41–50 of 77 posts
So is the extra day, or two days during a leap year, simply appended to the year, waited out and ignored? It's an interesting concept; similar to the Time-slip in Red Mars. Wanting a Martian day to equal that of an Earth day, colonists define the time between 00:00 and 00:01 as being 39 minutes 40 seconds in length. I guess most peoples' minds go immediately to, "do I have to work it?". Mine did.
It's essentially the same as the positivist calendar except:
* gregorian names are kept
* the extra month is inserted before july and is called Sol
* the extra day on leap years is inserted before the 1st of Sol
* was in actual use by Kodak until 1989 (amazing!)
The article fails to make the distinction between lunar and solar calender. It's just about dividing the solar year to equal months, but we also want to make the month align with the moon, which circles earth for 29.5 days on average. The big problem with the Gregorian calendar, in my opinion is that it so clearly missed the lunar month. it just feels intolerably close, but not quite there... by the way, no need to i…
I love the idea, but this has no chance of happening in my lifetime. I'm still holding out hope that the US will switch to the metric system however.
Then judaist religious backlash kicked in, and here we are.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the current system doesn't deserve to be called hard to deal with OK, then tell me what day of the week May 4th, 2054 will be.
How often do you really need to know what day of the week a specific date in 40 years will fall on? The current system will stand, because however irrational it is, it is good enough . Not to mention, people don't like things that aren't classified. I think there would be a lot of people that didn't like having day 365 (and 366) be unclassified as days. That is another hack that would probably end up doing more harm…
Exactly like a broken but popular API. It's still fundamentally bad.
>Not to mention, people don't like things that aren't classified. I think there would be a lot of people that didn't like having day 365 (and 366) be unclassified as days.
I think we'd all be relieved to have a separate classification space for leap days (29 February is an abomination) and other adjustments we might have to add here and there. We could dedicate these days to generic "spiritual and religious celebrations" to make traditionalists happy, call it "Holy Month" or something. It's a very subjective judgement anyway, one way or the other.
>You'd have (13) 4 week months, plus (1) one-day or two-day month. Hardly an elegant system worth changing for.
Still much more elegant that the current mess.
I'd make one change to Asimov's scheme. He gets rid of months. I'd keep them, with each season consisting of 3 months: 2 of 30 days and 1 of 31 days.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How often do you really need to know what day of the week a specific date in 40 years will fall on? The current system will stand, because however irrational it is, it is good enough . Not to mention, people don't like things that aren't classified. I think there would be a lot of people that didn't like having day 365 (and 366) be unclassified as days. That is another hack that would probably end up doing more harm…
>The current system will stand, because however irrational it is, it is good enough. Exactly like a broken but popular API. It's still fundamentally bad. >Not to mention, people don't like things that aren't classified. I think there would be a lot of people that didn't like having day 365 (and 366) be unclassified as days. I think we'd all be relieved to have a separate classification space for leap days (29 Februar…
And yet, not bad enough to @deprecate.
> Still much more elegant that the current mess
I'd argue that it's just as much of a hack... if there was something that was obviously better, I'd be all for it, but this is just a different mess. I'd rather deal with the devil I know...
I've been a proponent of this reform for a while. Strangely on my way into work this morning I was trying to figure out why a week is 7 days and not some other division. I thought maybe it was religious, but I now think it has more to do with lunar cycles being close to 28 days and that predating any religious foundation. 12 months has the benefit of dividing the seasons into 3 month quarters. However having an uneve…
A fun read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Week#.22Weeks.22_in_other_calen... In general, I can't imagine what month reform could be done that would be worth the pain of switching. Computers are doing all the hard calculations now. While calendars throw programmers for a loop sometimes, what really nails programmers (and therefore computers) are timezones and all the screwy things we do with seconds. Changing calendars…
Saying that it doesn't matter because computers do it for us is just hiding dirt under the carpet. I agree that timezone and second adjustments are more problematic, but having a more rational overall approach would also help there: you would have a "hack zone" where to dump all the madness (the special 1-day/2-days period), making it easier to deal with any adjustment. Currently, you are inserting most changes on 1 January and / or 31 December, but then also hacking February for no particular reason, all the while not being able to use the week as a meaningful unit.
Throughout history, we experienced periods when people would not shy away from bold cultural and rational changes in order to improve life for future generations. Holding the (adjusted) Gregorian calendar as an ultimate taboo is just sad.
The article fails to make the distinction between lunar and solar calender. It's just about dividing the solar year to equal months, but we also want to make the month align with the moon, which circles earth for 29.5 days on average. The big problem with the Gregorian calendar, in my opinion is that it so clearly missed the lunar month. it just feels intolerably close, but not quite there... by the way, no need to i…
It's actually unclear to me why we particularly care about how long it takes to orbit the Sun. Axial rotation, sure, the length of a day is important. But outside of that... why do we need particular units like weeks, months, and years at all?
I understand this is a bit of fun trying to rethink a very old thing, but the benefits are really bare even when looking past all the damage of a potential transition. Basically, you're consolidating the unevenness between years/months/days of the week to one special 1 or 2 day period. Ok, that's alright, but it still requires a bit of extra help. You still have to think through calendars understanding "Oh! I have to…
There are benefits for things like accounting, logistics/scheduling, standardizing periods for better comparative analysis, etc.
Such systems are already in common use (though the extra day of the year does create a wrinkle): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-4-5_calendar