Editing 2542: Daylight Calendar
Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
The edit can be undone.
Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
Latest revision | Your text | ||
Line 8: | Line 8: | ||
==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
− | + | {{incomplete|Created at 164:32 o'clock - No comment yet on Cueball's delight in the extra dead line time. No direct explanation on how the 21 december for a week comes about in the title text. Only indirect from other parts of explanation. Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} | |
− | + | At the time of this posting, the United States had ended {{w|daylight saving time}} (DST) recently, on November 7, and returned to standard time. Daylight saving time is a practice of setting clocks ahead by 1 hour during warmer months to effectively 'borrow' some of the typically unused early morning light and pass it down to the late evening where more people can make use of it. In the United States, daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November. | |
− | In this comic, however, Randall turns the normal talk about DST on its head by devising a [[:Category:Calendar|calendar system]] where the dates "change" based on 12 hours of daylight. This causes shorter "days" in the summer months, which may get more than 12 hours of daylight in a "solar day" and longer "days" in the winter months which would have | + | A result of ending of daylight saving time is the sun setting earlier than people are used to, as people have become acclimatised to the shifted clocks — though it does mean an 'extra' hour of light has returned to the seasonally redarkening mornings. The first sentence of the comic may be the start of a typical comment about how the sun seems to set earlier than usual in November; which it does anyway (north of the equator) but the clock-shift makes it even more obvious. |
+ | |||
+ | In this comic, however, Randall turns the normal talk about DST on its head by devising a [[:Category:Calendar|calendar system]] where the dates "change" based on 12 hours of daylight. This causes shorter "days" in the summer months, which may get more than 12 hours of daylight in a "solar day" and longer "days" in the winter months which would have less hours of daylight in a "solar day". As mentioned in the title text, this change would be very pronounced near the poles, which may only get a few hours of daylight in the winter, but conversely may get 20 or more hours of daylight in the summer. | ||
At temperate latitudes and above, as the calendar goes towards winter (for your hemisphere) the length of daylight per daily cycle shortens. Instead of having "long summer days" (i.e. periods of daylight) and shorter ones in the winter, but still the artificial pressures of a regulated 24-hour cycle to adhere to, the proposal seems to be that the date gets incremented whenever (and ''only'' when) twelve hours of daylight have passed. | At temperate latitudes and above, as the calendar goes towards winter (for your hemisphere) the length of daylight per daily cycle shortens. Instead of having "long summer days" (i.e. periods of daylight) and shorter ones in the winter, but still the artificial pressures of a regulated 24-hour cycle to adhere to, the proposal seems to be that the date gets incremented whenever (and ''only'' when) twelve hours of daylight have passed. | ||
Line 18: | Line 20: | ||
In the summer, a day-count starting at sunrise could require a late-afternoon switch to 'tomorrow', which would in turn be switched earlier still the next day as it was already partly used up, with possibly two date-changes per astronomical day (early morning and mid-evening, for example). As winter draws on, not enough daylight will pass to guarantee a date-change in any single period. On the day of this comic's release - November 15, 2021 - Massachusetts, where Randall lives, gets ten hours and forty five minutes between {{w|civil twilight}}s. It is possible that the last day-mark was late during the previous daylight cycle and the next one won't be until early in the following one. | In the summer, a day-count starting at sunrise could require a late-afternoon switch to 'tomorrow', which would in turn be switched earlier still the next day as it was already partly used up, with possibly two date-changes per astronomical day (early morning and mid-evening, for example). As winter draws on, not enough daylight will pass to guarantee a date-change in any single period. On the day of this comic's release - November 15, 2021 - Massachusetts, where Randall lives, gets ten hours and forty five minutes between {{w|civil twilight}}s. It is possible that the last day-mark was late during the previous daylight cycle and the next one won't be until early in the following one. | ||
− | Exactly how the time is marked is not fully explained. Starting each day-period at 00:00 would be easiest, but could be a psychological step too far. One possibility is to set a nominal 00:00 six hours before a day-change, in line with an ' | + | Exactly how the time is marked is not fully explained. Starting each day-period at 00:00 would be easiest, but could be a psychological step too far. One possibility is to set a nominal 00:00 six hours before a day-change, in line with an 'idealised' twelve-hours-of-daylight day, but disregard hours 'belonging' to a prior daylight period. Then keep the clock running (throughout any intervening nights and into the next daylight as necessary) until the date clicks over and realigns as necessary. Clock times would not reach 23:59 for most of the summer, and could far exceed that in the winter. Megan's clock has reached 26:15, by this sunset, and may well be due to be far into the 30-hours range before more daylight and the moving on to the new date and reset time, if not beyond. |
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | + | Beyond the arctic (and antarctic) circle, twelve hours of daylight would be accumulated up twice per traditional day, at times, while being effectively on hold for much of the other six months, depending upon actual latitude. | |
==Transcript== | ==Transcript== | ||
− | :[Megan is looking down at her phone which she holds up in her hand, while Cueball stands next to her | + | :[Megan is looking down at her phone which she holds up in her hand, while Cueball stands next to her]: |
:Megan: Ugh, I hate November. It's 26:15 and the sun is setting ''again!'' | :Megan: Ugh, I hate November. It's 26:15 and the sun is setting ''again!'' | ||
:Megan: 3-day days are the worst. | :Megan: 3-day days are the worst. | ||
:Cueball: I like it. I know it's dark, but it's nice to have the extra time on deadlines. | :Cueball: I like it. I know it's dark, but it's nice to have the extra time on deadlines. | ||
− | :[Caption below the panel: | + | :[Caption below the panel]: |
:In our new calendar system, the date changes after every 12 hours of daylight, regardless of how long that takes. | :In our new calendar system, the date changes after every 12 hours of daylight, regardless of how long that takes. | ||