Should We Update the Calendar?

I say go for it...

I didn't see a description of the proposed calendar. Is it the one that has four quarters, each consisting of three months of 30, 30, and 31 days (13 weeks), plus one or two "world days" according to whether it is a leap year?

That one was a good idea, but it met some silly religious opposition.

Interesting. That is slightly different from the one I was remembering, and it always maintains 7-day weeks, which probably answers the religious opposition I mentioned. My own preference would be to keep the years more nearly uniform.

It's a money saver, a move to better efficiency, a simplifier of life planning, why would you oppose such a thing? And just because you're used to it, doesn't count...

What is the point? you still have months of 30 and 31 days to remember.

Still have corrections every year or every few years.

The hand nucle counting methode works well for the present calendar.

The only real solution to the calendan issue is to adjust the earth rotating speed to be an integer of its orbit around the sun. Then, fix the moon orbit to take 30 days exactly. We also have to sinchronise the earth wobble around the axis. There are a few more tweaking needed to make everything work well but we have to start somewhere...

Why don't we start by making the hours of the day a nice round number of say 100 units, divided in hundredth of hour...

Hey- I bet if we would redefine the degree slightly, say !/372 part of a circle, then recalculate the length of the day to be exactly 100 time units (possibly slight adjustment to the definition of a second), then we have changed the length of the year, and have digital time. Every 20 years or so, we redefine the degree to accommodate variations in earth's rotation about the sun, then maybe shift the definition of the second a few Hertz.

Hey, I like this! With this system, we no longer have to worry about why the speed of light is a constant!

Actually, the regorian Calendar, which was first proposed in 1582, was not fully accepted world wide until the 1920's (when the USSR, Greece and Turkey finally adopted it). I think we should give it a few more years to run before we start screwing with it. Unless, of course, you can figure out a way to get everyone in the world to change at once...

To quote Charlie Brown, "Good grief".

Is it asking too much to remember the number of days in 12 months? Or that every 4 years there is an extra day in Feb? Is not having to remember that information going to free up some neurons for something more important, like what the Kardashian girls are doing this week or who won American Idol (or the latest reality show contest).

Is it possible that expending some effort to understand complex relationships of every day occurrences (i.e. trip around the sun and the number rotations of the earth) has more benefit to an individual than just knowing that relationship.

I don't get it. The first lines says, "Tired of trying to remember when leap year hits, which months have 30 days, and more? ". But the proposed calendar has months March, June, Sept and Dec with 31 days while the rest have 30.

So it just changes which months have 30 and 31 days. While it gets rid of Feb having a different number of days than the rest of the months of the year, there is still an odd length year every 5 or 6 years. Is that so much different than a leap year every 4 years giving us an extra day in Feb that year?

The advantage is your birthday and other yearly events always fall on the same day of the week. How boring.

The problem is an year of 365.25days cannot be divided equally by 52(weeks)or 7(days), therefore any day,say your birthday or Christmas will never fall on the same day of the week.

I think we need to wait till the earth slows it's rotational speed down to 365 days per year from 365.25. Once it slows down, we eliminate leap year, then switching to new calender is a non issue. Got to get rid of that .25 extra day/yr.

Switching will most likely make some programmers wealthy while they sell their services to "fix" all the programs out there that use the Gregorian scheme. Does anyone remember Y2K??? Lot's of COBAL hacks got a lot of work out of that!

_{Not complaining mind you...I can still cut code pretty well}

If we were to change, we should also think about aligning the summer solstice with New Years Day (for us 'Stralians - winter solstice for euros & yanks) - oh and also adopting a base 12 counting system - then we will have 20 hour days! but evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6 & 12!

Thirty days hath September,

all the rest I can't remember.

If I want to know them all,

I look at the calendar on the wall.

-

And now you want to change it?

It would be the same ol' system for you.

Just look at the Calendar on the wall.

It's only a protocol, like this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_calendar

I prefer the following one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar

because it's easy - all months have the same number of days and all days have the same position inside a week. I'm sorry it was never adopted.

Some might argue that each month will have a Friday 13-th :). This can be avoided by starting each week (and month) with a Monday (as it is used in Europe).

"starting each week (and month) with a Monday (as it is used in Europe)"

If we think of religious acceptance, we must think the 7-day week is a basic element which is kept in every proposal for calendar reform.

According to the OT, Saturday is the 7th. day.

The NT refers to Sunday as the 1st. day.

I guess the change to considering Monday as the 1st. day started in Germany in the 1930s.

brgds

Snel

I don't know when and where was used Monday as a first day and it's not very important if we use Sunday or Monday as the first day of the week. However, according to the religion, didn't God create everything during 6 days and then He rested during the 7-th? And wasn't Sunday the rest day? I live in Europe and I visited several European countries - all of them use Monday as the first day.

But I have no problem in accepting Sunday as the first day as I have no problem with Friday 13-th, black cats or any other superstition. The main question is: what do you think about this proposed calendar?

Given that no religious text allows for dates on Mars it would be necessary to re-engineer it when colonisation begins.

Given that the Moon is a satellite of Earth would an Earth-based calendar be applicable there despite the different length of the lunar "day"?

Sorry but have you looked to the link I posted? It is about a calandar for Earth (has nothing to do with Mars).

The point is that any calendar is only applicable to the rock being occupied.

Salut Alex.,

just provoking, don't take it too seriously...

Saturday was the rest day at the beginning, it was changed to Sunday later on.

I think [with present information systems] rules don't have to be simple anymore. So there will be less motivation for a simplified calendar, given inconveniences of change in general. Just think of the inchic system, which is still in use, as opposed to the SI...

Snel

I'm actually much more tired of daylight savings time.

When I woke up today.. It was very dark..

When I go to bed tonight.. It will be very dark..

Daylight savings time can kiss my ass.. It don't fool me

Many business calendars, like the one on my desk, number the days of the year. Today is the 58th day of 2012. Of course, the calendar also tells me it's February 27th. Months are an unnessary complication, like AM and PM. Some electronic clocks can be set to display 24-hour time, and the military has long used 24-hour time. If someone scheduled a meeting 13:30 on Monday the 65th, I wouldn't mind, but it might confuse some people till they got used to it.