Hello Asgardia,

today, we received the approval of the draft of a calendar system for Asgardia with the Decree No 2 of our head of our nation. The formalization of the drafted calendar system is incomplete, the development not finished and the approval does not reflect or provide the technical standard on what the calendar system is based. The provided conversion chart combined with the provided information about the calendar system reflects that the approved calendar system is an IFC (Internation Fixed Calendar) derivate with additional fixations of the end of the year and the synchronization of the beginning of the Asgardian year to the exact same day of the beginning of the gregorian year. The calendar will desync after the first occurred leap year. The calendar does ignore the February 29th of the gregorian calendar. The calendar system is unaware of leap seconds. The calendar system binds too much historic society decisions to its new representational asgardia age. The calendar system suffers from the same mathematical issues as the gregorian calendar and the same mathematical incompatibility as the gregorian date and time standard. The calendar system does not cover the need or decoupling of time zones and the start date and time is vague and not fixated to a specific (ZULU) date and time.

In hard words: The approved calendar system is just executed inheritance with added sugar and honey. A scientific cataclysm for a nation based on science. We can do that better.

I strongly recommend to abrogate the engaged Decree and to not longer establishing a date and time system proposal by the head of the nation. Instead of the abrogated Decree immediately a Standard Authority of Asgardia should be formed by an executive order, completely decoupled from the government to work on standards utilized in Asgardian environments.

I propose ATESA as the name for the authority which stands for "Asgardia Technical and Environmental Standards Authority" and should be lead by a director of standards, who proposes new standards to the head of the nation and takes the responsibility of a proper and public available draft and recommendation documentation bundled into a ATESA (online) Library.

ATESA should operate with a public - technology aware and socially mixed - audience to gather feedback about formed drafts. If a draft is ready to be proposed, the head of the nation (or later the council of ministers) can approve the standard and turn the Draft into a Recommendation. Recommendations are contracted Standards to operate on. As you see, a 100% transparent approach.

I personally see no professionalism in proposing half-baked calendar concepts as the "big thing" to vote on for a parliament that still does not exists. I also see no reason to not reply to those who submit their proposals, explicitly when they ask for feedback about the standards from the point of view of an acting government. I see the reason to improve such processes. That's why I do write this. That's where my hope is focussing.

Thank you,

nihylum
Singularity Prime - Think Tank

Hi!

I'm sorry but I think you misread the decree? It's a proposed calendar. Not a finalized version. :) It was never stated that it would be put into effect.

I hope that clears it up for you!

EDIT: Great feedback though on how it wouldn't work and why! You should post that in one of the decree threads so everyone can see it and give feedback on it.

Kind regards,
Rebekah Berg, Lead Community Administrator, Asgardia

Hello Rebekah, thank you for your feedback.

A decree is an authoritative order and will be automatically understood as the wish of the (current) government to use what has been proposed. That why I file this recommendation to abrogate the decree and I wish that this recommendation will be sent to the head of our nation for consideration. I welcome an official statement.

I'll link this topic into the decree threads.

Hello!

Okay, I understand and acknowledge your viewpoint on this. It was already sent along when I posted by original reply. :)

Kind regards,
Rebekah Berg, Lead Community Administrator, Asgardia

Thank you for the feedback. About the leap year - it is addressed in the last point of the Decree. Concerning your proposal about establishing a standartisation authority, it will happen in due time within the scope of the distribution of the tasks between the Ministries.

Hello Lena,

the leap year support is mandatory when synchronizing to the gregorian calendar system it is theoretically and practically not possible to address it later. It must be covered by the date and time standard when defining it this way.

Forming Standards is no task of a government, it should not happen when the ministries receive their tasks. It should coexist and established earlier. A standards authority is needed before standards are engaged. Sounds logical, or not?

Thank you for your feedback.

+1 Standards authority

It's sanity - clear sanity. However, there is the "XKCD effect" https://xkcd.com/927/ - in an effort to eliminate redundancies of mulitple standards ours should take into account all existing it is possible to get. They should consider more than itself, and self mitigate any negatives introduced in the attempt.

A good example of what I'm talking about is something as simple as a screw. I say "screw" - we all loosely think the same thing, but the actuality between head and thread is there thousands of different types of screw. Not many people spot the difference at a glance between M3 and M2.5(which are in themselves, standards). As much as you'd not want lots of similar things lying about - you'd not want lots of vastly different things lying about. A posidriver is no good for a triwing - So many tools to effectively achieve the same task.

Some sort of standardised operation would alow operations in space to be conducted cleanly, and more efficiently. Safely. Lift weight of 174 bit heads, or lift weight of one?

Yeah, my standard approach ( to remember, I wrote the Stardate Recommendation https://prime.singularity.name/stardate/stardate-standard.pdf ) for example is Gregorian Inclusive and a double standard.

I fully with you EyeR.

@ nihylum - I am in full agreeance. A nation based on science can do so much better than this.

Plus, does it strike anyone else as a bit "cart before the horse" to develop a new calendar before any standardization authority is established?

Not easy to answer, Scarbs.

Practically: It is useless to work on standards when there is no authority who is responsible for its maintenance and enforcement.

Theoretically: Only a blind and deadlocked society will blame you for work that you do immediately without pressure instead of when it is needed and under pressure. Real progress of a nation is achieved when no one limits people who have the ability to do demonstrate ingenuity, dedication or foresight conducted development.

Combine both and you will come to the conclusion that it is needed to form a standard authority when standards are about to be constructed. It is really that easy to communicate.

Plus, does it strike anyone else as a bit "cart before the horse" to develop a new calendar before any standardization authority is established?

No, not really.

Before any laws can be produced, communiques written, or any other form of community be established, certain baselines must be defined.

Measurements of time, mass, volume, and distance, and even the definitions of words must all be clarified before everyone truly understands what we are talking about.

For example, we are saying that Ministers are having terms of X years. Well... how long is a year? On Earth a year is 365¼ days, but in space, when a sunrise happens every 6000 seconds, some might call a day the time between sun rises. That would make 14.4 Asgardian days to each Earth day. Do we still hold to the 365 days (again, depending on the definition of a day), or do we adjust our calendar to our new concept of 'days', having over 5000 days per year?

I have seen arguments about helicopters on here that were going on between Asgardians because they both had different definitions of what a helicopter was. Unfortunately, we really do need to be this specific and pedantic to remove misunderstandings.

I think it's putting the cart before the horse to propose legislation for consideration by the Asgardian Parliament before an Asgardian Parliament exists.

Fully agree, it´s commonly adopted. We have no other choice but to hope that Decree #2 Case will be sufficient lesson and will not repeat.

I think Dr. A is setting a precedent for limited executive authority rather than misusing a term, actually. Decree N1 cited the authority of certified Asgardians as giving the Decree force of law. Decree N2 requires the approval of a legislative body before it takes effect. Maybe he's simply trying to avoid exercising power that hasn't been formally invested in him yet (we approved him to speak for us, but we didn't say he could issue decrees).

I recommend to re-read your application ^^

Are you saying you consider a decree to be a negotiation?

No, but I consider a head of a nation to act as one. Starting with negotiations, over doing executive orders and finally setting initial laws. If he won't be able to do that, the borders to run a nation are in danger or extremely expensive in it's construction (time).