the Southern Hemisphere of the Earth. The latter was to be used between time zones (particularly in space). It is artificially regular, with 3 Thirds, 0 buffers between Thirds, no leap years, and exactly 144 days per Third; and was designed to be geographically neutral. The value of a day in TU is the same as a day on Earth; this is due to the natural engrainment of the terran circadian rhythm in humans.
So long as no Theodian baronies existed in another calenzone (calendar-zone), the calendar of the capital's calenzone was to be the official calendar of the country; else, it was to be TU. The calendar in-use at this time was always EN.
- Formatting
There are three main date-formats for the Kalendars: full, med, and short. Like the ISO date, they are little-endian. Note that each individual parameter is optional.
- Full
- Format:
T±yyyyWE_Ddd_Chm.s - Example:
T+27Ʒ0WE_D08_C64.3 - Spoken: Third plus two-thousand seven-hundred eleventy zero Western Era, Day zero-eight, Clock sixty-four point three
- Uses: For archiving and sorting
- Format:
- Med
- Format:
Tyyy_Dd_Chm - Example:
T7Ʒ0_D8_C64 - Spoken: Third seven-hundred eleventy, Day eight, Clock sixty-four
- Uses: General-purpose
- Format:
- Short
- Format:
yy_d_hm - Example:
Ʒ0_8_64 - Spoken: Third eleventy, Day eight, Clock sixty-four
- Uses: Texting, note-taking, etc.
- Format:
Quartered calendar
TODO
Original
- General
Relatively shortly after Theodia's founding, Swena started thinking about calendar reform. Se came upon the notion of fiscal calendars, and quickly adopted their division into quarters for Theodia. The country's original constitution was actually dated with this calendar.
There were 4 quarters per year, each of 91 days. This system was decimal, as it was used before Theodia adopted base-twelve. Each day had ten hours in it, and each week had five days. Their names were, in order: Sunzday, Moonzday, Tyrzday (from Tyr, the Germanic god of war), Friggzday (from Frigg, the Norse god of fertility), and Lagurzday (from the Scandinavian tradition of naming one day as washing day). Sabbathdays were special days of the week which occurred at the beginning of each quarter (day 0) and which were national holidays. Leapsday was the other special day of the week, and was any day after day 90 in any quarter. Q3 always had a leapsday, and Q4 had one every leap-year. The year-break was originally placed on March 21 to roughly coincide with Theodia's founding on April 22, but it was later moved to the winter solstice. When this move happened, the leapsdays were shuffled, such that Q1 always received a leapsday, and Q3 received one on a leap-year.
The rationale behind adding the extra days to the more wintry quarters had to do with a mystical relation between having a longer quarter and longer nights.
- Epoch
The Runic Era, abbreviated RE, was used from 2010CE to 2011CE. It places the epoch roughly around the time that runic writing systems are believed to have come into existence, about 250BCE.
A multi-era system of epochs based on Sri Yutekswar's interpretation of the Yuga Cycle was also considered, but it didn't have the scalability, among other things, of a continuous system; and the Yuga Cycle isn't believed in strongly enough by the average Theodian in order to support basing the calendar off of it.
- Formatting
Dates in the quartered calendar were big-endian, like the European date-system.[more info needed]
Reformed
- General
Before the adoption of the Universal Calendar, there was serious talk of returning to a modified quarterly calendar so as to increase compatibility with the Ergonomic system's radial representation of time, by representing the cyclical solar year with a similar four-quarter system. It would have used the same epoch as the halved Kalendar.
- Weeks
The reformed quarterly Kalendar would have had 6-day weeks. The individual days-of-the-week wouldn't have had names, instead simply being numbered; but their functions would, of course, have had names. A six-day week has many of the benefits that the twelve-day week used by the The reformed quarterly Kalendar has, but is more familiar to users of seven-day and five-day weeks, being the equivalent of a seven-day week with one less workday (so, the four-day work-week with one less sabbath). It also would have brought back the notion of auxiliary days-of-the-week, as used by the original quarterly Kalendar—a feature forgotten by the later Kalendars, and whose lack made notational reckoning of "intercalary" days confusing. In the reformed Kalendar, these two auxiliary days are: 0, which would have been used for the first day of each quarter, and 7, which would have been used for leapdays at the end of each quarter. There would have been 15 weeks per quarter.
- Quarters
Instead of years, the calendar would have counted quarters, in-line with the the reasoning behind the four-hour day and the conventions of most of the previous Kalendars. Also in-keeping with the format of the four-hour day, the quarters would have been numbered starting from zero. Each quarter would have been of 91 days, with exceptions for the third quarter, which would have always had 92 days, and the first quarter, which would have had 92 days every leap-year. The zeroeth quarter would have begun on the winter solstice, and leapyears would occur as necessary to keep the first day of the zeroeth quarter on the winter solstice. The winter solstice was chosen as the location of the year-break for compatibility with how Theodians view daytime, with night at the bottom of the circle. The leapdays were placed near the winter and summer solstices, as they represent the astronomical extremes of each season, and so were considered to be more generally significant than the equinoxes.
- Formatting
[more info needed]
See also
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