{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1742",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1742,
    "subject": "28-day \"moonths\" [Digest urth.v028.n015]",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-08-13T10:22:12+00:00",
    "last": "1999-08-13T10:22:12+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0052@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "John Bishop",
        "address": "jbishop at blkbrd.zko.dec.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-08-13T10:22:12+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re: 28-day \"moonths\" [Digest urth.v028.n015]",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "You have to alternate between long and short months,\nor the lunar connection disappears: if you pick any\nwhole number of days, it'll be off by half a day.\n\nThis means that the full Moon starts out on the first,\ntwo months later is on the second [if the count is long,\nand a day early if it is short], another two months\nlater the full Moon is on the third; gradually it will\nrotate through a whole month, over a period of about\nfour years.\n\nIf you pick 28 days, then you're 1.5xxx days off, and \nthe rotation is faster.  It's hard to call it a lunar\nmonth when it's not connected to the Moon.\n\nThe unending cycle of 28-day periods is more like weeks;\nuncorrelated with anything astronomical (which is OK).\nThe Mayan calendar had several such cycles, of varying \nnumbers of days (20?, 13?), so that the rotation from\nthe equivalent of Monday the 1st of July back to the\nnext Monday the 1st of July took a long time (as it does\nfor us, too).  But it's not lunar reckoning: you can't\nlook at the sky and read the date, as you can in a true\nlunar calendar.\n\nThe reason for all the Moon names (Hunters' etc) is that\ndue to the way the lunar months mesh with the solar year,\nthe full Moon shows up at different solar dates.  So a\nfull Moon on Oct 1 gets one name, and a full Moon on Oct\n7 gets another name.  I don't think this was ever elaborated\ninto a full system.\n\nThis all aside, I agree that the _ad_hoc_ calendar, like \nthe seasonally varying lengths of watches/hours, is meant\nto make Urth both more foreign and less technical.  The\nway both refer to usages of our own past is deliberate.\nWe are give strong clues that Urth is in our future and\nthat it is in our past, up to Severian's musing about\nechos of time when in the Jungle Garden (if I recall correctly).\n\n\t-John Bishop"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}