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Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

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Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#131

Post by aGHz »

vacri wrote: post #118
mooism2 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, it breaks the assumption that quarters are a whole number of months. 12 is a handy number of months to have in the year. 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. Not by 5, but you can't have everything (unless we had 60 months of 6 or 7 days each... let's not go there). 13 is prime. I think not bothering with months at all would be better than having a 13 month year.

I like New York in weeks 22 to 25, how about you?

That sounds ridiculous now but it's actually not that bad when you get used to it. Besides, people would likely still keep the month names to refer roughly (if not even exactly) to periods of the year. The real benefit would be in dropping months from the business and commerce world.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#132

Post by colanderman »

Sorpigal wrote: post #125

For people who are apparently enlightened enough to realize that no calendar, however rational and perfect, will be accepted if it violates a certain religious rule (the sabbath), they are apparently quite ignorant in their advocacy of UTC for all purposes. It's all well and good to eliminate time zones as such and have each region operate on a fixed clock, but to suggest that people will simply stop paying attention…

I'm pretty sure they're not advocating screwing with the Circadian cycle. You still wake up and go to sleep with the sun; just now you wake up at 13h00 instead of 8:00 AM.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#133

Post by mikeash »

GreenNight wrote: post #109
lambda wrote: post #73

Have they come up with any estimate of the global cost of the switch, and compared that to the benefit of the new calendar? It seems to change a bunch of stuff, and add a complicated new "leap week", for no particularly good reason. Yeah, it might reduce the cost of printing calendars slightly, though a lot of people use new calendars yearly so they can write on them, and a lot more just use their computer. The cost…

Timezones are not an ugly hack. When you travel to a different timezones you just have to adjust your clock and, without asking, you know that shops open at 8~10am until 4~8pm with or without a midday stop for lunch (12~3). You have dinner at 18~22, and breakfast at 8~10. All the divergences depend on the country you are in but you can get good aproximations that work for 90% of them (breakfast 9, open shops 10, lunc…

With time zones, you have to know which time zone you're in and set your watch accordingly. With no time zones, you have to know what time local noon is and interpret your watch accordingly. The amount of information required, and the difficulty of using it, appears to be the same to me.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#134

Post by shasta »

gahahaha wrote: post #130
lambda wrote: post #73

Have they come up with any estimate of the global cost of the switch, and compared that to the benefit of the new calendar? It seems to change a bunch of stuff, and add a complicated new "leap week", for no particularly good reason. Yeah, it might reduce the cost of printing calendars slightly, though a lot of people use new calendars yearly so they can write on them, and a lot more just use their computer. The cost…

"""Have they come up with any estimate of the global cost of the switch, and compared that to the benefit of the new calendar?""" If there are ANY benefits at all from switching, then that benefit can be enjoyed every year forever, dwarfing the one-time cost of switching no matter how big that cost is.

You forgot to discount future benefits. Interest is exponential, meaning bounded gains that last forever have finite present day value.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#135

Post by gus_massa »

shimon_e wrote: post #47

So in a matter of a few thousand years we have gone from Emperors (Caesar) dictating calendars to scientists proposing new ones. :) These type of reforms were quiet popular in the beginning of the 20th century. E.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Calendar Had this proposal been suggested a century ago. I would have a good feeling it would have been made a reality since it doesn't interfere with a 7 day work w…

The former calendars were proposed by scientists, but named after the ruler that forced them:

Julian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar

"The Julian calendar began in 45 BC (709 AUC) as a reform of the Roman calendar by Julius Caesar. It was chosen after consultation with the astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria and was probably designed to approximate the tropical year (known at least since Hipparchus)."

Gregorian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar

"The Gregorian calendar reform contained two parts, a reform of the Julian calendar as used up to Pope Gregory's time, [...]. The reform was a modification of a proposal made by the Calabrian doctor Aloysius Lilius (or Lilio)."

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#136

Post by Navarr »

ars wrote: post #95
Navarr wrote: post #54

I just pointed this out to a friend and she gladly brought up the Shire calendar from Tolkien's works, which according to her has 12 months, 30 days a month, 7 days a week, 365 days a year with the date of each month staying the same weekday due to the separation of the five other days as holidays that are separate from the months (including leap-day, which doesn't belong to any day of the week). Which actually solve…

No it doesn't. Making a day not be part of any week breaks the strict 7 day cycle, and will be rejected be the vast majority of the world.

But if its only for seasonal holidays (lets say the two equinoxes, the solstices, and leap day) they'd make for worldwide accepted celebration points that wouldn't disrupt the "working week"

It'd be a little strange, but its really not any worse than adding a day in February every four years.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#137

Post by LeafStorm »

6ren wrote: post #34

Seems unlikely, yet, Europe switched to the euro. If we get better at software integration, different calendars might not be such a problem. We already convert between currencies, times and date formats. Is this really that much different to a new date-format, just with deeper syntactic changes? (rhetorical)

Computers have had to deal with multiple currencies from their inception, so the technical aspects of euro conversion were fairly minor. But they have never had to deal with an actual change in the rules of the calendar.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#138

Post by rmc »

jarin wrote: post #111
GreenNight wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Timezones are not an ugly hack. When you travel to a different timezones you just have to adjust your clock and, without asking, you know that shops open at 8~10am until 4~8pm with or without a midday stop for lunch (12~3). You have dinner at 18~22, and breakfast at 8~10. All the divergences depend on the country you are in but you can get good aproximations that work for 90% of them (breakfast 9, open shops 10, lunc…

I ran into a big problem with timezones when I was in the Navy. I was in charge of a big supply database server on an aircraft carrier, and every time we changed timezones I had to update the timezone on the server. Heading from East to West was no problem, but when we went from West to East I had to shut the server down for an hour when changing timezones, to prevent timestamps from overlapping. Admittedly, this was…

Just store all the dates and times in UTC, then convert to local time

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#139

Post by shimon_e »

gus_massa wrote: post #135
shimon_e wrote: post #47

So in a matter of a few thousand years we have gone from Emperors (Caesar) dictating calendars to scientists proposing new ones. :) These type of reforms were quiet popular in the beginning of the 20th century. E.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Calendar Had this proposal been suggested a century ago. I would have a good feeling it would have been made a reality since it doesn't interfere with a 7 day work w…

The former calendars were proposed by scientists, but named after the ruler that forced them: Julian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar "The Julian calendar began in 45 BC (709 AUC) as a reform of the Roman calendar by Julius Caesar. It was chosen after consultation with the astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria and was probably designed to approximate the tropical year (known at least since Hipparchus)." Gre…

Interesting. :)

Any rulers out there want a calendar named after them?

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