Amos Shapir wrote:

> Exactly.  As Simon Cassidy had pointed out, we can never achieve enough
> accuracy; every time we think we did, the Earth-Sun-Moon system pulls
> yet another trick on us...
>
> That's why I consider the whole business of calendar reform as just a
> parlor game; we should never have left the Julian calendar anyway.  So
> what if certain astronomical and religious dates would have to be shifted
> by one day every 100 years or so?  The effect on an average person's life
> would never be felt more than once in a lifetime, at most.

Actually Amos, what I have been trying to get across (apparently I need
to communicate more carefully) is that, to the contrary, if the earth,sun
and moon have somehow conspired to do anything, it is that they have made
life for us calendar makers, (in this ten-thousand year epoch starting
around 3-4000 BC), as convenient as they possibly could, subject
to the larger (cosmic) framework of strictures laid down by who knows
what, and partly interpreted to us through such geniuses as Omar Khayyam,
Dr. John Dee, Newton, Einstein and so on.

It is not the Earth and Sun and Moon who have tricked you, tricked the
Greek Orthodox Church, tricked Gordon Moyer, tricked the world, it is
the modern United States Naval Observatory and Greenwich Royal Observatory.

But don't get so defeatist! You're starting to sound like the poor English
Elizabethan Bishops who refused to countenance a change in the calendar on
the grounds that the world was going to end soon anyway, so why bother!

Persevere, do the math and the veil will be lifted! My current studies of
Dee and his mathematical angels is starting to give me constant ecstasy!

Chris Carrier wrote:

>How can 365.25-(7/900) be less accurate than 365.2425?  Although 365.2425
>might be more accurate for the time being in computing the time from March
>to March equinox, over thousands of years this will change and the March
>will no longer be the closest to 365.2425 of the four seasonal events.

Chris, listen to yourself! You have answered most of your question by
admitting that the Gregorian value is more accurate for the time being,
so your real question must be about what happens in the future. And the
answer to that depends on how far into the future you wish to probe. Let
me first tell you that the Gregorian value will get more accurate,  versus
the Greek Orthodox value, over the next millenium, all things being equal.

My caveat (all things being equal) pertains to the rotation of the Earth
which is already being measurably affected by human activities. So I
suggest you not worry too much about the future beyond 3000 A.D., because
well before that time (if any modern calendar has survived at all) we will
be full participants in Mother Earths every breath, nod and twirl in the
solar dance! The length of the year will be beyond the grasp of our current
mechanistic analyses. We and She shall set the tempo of the whirling
dervish sun-tranced life orbit!

Dee aimed at his ensuing three hundred years, he suceeded in predicting
the earth's dance to date, though we modern steam-powered watch-obsessed,
nations of shopkeepers have helped him out for the last century or so,
with our mean-time and our railway instigated time-zones. We can now extend
his result to carry us to that happy time when we and the Earth are on
better terms than analyst and inert dissected specimen.

I am just finishing my follow up proposal to my last "Thirty-three year
calendars" message. Hope to broadcast it tomorrow, if I can stop laughing
at the miraculous joke Dee and his angels have pulled.
--
Yrs, Simon Cassidy, 1053 47th.St. Emeryville Ca.94608,USA. ph.510-547-0684.