141–150 of 174 posts
Now, imagine we stopped caring about that anyway. Ok, leave days, but the rest? Superfluous. How about decimal time? 100,000 seconds in a day, count days and be done with it. When is Xmas? In 300 days.
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…
Sure, but back then there wasn't even a globally recognised calendar. Nor did they have a near-instantaneous global communications network, or a global governing body such as the UN. These days, if the UN decided to take such a step, they could give 10 years advance notice, and on the decided day everyone would just flick the switch. We've already shown that w are capable of managing this sort of change when we went through the y2k "bug" without any major dramas, despite this requiring a large percentage of the world's information systems needing to be updated / tested. So I personally wouldn't anticipate any significant friction after the UN signed-off.
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…
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.
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…
Pretty nice! Too bad a non-trivial segment of the population won't be happy with 13. You might as well call the new month Deviluary. :D
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It doesn't. Quarters just become 13 weeks. They'd mostly correspond to existing quarters as well, give or take a couple of days at each end.
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 think not bothering with months at all would be
better than having a 13 month year.
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.
Quote from the proposal: "For example, the adoption of Universal Time would give new flexibility to economic management in the vast East-West expanse of Russia: everyone would know exactly what time it is everywhere, at every moment. Opening and closing times of businesses could be specified for every class of business and activity. If thought desirable, banks and financial institutions throughout the country could be required to open and to close each day at the same hour by the world time. This would mean that bank employees in the far East of Russia would start work with the sun well up in the sky, while bank employees in the far west of Russia would be at their desks before the sun has risen. "
The article omits this in its summary.
From another point of view, a given date gradually occurring on every day of the week is a feature, not a bug. I see that the proposed calendar puts my birthday on a weekend, every year year after year, but I kind of like my birthday (and my wedding anniversary, and other important dates) occurring on a new day of the week each year, for variety. I note too that the calendar would not "make it easy to plan annual act…
that "new memory load" is functionally zero, since no one would have to remember that. By the time the Extra week actually arrived, people would have been looking forward to it for an entire year, and it would not catch anyone by surprise. No memory required. Even subterranean cave trolls would be aware it is coming. I think it's a nice idea especially if we could have a big weeklong worldwide party once every 5 or 6…
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 think not bothering with months at all would be better than having a 13 month year. The phases of the moon are 28 days long. So a 13 month calendar also lines up with the lunar cycle. The more you think about it, you wonder how they ever came to the conclusion to use 12 months instead of 13.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon and see the synodic period (quoted to a tenth of a second even though full moon to full moon can vary by about ¼ day either way).)
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…
The most recent one, the transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, lasted for about 400 years, as different countries transitioned at different times, with, I'm sure, plenty of friction caused by the lack of synchronization. Sure, but back then there wasn't even a globally recognised calendar. Nor did they have a near-instantaneous global communications network, or a global governing body such as…
The UN doesn't have that authority, either politically or morally. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durban_Review_Conference