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Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

edition.cnn.com

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Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#51

Post by tylerneylon »

I've been using an independent calendar for my own records for over a decade now - it's the day-of-year, written base 7. It fits in with weeks; if we reset weeks every year (why not? we do worse things already with leap days and seconds) then dates become equivalent with weekdays. One number expresses the day-of-year, day-of-week, week-of-year, and month-of-year, using a 49-day month.

http://tylerneylon.com/b/archives/122

I don't really expect many other people to use this, despite being a better designed system. I think hardcore math/cs people would like it, though. I've written some small pieces of code that work with this system, if anyone's interested.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#53

Post by vorg »

Some people, groups, or governments could change over on a case-by-case basis to a week-based system, without a sudden change to the worldwide date system. Just label the weeks with numbers, e.g. 1-Wednesday, 27-Monday, or 52-Sunday for Christmas this year.

It seems Chinese people generally don't remember the time of week so much as the Month and date. Whenever someone in China tells me "this is happening on the 28 November", in my mind I have to work out what day of week it is before I can internalize it in my memory. Chinese seem to just remember the month and date. Schools often say "Monday's and Tuesday's timetable will be shifted to the previous Saturday and Sunday, respectively".

And of course their idea is Western-centric. Chinese and Muslims both have their own calendars for festivals.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#54

Post by Navarr »

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 solves the exact same problem in a much cleaner fashion than this proposal.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#56

Post by mbreese »

I'd like to know how much extra complexity these leap weeks add to the calculations that would supposedly be easier... I would imagine that it is non-trivial.

Am I the only one that likes the fact that dates occur on different days? This way everyone's birthday will occur over a weekend every few years.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#58

Post by wavephorm »

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 basically everything imaginable becomes considerably easier.

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

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#59

Post by notatoad »

scythe wrote: post #55

Why preserve the seven-day week? The appropriate factorization of 365 is 73*5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordian_calendar Plus, the Discordian calendar has the advantage of already being implemented in Linux!

if you read the linked article, you see the explanation: the fourth commandment specifies resting on the seventh day. any proposed calendar that doesn't have a seven day week will never be adopted as long as religion still exists.

and even if it weren't for religion, everything is structured around a seven day week. changing that would mean a drastic lifestyle change for most people.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#60

Post by martythemaniak »

SquareWheel wrote: post #39
jaylevitt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously, the calendar ambiguity can be resolved by some sort of calendar NAT.

You know, let's just use Unix timestamps when marking future dates. Removes all ambiguity from calendar types, time zones, etc.

I like your idea, let's get together and discuss it over drinks. Hows your 1325357149?
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