Total Confusion: A New Calendar Suggestion

[Gridlock]

http://www.popsci.com/science/articl...-identical-one

Each year stays the same, so Jan.3 is a Tuesday for the end of time. No leap years, instead a leap week every 5 years.

I think at the end of the day, we need to devote our scientists to solving real problems.

As the calendar turns over to a new year, a couple of researchers over at Johns Hopkins University are rethinking the way we tick off the days during our annual trip around the sun. The duo has devised a new yearly calendar in which each 12-month period is identical to the one before--meaning if your birthday is on a Monday one year, it’s on a Monday every year--until the end of time.

The Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar--named for Richard Conn Henry and Steve H. Hanke at JHU, the researchers behind the reformed calendar--isn’t just a realignment of the way we count days, but a simplification of the overall economic rhythm of the world. All the time and effort spent adjusting calendars and schedules every year to accommodate shifting days of the week could be saved, they argue. The man hours and money saved by a uniform year would be tremendous.

The calendar consists of the same12 months as the current Gregorian year, but the months have been adjusted subtly to make each quarter exactly 91 days long--two 30-day months and one 31-day month. That means September, June, March, and December would become the long months, while February would gain a couple of days.

Speaking of February, leap years would be dropped from the calendar completely. To make up for the remainder days (each Earth year is 365.2422 days long, and that remainder must be accounted for to keep the seasons from wandering out of sync with the months), Hanke and Henry propose adding a week to the end of December every five or six years to bring everything back into alignment.

In doing so, they wouldn’t disturb the carefully curated order that keeps days of the seven-day week aligned with the same dates each year. That’s key, they say, because most attempts to reform the calendar have failed because of objections to breaking up the seven-day week (it doesn’t matter what Sabbath you celebrate, you still have to keep it holy--therefore, you need that traditional seven-day week).

For all of its perceived benefits the Hanke-Henry calendar still doesn’t explain why the NCAA Football Championship always falls on a Monday night, but nobody’s perfect. There’s a lot more about the concept calendar here, including a proposed timetable for its adoption (the proposed date is Jan. 1, 2017) and an argument for switching to a universal clock that dispenses with time zones, daylight savings, and the like.

[RRxtar]

Originally Posted by Gridlock

http://www.popsci.com/scien...h-year-identical-one

Each year stays the same, so Jan.3 is a Tuesday for the end of time. No leap years, instead a leap week every 5 years.

I think at the end of the day, we need to devote our scientists to solving real problems.

like making copy and pasting links easier

[Presto]

Linky for those not wanting to search:
A Rethought Calendar Makes Each Year Identical to the One Before | Popular Science

[Great68]

No more leap years would be nice... People on monthly salary pay no longer have to work for free on Feb 25th...

[FerrariEnzo]

i hope they make the calendar so my birthday is on the weekend forever..

[AzNightmare]

Not sure will this pass... kind of doubt it.
But only because I think most of the population will not want change, including myself.

Although I did read through the article including this one.
Calendar Reform
I didn't fully understand everything, but the potential issues seem well covered.

I don't really mind about my birthday being in the middle of the week.
It's not like all my life, I have only been celebrating my birthday whenever it landed on a weekend.
It's really not that big of a deal. Most of us already just celebrate it on the closest weekend.

[Gridlock]

Originally Posted by Great68

No more leap years would be nice... People on monthly salary pay no longer have to work for free on Feb 25th...

They gave me a hard time, so I'm reciprocating.

Would you mean the 29th?

[bloodmack]

they can implement it but it wont ever be worldwide.. Good luck.

[Great68]

Originally Posted by Gridlock

They gave me a hard time, so I'm reciprocating.

Would you mean the 29th?

Yep, that'd be it.

My brain took the day off today.

[Gridlock]

Originally Posted by Great68

Yep, that'd be it.

My brain took the day off today.

So did mine, apparently.

[RTS]

As long as my bday is a friday or saturday, I'd be cool with it

[Presto]

It mentions the man hours and money saved by uniform year would be tremendous. I strongly disagree. The modification to the day that DST occurs was bad enough. I can't imagine the excruciating headache that modifying the calendar would cause. Save money, my ass.

[TOS'd]

On the upside, my birthday would be on a friday for the rest of my life..

[buddy]

my suggestion is to make same days in each month, maybe 30 (365 divide by 12)??

comes to think of it ... anyone know why each month has the days it has?

[InvisibleSoul]

I think overall, it actually is a better system... but it's too hard to change something like this that's universally accepted by almost the entire population of Earth.

Similar to how there's little argument the metric system is vastly superior to the imperial system, but yet it's been almost impossible to get countries still stuck on imperial to switch over.

The biggest quirk with the new proposed system is this:

Hanke and Henry propose adding a week to the end of December every five or six years to bring everything back into alignment.

So every 5-6 years, there will be a random extra week after December 31st.

[Gridlock]

Originally Posted by buddy

my suggestion is to make same days in each month, maybe 30 (365 divide by 12)??

comes to think of it ... anyone know why each month has the days it has?

Yeah, I was reading about the Julian vs. Gregorian calendar systems on wikipedia after I read this article.

The Romans fucked it up.

The whole problem comes from the fact that a solar year isn`t a straight 365 days. The romans named the months after themselves(well, the emperors).

From Wikipedia:

The more modern Gregorian calendar eventually superseded the Julian calendar: the reason is that a tropical year (or solar year) is actually about 11 minutes shorter than 365.25 days. These extra 11 minutes per year in the Julian calendar caused it to gain about three days every four centuries, when compared to the observed equinox times and the seasons. In the Gregorian calendar system, first proposed in the 16th century, this problem was dealt with by dropping some calendar days, in order to realign the calendar and the equinox times. Consequently, the Gregorian calendar drops three leap year days across every four centuries.

Done by:

Every year that is exactly divisible by four is a leap year, except for years that are exactly divisible by 100; the centurial years that are exactly divisible by 400 are still leap years. For example, the year 1900 is not a leap year; the year 2000 is a leap year

[Gridlock]

Forgot to mention, the calendars all started adding in days to bring it out to 365 days, while still maintaining the 7 day week important for religion.

February, for some reason has been 28 days since before the adoption of the Julian calendar, so since before the supposed birth of christ.

[drunkrussian]

i would hate to have my bday fall on a monday each year etc
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