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Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

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Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#101

Post by salvadors »

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)

Except Europe didn't simply switch to the Euro. Some members of the EU (plus a few others who aren't in the EU) switched to it, over a twelve year period, with some others pegged to it (and maybe switching some day), some other countries adopting it 'unofficially' (i.e. it's their official currency, but they're not officially members of the Eurozone), and some countries who theoretically must join, voting against it in a local referendum, and thus deliberately failing to meet the entry conditions on an ongoing basis so as they can't join.

(And this is, of course, ignoring all the logistical hassles involved in switching, never mind the much bigger questions, now very pertinent, as to whether trying to do all this may have been a cause of the downfall of Western Society, etc.)

So I suspect this example gives more weight to the 'unlikely' side, than the 'yet...' side.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#102

Post by masklinn »

eurleif wrote: post #74
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…

>Instead of trying to do hacks to get all of these cycles to line up, why not move in the other direction and take the approach of having regular cycles at different frequencies that do not line up? With that system, how do you refer to a particular date? YYYY-MM-DD doesn't make much sense anymore, since a month can span multiple years, and a day can span multiple months and/or years.

Mesoamerican (mostly known through Mayans, but others used the same calendar) had two ways of doing that.

First was the "Calendar Round", they had two non-synchronous "yearly" calendar of 365 days (Haab') and 260 days (Tzolk'in), giving a date in both calendars provided an exact identification in a repeating cycle (era) of 18980 days (~52 solar years).

Second was the "long count", a monotonically increasing calendar from a root date (think CE/BCE, except including days). A "long count" date is composed of a number of counters mostly in base 20: K'in (day), Winal (20 K'in), Tun (18 Winal), K'atun (20 Tun), B'ak'atun (20 K'atun) (dates have been found with even higher orders, but they're rare, those are the most common). A B'ak'atun unit represents ~394 solar years. This provides an unambiguous and very long term calendar. It's essentially what the UNIX system does, except starting from days (interestingly, a standard 5-units long count fits in just 22 bits, 31 bits [to account for signing] allows for 5.8 million years before wrap-around)

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#103

Post by yaix »

meric wrote: post #89
yaix wrote: post #18

The scientific part is simple, its just a little maths. The difficult part is to get 8 billion people to agree to pull in the same direction. And my guess is, that it will never happen, unfortunately.

Hey look, it worked when the Chinese government in the early 20th century switched to the Gregorian Calendar... Or did it? Paper calendars in China generally represent both Gregorian and Chinese calendar dates. I'm going to assume when this new calendar is adopted, the chinese will then be able to buy three calendars in one.

It was done mainly by force and in a society that had almost no reading skills back then. The same methods are (thankfully) difficult to apply in the West today.

And it only "kinda" worked, because in the Chinese countryside, where most people live, 80 years later they still mainly use 农历, not the Western calender, despite all government stuff being done in Western calender dates. (I lived in China for some 6 years, just left the country yesterday, walking across the border to Vietnam).

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#104

Post by masklinn »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #42

In Malaysia, if holiday falls on Sunday, it'll be "carried forward" to Monday (you still celebrate on Sunday, but Monday will be extra holiday). And in some companies, if holiday falls on Saturday, you get extra 1 day leave entitlement. Now, you can see conflicting interest here, especially between employees and employers :)

> Now, you can see conflicting interest here, especially between employees and employers :)

Why would there be a conflict of interest? The point is that employees always get the same number of "days off" per year is it not? The conflict of interest would arise in countries where holidays are not carried forward (or stashed in leave entitlements), employers interest would be to have all of them fall on week-ends, whereas employee interest would be to have all of them fall on week-days.

Or did I miss something?

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#105

Post by kiwidrew »

vineel wrote: post #16
k-mcgrady wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK there have been discussions about stopping DST. The main problem is that in places Scotland it would be darker for longer in the morning which could lead to more traffic accidents. The affects on crime and traffic accidents would be huge. And it would never be possible to get half of the planet to agree that they will forever work while it's dark and sleep while it is light.

I don't think the suggestion is that the working day everywhere should start at X:00. The idea is that 4:00 in California is 4:00 in Britain and 4:00 in China. When the day starts would vary from place to place; perhaps 1:00 somewhere and 12:00 somewhere else. The point is to eliminate the confusion caused by timezones, especially those like Nepal's which are 15 minutes off other time zones for no good reason.

Actually, China did get rid of timezones and daylight savings: officially, everywhere is on "Beijing time" (GMT+8).

This understandably causes problems in the far western provinces such as Xinjiang, so everyone just observes an unofficial GMT+6 time instead. This wreaks utter havoc on conversationd about time: bus schedules, shop opening hours, etc. Aside from the ambiguity, since it's not an official time zone, people overseas just assume they can call you to discuss business at 9am, even though you've barely woken up.

Time zones are complex because, well, the world is a big and complicated place. But theanswer is certainky not to just get rid of them!

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#106

Post by Too »

Swizec wrote: post #7

Here's a revolutionary thought - the calendar is already fixed. Sporting events (etc.) don't have to happen on the same weekday, they can just always happen on the same date. Voila, predictable time planning that doesn't have to be redone every year. And I love the idea of eliminating timezones, especially the example that pilots already use UTC. Ever considered this might be because the concept of "day" doesn't real…

Removing time zones would break any kind of cultural joke and reference to time. "omg, i woke up at 4am today!"... Especially in todays internet connected world.

Swatch tried to intruduce timezone-free time many many years ago called "swatch internet time", Ericsson even had it as default on some of their cell phones to promote it. Needless to say it didn't work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#107

Post by yaix »

biturd wrote: post #41
yaix wrote: post #18

The scientific part is simple, its just a little maths. The difficult part is to get 8 billion people to agree to pull in the same direction. And my guess is, that it will never happen, unfortunately.

I would tend to agree, but then we have things like DST shifting around all the time. The government just states they are making a change, and everyone does. Every software that isn't based on a network time server breaks, and is fixed, and we move on. The same could happen with this new calendar, the government simply mandates that by a certain year it has to be in place. The largest burden will be on legacy softwar…

I remember when I lived in Mexico some 12 years ago and the government introduced DST there. Some schools would actually start an hour later to sync their starting time with before-DST-time, people where complaing about being totally confused, etc. Don't know if there is still DST now or if they abandoned it because of the many (often totally irrational) protests. Its not easy to change people's habits.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#108

Post by ernesth »

wavephorm wrote: post #58

A more simple solution is to have 13 months of exactly 28 days, plus one day for new years day. That's even better because every month is exactly the same number of days which means semi-monthly and bi-weekly billing systems are the same thing. And because there's the same number of days anything billed per month can be easily prorated per day, and any billing cycle will match up with every other billing cycle... so…

> The only real problem is coming up with a name for a new 13th month and where to insert it.

The strange month is called 'Gidouille' and goes from june 15th to july 13th. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendrier_pataphysique

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#109

Post by GreenNight »

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, lunch 13, close 17, dinner 20).

But, if you go for an universal timezone, you've got to learn the different times for the different activities again and again and again. You change a one step correction (change time on your watch) to a constant struggle.

With universal timezone: You wake up when travelling, it's 17:30 and you don't remember the country unless you do the mental effort to wake up, it's time to get up or not? You start to calculate and... too late to decide, you are already woken and could not get back to sleep even if you wanted.

With different timezones: You wake up when travelling, it's 2:30 and you don't remember the country unless you do the mental effort to wake up, it's time to get up or not? No, time to sleep some more.

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