Christmas Always On Sunday? Researchers Propose New Calendar 725
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have discovered a way to make time stand still — at least when it comes to the yearly calendar. Using computer programs and mathematical formulas, an astrophysicist and an economist have created a new calendar in which each new 12-month period is identical to the one which came before, and remains that way from one year to the next in perpetuity."
In a nutshell: (Score:5, Informative)
Jan 1 = Sunday, 30 days
Feb 1 = Tuesday, 30 days
Mar 1 = Thursday, 31 days
Apr 1 = Sunday, 30 days ...
May 1 = Tuesday, 30 days
Jun 1 = Thursday, 31 days
Then every 5-6 years, there's a leap *week* at the end of the year after December called Xtr, so Xtr 1, 2015 through Xtr 7, 2015 would exist as valid dates (in whatever order your country uses).
Each 12-month period is not identical (Score:4, Informative)
...have created a new calendar in which each new 12-month period is identical to the one which came before, and remains that way from one year to the next in perpetuity.
and then later in the article
This adjustment was necessary in order to deal with the same knotty problem that makes designing an effective and practical new calendar such a challenge: the fact that each Earth year is 365.2422 days long. Hanke and Henry deal with those extra “pieces” of days by dropping leap years entirely in favor of an extra week added at the end of December every five or six years.
So it does not remain consistant from one year to the next.
What, ANOTHER "leap week" calendar? (Score:5, Informative)
There have been many calendar-reform systems proposed, and "leap-weeks" are a common solution. Wikipedia has an article on leap week calendars [wikipedia.org] and lists five advantages and three disadvantages. It, in turn, points to a web page about leap week calendars [hermetic.ch] that details nine of them.
Henry's own web page [jhu.edu] doesn't mention the existence of other leap week calendars. It merely says the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar is better than the Gregorian calendar, not why it is better than the nine other leap week calendars. And it doesn't seem to present any particular plan for getting it adopted, beyond saying "It CAN be done, folks, and the decision is YOURS, not mine. Each of you," and the proof that it's feasible is that his mother has adapted to quoting Celsius temperatures. But what's needed is not a better calendar, but a better plan than anyone has heretofore come up with for getting it adopted.
Re:Not a bad idea but... (Score:5, Informative)
Time Zones... (Score:5, Informative)
Eh, not bad at first glance, but I can't be on board with zapping time zones. As someone who deals with international locations across the globe every single day, its a ton easier to find out "oh, they're 8 hours behind us" vs "Hmm, its 0900 Global. We just had lunch... what are they doing in New York at this time? Its 0900 there too - I think its still dark, but I don't know if its close to dawn or if they just woke up."
Sounds good in theory, but god it would suck.
Re:Not a bad idea but... (Score:2, Informative)
It wasn't Reagan, per se, but the fact that there is so much military hardware out there and being maintained
already the the conversion of theses systems are darn near impossible. It's not a matter of replacing a 1/4"x20
bolt with a "metric" equivalent measurement; all of those engineering drawings, etc, would have to be converted.
Plus all of the supporting tooling, etc. At the time (70's) it would have been far easier to convert the world to
U.S. standards.
Reagan just tabled the obvious.
Re:The government isn't willing to force it (Score:5, Informative)
For every day use, all you need is to have a sense of how much a unit is.
Here's a handy guide [xkcd.com].
Re:The government isn't willing to force it (Score:2, Informative)
As someone who's grown up with the metric system (Europe), I can assure you that it works just fine for 'normal activities' :) I think in the end it's just a matter of getting used to it. And frankly, I do understand why people resist it, because people who didn't grow up with either system are probably never going to get 'used to' the other system and be able to easily use it for everyday things.. that will have to come with the next generation of people that grow up with it
I was in my teens when my country switched form their native currency to Euros, and I still catch myself translating prices to the old currency in my head on occasion, to get a better sense of prices. Having to do that for all sorts of measurements would be hugely annoying I can imagine.
Re:In a nutshell: (Score:5, Informative)
I remember a lecture where they went over why the months have the number of days they do. I'm not sure this is entirely accurate but at least it helps me remember what months have how many days.
It was a 10 month calendar where it alternated between 31 and 30 days and started in March (Mars) which was the start of nice battle weather and ended in December and they just didn't bother counting the days in winter and waiting for spring to arrive. Eventually January and February were added to the end. to get this.
1 March 31
2 April 30
3 May 31
4 June 30
5 Quintilis 31
6 Sextilis 30
7September 31
8 October 30
9 November 31
10 December 30
11 January 31
12 February 28 basically whatever was left over.
Notice the first 4 months are named after Gods. So when Julius Cesear came to power he renamed the 5th Month July after himself. Then they also changed the order so it started with January.
Then Augustus came to power and took the 6th month. But he didn't want his month to be shorter so he changed it to 31 days and changed the rest of the months
to alternate from 30 to 31.
So that is why the months have the number of days they have.
Re:In a nutshell: (Score:4, Informative)
They appear to have discovered the World Calendar [wikipedia.org], a calendar proposed almost a century ago. The only noticeable difference is that they shifter which month had the 31 days.
I don't know how anyone goes about researching something new without first exploring what has been done before. It's not a great show of research prowess on their behalf.
3L 2L (Score:2, Informative)
Ummm... According to the guide, a two-liter bottle holds three liters.
Re:Not a bad idea but... (Score:3, Informative)
Or star trek like translators that convert units in real time, so each of us can be maximally free to use whatever system we choose.
Apparently NASA [wikipedia.org] didn't get that memo.
Re:In a nutshell: (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Everything would be on the same day every year. (Score:4, Informative)
Um, you might want to check that. Equinoxes (and solstices) mostly are. The only variability is because the terrestrial orbit is about 1/4 day longer than an integral number of days, but the effects of that are kept to a minimum due to leap years. We have an approximately astronomical calendar.
That the 7-day social cycle doesn't fit into the 365 day calendar is the source of most of the perceived and actual variation in dates (eg, American Thanksgiving is always a Thursday, President's Day is always a Monday, etc., which means those dates will never be the same from one year to the next), in addition to events which are determined by lunar cycle (like Easter, Passover, or Ramadan) which also doesn't neatly fit the terrestrial orbital period.
But as for equinoxes and solstices, they're mostly stable, varying by date only between two neighboring days. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox [wikipedia.org] .
Re:In a nutshell: (Score:5, Informative)
Contrary to what some would like you to believe, Christmas is not necessarily a "Christian" holiday to everyone.