Egyptian calendar of Kom Ombo temple, in Egypt.
Image: Flickr/guillenperez
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Forget leap years, months with 28 days and your birthday falling on a different day of the week each year. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland say they have a better way to mark time: a new calendar in which every year is identical to the one before.
Their proposed calendar overhaul — largely unprecedented in the 430 years since Pope Gregory XIII instituted the Gregorian calendar we still use today — would divvy out months and weeks so that every calendar date would always fall on the same day of the week. Christmas, for example, would forever come on a Sunday.
"The calendar I'm advocating isn't nearly as accurate" as the Gregorian calendar, said Richard Henry, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins who has been pushing for calendar reform for years. "But it's far more convenient."
New versus old
The trouble with designing a nice, regular calendar is that each Earth year is 365.2422 days long, leaving extra snippets of time that don't fit nicely into a cycle of 24-hour days. If this time isn't somehow accounted for, the calendar "drifts" relative to the seasons, and the next thing you know, Christmas Day is coming after the spring thaw.
The Gregorian calendar deals with this by adding an extra day (Leap Day) to February about every four years, correcting for the seasonal drift.
"It's really incredible that in the Middle Ages, they were able to invent a new calendar that was so accurate," Henry told LiveScience. What bothers him about the Gregorian calendar, though, is the frustrating tendency for days of the week to jump around. Because 365 is not a multiple of seven, 7-day weeks don't fit evenly into the Gregorian calendar. That means that each year, dates shift over one day of the week (two during leap years).
"Everybody has to redo their calendars," Henry said. "For sports schedules, for schools, for every damn thing. It's completely unnecessary."
Under the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar (named after Henry and Steve Hanke, a Johns Hopkins economist who also advocates calendar overhaul), every date falls on the same day of the week — forever.
The calendar follows a pattern of two 30-day months followed by one 31-day month. That means the old rhyme, "30 days hath September, April, June and November," would need to be revised to "30 days hath September, June, March and December."
To account for extra time, Hanke and Henry drop leap years and instead create a "leap week" at the end of December every five or six years. This extra week, dubbed "Xtr", would adjust for seasonal drift while keeping the 7-day cycle on track.
"The new calendar can be fairly often off as much as three days on the seasons, but looking out, could you tell?" Henry said. "Of course you couldn't tell."
The economics of time
For Henry, the new calendar is worth it because of how much time and effort goes into revising the calendar each year. He first got into the idea of calendar reform while having to yet again update lecture dates and syllabi for his students. He quickly discovered that there were calendar-reform advocates with suggestions on how to do away with that problem, he said.
"My heart sank, and I thought, 'Oh my god, I don't want to get involved in calendar reform. It's the stupidest waste of time. It's hopeless,'" Henry said.
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96 Comments
Add CommentWhile more logical and user friendly than the current calendar, the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar could still be improved upon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy not a 13 month calendar, with each month made up of four seven day weeks for a total of 28 days for each month? Every month starts and ends on the same day, every holiday stays on the same day, and there is no need for rhyming devices to remember how many days in the month.
Of course, this leaves one day left over, outside the months, but we just make that New Year's Day. Every four years New Year's Day is a two-day holiday, making it something really special and thereby accounting for the leap day.
Change is hard. My Dad used to say that his company motto was "Dedicated to improvement, opposed to change."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChanging our calendar system would be nearly impossible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA psychological barrier that the article missed is that if March and December are turned into 30 day months, what happens to a March or December 31st birthday (or other anniversary)? Are people really going to change their birthday?
On the economic side, the new calendar idea would only work if the vast majority of the industrialized countries adopted it at the same time. Can you imagine the chaos there would be if the US was on one calendar and the rest of the world was on another. It would be worse than imperial versus metric.
Also, what would be the cost of changing out every program and database to handle the new calendar? Not only would apps have to be reprogrammed with the new calendar, but they would all have to have some kind of conversion built in to handle dates from the old calendar system. On top of that, not only would you have to change the apps, but some programing languages like PHP have built in date functions that would have to be changed. As we learned from Y2K, this would not an easy or inexpensive task, especially on older systems.
And what about the birthdays/anniversaries that fall on March and December 31 now? Those would all have to be changed in the various databases.
Sure the long term savings would exceed the short terms costs, but how often does a corporation look past its next quarterly report or a politician look past the next election year?
Apparently, all of the significant problems of the world have been solved and now we can concentrate on the second tier issues that are so pressing that it requires someone to spend actual time on a solution seeking a problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've asked my favorite calendar application to offer the Jewish calendar so I can enter yartzeits once and be reminded at the appropriate time each year.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've also advocated a metric calendar. Ten day weeks with a three day weekend every week. Then every other year a leap week.
Funny... I've always thought how annoying we divide time up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI hate how time is divided in general. Why can't we divide each day into a 100- clicks and each click into 100 centiclick (or 1000 miliclicks to give an approximation of seconds).
Much easier to do calculations that way. Also- one timezone worldwide. Why does "noon" have to be midday?
Does it matter if you wake at sunrise (5am) and go to bed at 11pm or wake at sunrise (10am) and go to bed at 3am?
Time should be time.
As for calendars- I've thought about this too. My thought was always- week should be 10 days. (3 day weekends- or 2 day weekends w/ halfday midweek break would approximate same percent of time off we get now).
If a week is 10 days. You have 3 weeks in a month. 12 months in a year- and a "rump-week" at the end of the year to fit the days in with the earth's solar cycle and work in leap days.
What about a 24 month calendar with 14-16 days per month?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThus, for example, today's date would be: 2011:24:14.
The first number would be the year, the next number would be the number of the month (24 months) of the year; and, the last number wold be the day(14-16 days) of that month. The advantage of this system is it's mathematical logic and simplicity which can translate into more utility than the present system.
I don't think this person has really thought this through. This would be a Herculean, global effort to change the calendar. You can't just have a cutoff on a certain date. It would have to be done together, world-wide. The coordination for this alone is a massive effort.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen, you have all the computers and devices. Of course, there's all your obvious software applications, like billing and payroll. But what about the businesses that still use the old, mechanical punch-clock? Those would have to be changed. And, of course you have digital watches. Those would be useless without a firmware update, which I bet is not possible.
What about electricity-monitoring software that is used by power companies to calculate your bill? And software in nuclear power plants? Prisons?
Of course, all phones and communications devices would have to be updated. Even some cars, security systems, and appliances would need to get updates.
Oh yeah, and don't forget satellites, especially GPS satellites. How is that firmware going to be updated? Is it even possible? How do we know it would even work? Of course, all flights would have to be grounded while they're being updated and tested.
And all of this would need to be done globally, at the same time to minimize impacts.
Honestly, I don't think this person really thought this through at all. The impacts are enormous, the risks are enormous, but the gain is minimal to nonexistent. All in all, a terrible idea.
Think about the author's points though. Every year we have a herculean effort to reschedule the year because every year is different. I think this is a point that shouldn't just be forgotten.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems to me like simple conversion programs could be written to convert time until everything is replaced. For the next 5 years, until 2017, we could start phasing in the changes. Essentially we would have 5 years to prepare. Seems worth it to me.
Think about the author's points though. Every year we have a herculean effort to reschedule the year because every year is different. I think this is a point that shouldn't just be forgotten.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems to me like simple conversion programs could be written to convert time until everything is replaced. For the next 5 years, until 2017, we could start phasing in the changes. Essentially we would have 5 years to prepare. Seems worth it to me.
I'm sure I'm more progressive in my thinking than most people, The premise seems to be a constant. I am in favor of reform that is complete rather than partial. What purpose do months and days serve. The only requirement is a number for each day and nothing else. Weekends would always be 6,7 13,14 20,21 27,28 34,35 etc. Just as confusing to me is the concept of adding time to the end of the year when it's far more accurate and feasible to add the necessary amount of time to each day. The idea that Christmas should hold sway over a decision is a little too arrogant as not being appropriate for the whole world. An argument such anniversaries or birthday's not being observed properly does not appear to be valid because of how terminal our linear existence is. To do it, is to do it completely especially for those that come after us, as I wish someone would have done for us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wouldn't say that updating a course syllabus is a herculean effort, and honestly, I don't have to do anything every year. I do all my work on computers, so everything gets automatically converted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for the phase in approach, that won't work. We have too many inter-dependencies.
Here's an example. Let's take a date, say Feb. 30. So, you've already gone and updated your punch clock to the new calendar. However, when you go to put in Feb. 30, it fails. So, then, you have to make sure your payroll system is updated. OK, you got that done. But now, you try and tell your bank that you want to make payments or transfers on Feb. 30. That, too, would fail. So, that means the bank would also have to update their software. But, let's say that your bank also updates their software. How about when they transfer money to another bank? Then, those banks would need to be updated, as well, or transactions would be failing.
The above example doesn't even get into details like ATMs and stock market transactions.
Also, you mentioned above that "simple conversion programs could be written." But in my example above, all the "actors" in that example would at least have to have "simple conversion programs" already. The point is that all the above systems would require changes in order for the financial system to work. And they would need to be done at the same time because once just one person or one institution tries to use Feb 30 in a date, transactions would begin to fail.
The author miswrote in the article; the months of March, June, September, and December would have 31 days if the pattern was as stated. Altogether, 8 of the months would change in length: 5 would be shorter, and 3 longer. How would those born at the end of the month in those that are shortened mark their birth date? Would it be moved to the new last day of the month? Would there be some "pre-HH" designation? Many people are attached to and emotionally invested in their birth date and might find it hard or undesirable to change it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs todrules stated, there would be an untold number of electronic devices that would need updating, or would become obsolete, and what could not be updated would potentially have to be replaced. This could be beyond affordability for many people, including businesses and farmers who have already spent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) on equipment up to now. Back when the Gregorian calendar was implemented, none of these concerns existed, but our lives have become infinitely more complex since.
Not everything in life is convenient, and those that are not should not, and in some cases cannot, necessarily be adjusted to make them so. In many ways, and for years to come, the inconvenience this would cause would, I believe, eclipse any so-called convenience that Henry is claiming.
WTF?!? This guy wants to make our calendar LESS accurate just for the sake of convenience? And JHU let this LAZY SOB become an astrophysics professor? Their standards must really be slipping.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Mr. Natural - So, in your scheme, would New Year's Day not have a day-of-the-week, or just no month? How would people born on that day to fill out forms, etc? Enter "00" for their birth month?
@thedarkdaimon - "Can you imagine the chaos there would be if the US was on one calendar and the rest of the world was on another." It wouldn't be unprecedented. Israel maintains 2 calendars (Hebrew & Gregorian), as do many Muslim countries (Hijri) and the Eastern Orthodox Christian churches (Revised Julian). Russia didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar until after the 1917 revolution.
@David N'Gog - "Why does "noon" have to be midday?" I'm pretty sue that's a relic of the sundial days. Most people using sundials were north of the equator, so a sundial with it's gnomon (pointer) on a north-south line would point to the top of the arc at midday. How that got to be 12:00 is beyond me. It makes a bit more sense in 24-hour time, where the top of the clock is 00:00 on the first time around.
@GeekStatus - "Every year we have a herculean effort to reschedule the year because every year is different." It's hardly herculean. Henry & Hanke are proposing creating a major cluster-f, just to avoid what's really nothing more that a minor annoyance.
I am responding to you because your first comment. I can not understand reform that must retain something of the old way. Do you require months and days as a point of reference to connect your past with your future. Would it cause some turmoil in your life to no longer have this familiarity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisslayerwulfe 362,2011
"How would those born at the end of the month in those that are shortened mark their birth date?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the only practical way to do it would be to calculate the day of the year (Jan 1 is #1, Dec. 31 is #365) and reassign the birthday to whatever new date falls on that day of the year. For example someone whose Gregorian birthday is April 1st (non-leapyear) would have a DOY of 90 (31+28+31+1). In the HH calendar (Jan.=30 days, Feb.=30, Mar.= 31 & Apr.=30), the 90th DOY would be March 30th.
Of course this brings up a problem of its own. 2017, HH's proposed start-year isn't a leapyear. So what happens to people with Feb.29 birthdays? Since there's no Feb. 29 on the Gregorian calendar for 2017, would they never have another birthday? And what about people born during the HH "leapweek"? Would they only have a birthday every 5-6years? Could you imagine having to wait 80 years to be old enough to drive, 90 to vote and 105 to drink?
"Do you require months and days as a point of reference to connect your past with your future. Would it cause some turmoil in your life to no longer have this familiarity."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst off, certain holidays are determined according to month and weekday. For example, US Thanksgiving is always the 4th Thursday in November. How do you find a home for it with no Novembers or Thurdays?
Second, hte idea of thinking in terms of named months & weekdays in thoroughly ingrained in people's psyches. you might get away with changing the names, adding a few new ones or removing a couple, but you'll never get support for doing away with them entirely.
Many comments point out the difficulties, psychological and technical, in changing the calendar. This is certainly true, but they are not insurmountable. After all, the world has switched calendars before.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe change from the Julian to Gregorian (our current) calendar was pulled off with little disruption to people's lives. The Catholic countries of Spain, Poland, Portugal, Italy, and France eliminated 11 days from the calendar in 1582 to make the switch. Protestant countries followed more slowly, fearing the new calendar was a Catholic plot, with Britain and its overseas possessions (including the American colonies) switching in 1752. Contrary to popular myth, there were no riots of people demanding the crown return their stolen 11 days.
Russia was the last major European power to switch, making the change after the Bolshevik revolution in 1918 (Greece got on board in 1923). The Asian nations switched in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (although North Korea, while using a Gregorian calendar, has its own system for numbering years, starting year one with the birth of Kim Il Sung in 1923).
In fact, Asians, Muslims, and Jews have all had to adapt to a calendar different from the one they originally used. The fact that it is difficult should not be a major argument against doing it. That is the same argument that has kept the United States from adopting the more rational metric system, to our detriment.
Correction: Year one for the North Korean calendar is 1912, not 1923.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The calendar I'm advocating isn't nearly as accurate" This coming from an astrophysicist. He should have just stopped there. I don't see this new calendar being any more convenient really. In fact, leap weeks are even more complicated than leap years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHe made another spot on comment further on, "Oh my god, I don't want to get involved in calendar reform. It's the stupidest waste of time. It's hopeless,". Precisely.
Is the 4th Thursday in November an actual moment in time(how can that be) or the selection of an arbitrary point in time that does not remain constant. approx 325 days into the year is just as arbitrary and just as appropriate. 52 7 segment increments + 1 single segment New Years constant never changing. What is the first day of each segment? nothing more or less than the first day. Is there some special reason for having a Monday or an April other than being archaic terms that serve no purpose. I appreciate your reply and I would like to know would this cause problems. Is it possible to do something better for those that come after us, I think yes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe United States still hasn't even fully converted to Metric because of the technological, educational and psychological investment into feet and inches. Changing the calendar is an even bigger problem, and I just can't see it happening any time soon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe only hope I see is if, like Metric in the US, we establish and use the new system in scientific institutions. Also, if we ever do start to establish a significant off-planet presence, we can take the superior time accounting system with us.
It might be nice to build an even more robust system that can account for relativistic time shifts, too... but that might be terribly difficult. Look to GPS!
I'd tend to s
Complete nonsense. Previously, when everybody was using paper-calendars this might have made some sense, but now with everybody using electronic calendars, what is the point?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course the most business-friendly calendar is two 28 day months and one 35 day month in each quarter, thus four equal length quarters of 91 days for 364 days, with an extra week tacked onto December every 7 years. Yes, the same date will fall on the same day of the week every year. Months have a consistemt number of days year to year. As for birthdays/anniversaries, just figure the nth day of the year to translate from old-calendar to new.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was unrealistic in hoping for intelligent commentary with valid points either for or against. When to celebrate a holiday or days of strictly personal interest is just too sophomoric. That any suggestion implying time should be calculated by a civilization, culture, tradition or person is too imprecise. We have the mathematical precision of our rotational periods yet reject them in favor of the symmetry of midnight or the awe inspiring moment of Feb.29 every four years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd prefer the week to start on Monday, as it does psychologically for most people in the West, at least.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I'm sure I'm more progressive in my thinking than most people, The premise seems to be a constant....What purpose do months and days serve? The only requirement is a number for each day and nothing else."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat purpose do days and months serve? The same purpose the calendar serves - to help us order events and keep track of our lives. It may be more orderly for computers to keep track of events through a strictly numeric system, but the human brain is not a computer, although we like to use the analogy.
Numbers and mathematics do not come naturally for humans (ask any high school algebra teacher). If they did we could simply replace our street names with a numbered grid system. For that matter we could just rename cities and states numerically, as well. Replacing people's names with numbers would also be more efficient, but I don't think I would call it progressive.
I recall my first date with my wife occurring on the third day of October. It was in the fall and we attended a high school football game. Those things are memories associated with the month of October and a Friday night in a way that I don't think the 276th day of the year would.
A less accurate more convenient calendar sounds to me like a calendar that should still be in the r&d stage (unless your target market is lazy, imprecise people).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Is the 4th Thursday in November an actual moment in time(how can that be) or the selection of an arbitrary point in time that does not remain constant. approx 325 days into the year is just as arbitrary and just as appropriate."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn this case, the name of the arbitrary point ("the fourth Thursday in November") is actually specified in US law. In today's political climate, where Left & Right can't agree on the color of $hit, there's no way it's getting changed to "the 325th day of the year" (or thereabouts).
In fact, ALL ways of designating specific poits in time are arbitrary. the point is that the arbitrary terms currently in use are the ones that people are familiar with & the benfits of changing aren't worth the hassle.
"Time is an illusion. lunchtime doubly so." - Douglas Adams
"In fact, ALL ways of designating specific poits in time are arbitrary. the point is that the arbitrary terms currently in use are the ones that people are familiar with & the benfits of changing aren't worth the hassle."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndeed. There is nothing inherently objective about the idea of measuring the passage of time by the movement of the earth around the sun or the moon around the earth. If we chose to we could measure time by the movement of the stars and, indeed, some civilizations have done so.
The Aztec and Maya calendar marked the end of each sheaf (a period of 52 solar years) to coincide with the alignment of Earth and the Pleiades. The Pleiades appear exactly on the meridian at exactly midnight every 52 years.
Egyptians marked the divisions of their annual solar calendar by decands, 36 groups of stars that reappear in the eastern sky at dawn right before the Sun rises every ten days.
Both of these elements of stellar calendars appear with solar calendars, but the point is that calendars are a subjective, human invention that are a reflection of our civilization, culture, traditions, and values (nothing sophomoric about that, slayerwulfe).
My only disagreement with your post, Mad Scientist, is your contention that it isn't worth it to reform the calendar. There is no perfect calendar, but just as the Gregorian calendar we now have was an improvement on the previous Julian calendar, which was itself an improvement on the earlier Roman calendar, so to should our calendar reflect our times. The hassle only lasts one generation and then people will adopt the new system (I'm in favor of the 28 day month, 13 month calendar) as if that is how it has always been.
If we're going to the extreme anyways, why not just divide up that extra 0.2425 day amongst the other 365? it would only add 57.4 seconds to each day. Then we would have exacly 365 days of 86457.4 seconds every year. We the divide those "old" second into 100,000 "new" seconds, 100 of which could make up 1 "new" minute. 100 "new" minutes would be 1 "new" hour in a 10 "new" hour day. We could divide the days into 10 "new" months of alternating 36 & 37 days. Or we could group the days in to 6-day weeks, with 6 weeks per month & a non-weekday holiday after every other month.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would be happy if the idiot politicians would simply drop the daylight savings time nonsense. Lets start with something simply and doable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"...just as the Gregorian calendar we now have was an improvement on the previous Julian calendar, which was itself an improvement on the earlier Roman calendar..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince both the Gregorian and Julian calendars are both technically Roman, having been created by Roman Catholic Pope Gregory & Roman general/consul/dictator Gaius Julius Caesar, I imagine you mean one of the pre-Julian calendars use in the Roman Republic (Caldendar of Numa from 713-46BC, Calendar of Romulus from c753-713BC).
Since we'll need to rework the calendar anyways sometime within the next 100 years - when we establish our first off-world permanent settlement, on the Moon, Mars or an asteroid - I hold to the proposition that it's not worthwhile doing it NOW.
"30 days hath September, June, March and December" is incorrect. It should be, "31 days hath September, June, March and December" with the other eight months having 30 days each resulting in a 364 day year which is perfectly divisible by 7, yielding exactly 52 seven day weeks. Four 30 day months and eight 31 day months results in a 358 day year which would never work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting idea, which might have worked back when a second was defined as a division of the solar year (just under 31,446,926 seconds in a year). Under this system we could just redefine a second and add your leap-quarter of a day into the year. However, the earth's rotation decreases every year by about 20 millionths of a second (blame it on the moon), which makes the earth's rotation an imprecise method of measurement in the modern age.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe modern second is now defined as 9,192,631,770 vibrations of a cesium atom and is the basis for the modern atomic clock, which is also imprecise, but not as much, losing a second every 20 million years.
Hey, whaddaya gonna do?
Oh, and rgarding "The hassle only lasts one generation and then people will adopt the new system", the Gragorian calendar was decreed in 1582, but worldwide adoption wasn't completed until the 20th century.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's render human culture down to the most sterile components.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Let's render human culture down to the most sterile components."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not sure I understand what you mean by this statement, but there is nothing "sterile" about a discussion of time and how we humans chose to measure it. It is an integral part of our culture(s) and says a great deal about who we are.
For instance, the 60 second minute and 60 minute hour come to us from ancient Babylon. We maintain a cultural connection to a civilization that existed nearly 4,000 years ago. Most of our months are named for ancient Greek and Roman gods, plus a couple named for Julius and Augustus Caesar, maintaining our ties to civilizations that contributed immeasurably to Western and world culture. The names of our days reflect the heritage of Germanic tribes (Wednesday - Woden's day, Thursday - Thor's day, Friday - Freya's day). The starting point for each calendar (the birth of Jesus for the Christian calendar, the Hijra of Muhammad for the Muslims, Bastille Day, 1789 for the French Revolutionary Calendar) reveal something fundamental about people.
I find that a fascinating reflection of our history, traditions, and culture. If all you see is a piece of paper with days and dates on it, then I can understand how you might find it sterile, but there is so much more to our calendar than what you see on the discount rack at Barnes & Noble.
One reason why this will never be universally adopted: "Remember the sabbath and keep it holy." The Sabbath happens like clockwork every seven days through all eternity, regardless of what day people think it should be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne reason why it might be adopted for business purposes: We can now have software that tracks as many calendars and dates thereon as we wish. I think that the Maya calendar is one of the more logical ones.
Anyway, this has been proposed already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Calendar
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy not use the French Republican Calendar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"There were twelve months, each divided into three ten-day weeks called décades. The tenth day, décadi, replaced Sunday as the day of rest and festivity. The five or six extra days needed to approximate the solar or tropical year were placed after the months at the end of each year.
A period of four years ending on a leap day was to be called a "Franciade." The name "Olympique" was originally proposed[4] but changed to Franciade to commemorate the fact that it had taken the revolution four years to establish a republican government in France."
-- excerpt from above Wikipedia link
yes let's have a business friendly calendar, because we all know that we must evolve toward a business friendly genome, because after all, who's going to buy the end product, anyway, because it's obvious that bankers are the height of evolutionary progress, and bang-for-your-buck is bigger than even the biggest elk rack, eh???
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisand that's a trademarked phrase
All these ideas aren't new. My fifth-grade science project (over 50 years ago) was a perpetual calendar, and one section was devoted to ideas for calendar reform, including 13 28-day months, ten-day weeks, etc. There is also the Babi calendar, with 19 months of 19 days apiece, with 4 or 5 days left over at the end.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow, let me show you a trick. Every year has a certain day of the week (Monday for 2011, Wednesday for 2012), and the last day of February, July 4th and Halloween all fall on it, as well as 4/4, 6/6, 8/8. 10/10, and 12/12 (but not 2/2). For the Brits and Canadians who don't celebrate July 4th, add Prince Charles' birthday (11/14) and Boxing Day (12/26). All will be on Wednesday next year, and Thursday in 2013 (unless the Apocalypse intervenes).
Why stop at calendar reform? Why not overhaul our entire time keeping system? Anybody who has had to fill in a time sheet and calculate flexi-time will realise the benefit of decimal time - 100 minute hours would be so much easier than 60 minute ones.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@dbtinc, or people don't suffer from your intellectual challenges and can work on more than one thing at a time. Still, sad that the world doesn't check with you before launching a new initiative, all that time wasted not making you happy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have three Youtube videos done five years ago on my invention, the Loutetian calendar. It goes a step further than this by changing to a 6 day week, with four workdays and a 2-day weekend. Follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8vyj3xNNks to see part one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyup
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnder your six day week (4 work days, 2 days off) we will all see our pay cut by 1/5.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr are you proposing that businesses continue to pay for a five day week, while only getting four days of work?
And what would the ROI be for this 'business friendly' venture?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm old enough to remember the enormous cost of the year 2000 migration for business computer software systems. Back in the early days of computing (like, before 2000), programs were written that stored date information, like a person's birthday, as two digits. While this seems stupid at first glance, in reality no one had any reason to expect that software written in the 1970s would still be in use at the end of the millennium - computers had only been around for a few years...
Anyway, while implementing a new calendaring system would have somewhat different impact nowdays, I certainly don't see any cost savings that would offset a potentially enormous migration cost. Can anyone make as business case for this silly academic exercise?
It's my understanding that there are only 14 different "years". January 1st is either M,T,W,Th,F,Sa,Su with no leap year, or the same with a leap year. So as far as scheduling goes, you only need to do 14 of them - then you never need to lift a finger again... unless there is some lunar based holiday that requires additional calculation and the new proposed system doesn't do that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe leap year actually started with Julius Caesar, that's why it was called the Julian Calendar. Pope Gregory in 1582 made the change to remove 3 leap years every 400 years. so 1700, 1800, and 1900 were NOT leap years, while 2000 was.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe reason they did that was because the Spring equinox was occurring on March 10, instead of March 21. So they also removed 10 days in October 1582.
We can make a new calendar and use it along with the present calendar till the new one takes over in a few decades. We can consider many other advices. We can do it. Best of luck.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are so primitive in our thinking that we confuse ourselves consistently, there are not 365.2422 days in a year unless some of you annually see a partial 5.8 hr day that I have somehow always managed to sleep through. We do need reform and the centuries dead, persons that brought us here need to be forgotten that we abandon all of their ways and words concerning this subject.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFolks dream on, the calendar we use now will more then likely be in use in the year 3000, if humans are around that long. It is almost world wide, and things in use that much tend to stick like glue. The only way it could change is the whole world is told to change by a one world gov.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is why people shouldn't drink-and-post.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"there are not 365.2422 days in a year unless some of you annually see a partial 5.8 hr day that I have somehow always managed to sleep through."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fractional part varies a bit, depending on whether you're using the Gregorian (.2425), tropical (.2422, based on angle of the earth's axis relative to the sun) or the sidereal (.2564, based on the earth's orbital period) system.
Using the sidereal system, 1 year is the time it takes the earth to make 1 complete revolution around the sun and 1 day is the time it take for 1 complete rotation around earth's axis. In the time needed for 1 revolution, there are 365.2564 rotations. So, astronomically speaking, there actually is a partial day evry year. It's just been more prcatical to overlook the fact that the real year starts part-way through a day.
In one year the new age will start. That would be a good reason for a reset.Call it P.O. ( post apocalypse )
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe current Gregorian calendar is accurate to about one day in 3000 years. So there really isn't much reason to change it. In fact, it wasn't fully adopted until 1920!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRussia was the last one, they were 10 days off until then.
We could simplify it somewhat by adding 2 days to February to have 8 months of 30 days and 5 months of 31 days. Then there would still be a need for a "leap day" every 4 years.
Someone once proposed a "worldsday" calendar with an 8*30 + 4*31 format, and the extra day being called "worldsday." The purpose of the Worldsday was so that holidays will fall on the same day of the week each year.
"In one year the new age will start. That would be a good reason for a reset. Call it P.O. (post apocalypse)"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSure, if you're a Mayan. Oh, wait, the "classic" Mayan civilization collapsed in the 9th century & the last outpost of their "post-classic" culture was conquered by the Spanish in 1697. It looks like their apocalypse prediction was off by at least 315 years.
You know one group who doesn't believe the idea that Mayans have predicted the end of the world in 2012?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Mayans.
The actual Mayan people are mostly fed up with the bunk being passed off in their name. The Mayan calendar does not predict the end of anything other than than the end of a calendar cycle, and hence, the start of a new one. To think otherwise is the same as saying the world is coming to an end on December 31 because I have no more pages left on my calendar.
The reality is that every year is actually 6 hours longer than 365 days. That breaks down to, roughly, a little less than a minute a day, 2.5 seconds an hour, 0.042 of a second a minute. This means that all we'd have to do is re-calibrate the atomic clocks to make each second a few hundred thousandths of a second longer, and we'd get rid of the need for leap years. My watch, f'rinstance, would not even have to be recalibrated, since it resets automatically by the atomic clock at Fort Collins, Colorado.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHaven't thought through how that would affect sunrises, and equinoxes etc..., but they are pretty varied across the continent already, anyhow.
I am going to be short: Mr Nature(comment nr 1) is straight right. Point 2: suffices one country adopt a new calendar, which efficiency proves better, all other countries will follow. Who is going to lead ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI hate to let this go because of how beneficial this can become to the future. The most important thing to our personal existence is the solar day. what defines a year is not an immediate need. Forget about the .2422 of a day for the sake of completing a year. To let it go for 112 (artificial) yrs. results in an actual change of day to season relationship of only 28 days. Extend the amount of our 113th artificial yr. by 28 days and were approx. right back where we started from. I use this in my own life. 364 numbered days(52 wks. of 7 days) and zero day New Years day and then 1 to 364 again. There are no names for days and no months because there is no need for any, there are names for weeks 1,2,3,...52. A neutral (without bias or culture) calendar for all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe it's already been said, since it seems pretty obvious... But why stick with 12 months? 13 months of 28 days plus one extra day (New Years, which would not be considered at as a day of the week), with two extra days every four years. This way, every day would fall the dame every month (the 1st would always be a Sunday, for example) and every year would be identical. It seems to be it would be much more "business friendly" and logical than what is proposed in this article... It would be like the "metric" version of the calendar.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course, the superstitious folks out there might freak out because of the 13 months and 13 friday the 13ths... But hey, we're in the 21st century!
Haha, I just read and saw that the very first comment proposed the exact same thing. Great minds think alike!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"what defines a year is not an immediate need."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReally? Tell that to the farmers. What time of year it is is of vital importance to them.
"But why stick with 12 months?...It seems to be it would be much more 'business friendly'"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA 12-month calendar divides neatly into quarters, which business people like. A 13-month calendar wouldn't.
The Cotsworth Plan (13 months of 28 days with an extra day between the last day of December and the first day of January, plus a leap day every four years after June) is more logical and easier to work with.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince the dates wouldn't change each year, as they do now, it would still be easy to have a quarter every 91 days. That would be each three months and one week, exactly. There's no reason a 'quarter' must be only counted in whole months. It would actually be better for businesses as they could have a much saner quarter-end and year-end schedule going.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat? Right pass up mathematical perfection so you don't confuse some farmer that every 4 yrs (and maintain the count)that you plant one day later than you did. I'm sure his four yr. old child would work the math out for him. Did you happen to catch the one about three types of people to fire immediately.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou should go back and re-read the posts. I never said farmers couldn't figure calendars. I said that having a defined and accurate year is of great importance to them (and to any of the rest of us who like to eat). The "add a month every 113 years" scheme you proposed would throw an unecessary and impractical inconsistency into their planting & harvesting schedules.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLazy professors aside, the current system works just fine. So, if it ain't broke - DON'T BREAK IT!
No! this is why people in their early 20s hardly ever come to these places, so as an amateur I don't fit in with the professionals that do nothing all day long except post comments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBarnes and Noble, I didn't know anyone was still alive that remembered buying books.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.flickr.com/photos/73187819@N02/6604175001/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is what a 13 month calendar could look like. Every name is based on the logical latin prefix. I did it in French, so that's why the suffix is "bre" insted of "ber", but that's the only thing you need to change to translate. The colors represent the quarters. I personally see no disadvantage with this calendar.
For those that say it would be too complicated, let me remind you that the Gregorian calendar is not the only one in use at the moment. The arabic calendar is used throughout the arabic world, parallel to ours, and so is the chinese calendar if I am not mistaken.
It would be possible to use a new calendar at the same time at the one we use now, only gradually letting go of the old, archaic system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe succeeded with the metric system, so why not with the calendar? Well... most of us succeeded to change to metric... Apparently Liberia, Myanmar and some other strange country I've never heard of haven't switched yet :D
"Lazy professors aside, the current system works just fine. So, if it ain't broke - DON'T BREAK IT!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI bet you just loooove the imperial system, don't you?
You asked: "We succeeded with the metric system, so why not with the calendar?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suspect that a compelling economic case, based on reduced manufacturing costs and market potential, can be made for standardizing on one integrated system of measurement.
What is the economic benefit for changing to any other calendar (including "Hanke's" more consistent methods of business calculations)?
The unavoidable cost of converting existing business software systems to support dates beyond 2000 ran into hundreds of billions of dollars. The potential cost of migrating to a new system of calendaring could be quite comparable.
To Hanke, Henry and the ilk: Make a compelling economic case if you want anyone to seriously consider migration to a new calendar - otherwise, keep your academic exercises to yourselves and your students.
OR ... we could dispense with business altogether and any other cultural practices which regiment our lives to the extent that learning to live with nature as it is becomes a major stressor for so many people that they feel the need to advocate such a "calendar reform".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople have been killed for messing with the accepted calendar. That was *before* the internet and computers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe current Gregorian calendar roles over once again. 2012 is a correction year, so we get an extra day in February this year.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHappy New Year.
I support the case of Mr Natural. I think the author misses the point - there is absolutely no purpose for having months unless we refer to the cycles of the Moon (roughly 27.3 days). Gregorian conserves a 12-division but the one suggested by the author would be no better. The 7 days obviously relate to the frequently moving celestial bodies visible by the naked eye, as they still do in India, viz.: Monday (Moon); Tuesday (Mars); Wednesday (Mercury); Thursday (Jupiter); Friday (Venus); Saturday (Saturn); Sunday (Sun). Count here the cultures that deal with one or another type of astrology (which is maybe no science but certainly a tradition as worthy as Christmas and the like). Harmonizing the 7 moving celestial bodies with the cycles of the Moon and the Sun was obviously the aim of ancient European and Indian calendars. 28-day months would be an improvement - no matter what business and sports people say. (Birthdays themselves may not be such a big problem - as people have already been handling February 29 for centuries).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, as it is increasingly easier to calculate things by computer, I do not believe any reform will take place soon.
The Hanke-Henry permanent calendar would be a step backward. Making every fourth year a week longer than normal year would be unacceptable. The change in the length of the years would be too large. The dates of astronomical events like the equinox could shift by as much as six days. Before a decision to change the calendar is made we must ensure that the new calendar is the best possible one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBetter alternatives have been proposed in the past such as a year divided in four quarters each consisting of one 35 days (5 weeks) month and two 28 days (4 weeks) month - four 91 days quarters. The last quarter would have an extra day (December 29) every year and two extra days (December 29 and 30) in leap years.
Every year would restart with a Sunday. A specific date would always occur on the same day of the week. The 1st would always be a Sunday; the 13th would always be a Friday. The 29th and 30th of December could be called Sunday and Monday or be given special names.
The only problem with the system is that seven day cycle which it is claimed has not been broken since Moses would be broken. I read somewhere that the Catholic Church once said it would not object to breaking the 7 day cycle. God, he/she, is unlikely to retaliate particularly if the additional days are made holy days. Fundamentalists could continue to worship on the old seven day cycle and thereby help reduce congestion.
The change would be virtually transparent to the user. The seven day week, the twelve months year, and the 4 seasons would be retained. If you birthday was on the 255 day of the year you can simply continue to celebrate it on that day even if the new date is a few days off from the old date. The dates and day of the week of holidays could be set once and for all. Astronomical phenomena such as the equinox would move forward by a quarter day on regular year and backward by three quarters of a day on leap years. Placing the leap day at the end of the year makes the shift constant for the whole year simplifying astronomical calculations.
I would not expect the next calendar reform to take less time to implement than the last one. The birthday problem will go away after the first hundred year.
In case you didn't pick up on it from my handle, I work in SCIENCE, so I use the metric system far more frequently that the imperial. But, since I live in the US, I'm fluent in both systems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTolkien had a similar calendar for The Shire and so, every hobbit's birthday would fall always on the same weekday. That's why there's no mention of weekdays in "The Lord of the Rings".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeing a little more serious (not that my loved Tolkien wasn't serious), lunar months would have each a different lenght, for Moon phases change from 28 to 29 days in alternate months. The Mayas and other ancient civilizations had Moon-based calendars but they also considered the leap-day every four years and "extra" days which didn't belong to any month, to complete the 365-day year.Trying to overrule the 365-day period is not that easy.
Does the Hanke-Henry pair think that we are still driving 55mph (88.5kph)?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Of course the answer to that is you can celebrate your birthday whenever you want." And that's the best answer he can come up with?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would be an immense amount of work and coordination to achieve... People annoyed that the calendar isn't like it used to be (birthdays, holidays, celebrations), other people annoyed that it's pretty much just as illogical as before, in some ways more (a leap WEEK?), people annoyed that they'd never get nice combinations of weekends and holidays - I can assure you, Sunday is exactly the day employees do NOT want Christmas to fall on - the changing of every computer and electronic clock in the world, as well as a lot of advanced mechanical ones (yep, that won't be costly), oh, and you can print the same syllabus every year instead of printing a new one - will save you the bother of considering whether you should update it too, and banks will all make exactly the same calculations of intermediate compound interest - except for all the other differences they can come up with.
Usually when drastic changes involving the coordination of almost every person on the planet and immense investments, are suggested, it's to achieve some real and big advantage.
Logically, there is no particular advantage in the same date always being the same weekday (the only real simplification their suggestion entails), it's just days and dates, in some respects - particularly from an individual psychological perspective - there may even be advantages in the weekdays changing year by year, not just the birthdays.
Why didn't they suggest 12 30-day months and five filler days (holidays of course - shouldn't be a financial problem if the simpler calendar is of such benefit to businesses)? Or just leave out the months (many calendars already have day-of-year)?
Basically, the calendar follows the natural year, and that simply doesn't allow for a simple logical system. No matter what system you invent, there will be inconsistencies. Changing one illogical system for another, wouldn't be worth a small effort - and certainly not the immense effort required for this. The resources would be better spent establishing a permanent base on Mars.
It's sometimes quite wearying to go through the crackpots commenting on SciAm - now there's also crackpots writing the articles. Though I'm sure they know perfectly well it's not going to happen anyway (or they probably wouldn't suggest it), but it's nice to have your name mentioned in an article, isn't it.
It is a very creative suggestion on changing the calendar, but with only one problem of a leap week when either there shall be no work, or the work won't be paid in normal course. Still, I recommend the change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMany years ago when everybody was in such an eternal hurry some American proposed to change the 24 hours of a day into 25 in order to get people more time. To this good idea I would add leaving out a couple of days, preferably in the warm seazon, from the calendar for complete undisturbed relaxation. To facilitate business the jews or we may circle around the pole (comfortably in an airplane) and get sabbath on sunday or sunday on sabbath. Moslims can join too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"some American proposed to change the 24 hours of a day into 25 in order to get people more time"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this- Unless you know of some way to slow down the earth's rotation, that's an utterly ridiculous proposition. The lengths of the day & the year are not arbitrary figures, they're governed by the movement of the planet & CAN'T be changed.
Of course you are right, but if Jan Jitso is patient he/she will get the 25 hour day eventually.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe earth's rotation, the basis for sidereal time, is slowing by about 20 seconds every million years. As a result an earth day 400 million years ago was just under 22 hours long.
So, hang in there J.J. Your 25 hour day is coming.
And you thought re-programming all the computers for the year 2000 was a problem. This would be a doozie
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWayne
This reminds me of a proposal that I saw more than 30 years ago to re-design the way we write numbers in order to make it easier to display them with digital circuitry. Thank goodness 7-segment displays and the circuits needed to drive them became negligibly cheap before anyone could think about taking this seriously. Today, I don't give the calendar a thought. My smart phone tells me what day it is, what I'm doing that day and when the next holiday is. Considering the turmoil that this proposed change would involve, my response is the same as it was with the numerals. Use computer power to conform to humans rather than making humans conform to such "simplifications.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistime should be told by using a combination of heat and oranges.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreat article.Crazy how our whole life is based on a <a href="http://www.timeclockoutlet.com/ctgry49-punch-clocks.aspx">punch clock</a> It's how we live our lives on day to day basis.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think a new calendar system is much more likely to arise alongside the current one, rather than this all-or-nothing approach being debated in these comments. Things like this can take hold in certain niches where it proves so advantageous that the parties involved are willing to deal with the work of making conversions back and forth. A company I worked for years ago used a calendar organized primarily by weeks, thereby making it much easier to determine project lengths and deadlines. Conversations about schedules contained statements like, "That order will ship week 41, so we have 7 more weeks to get the programs tested." Weeks corresponded much more logically to how work really got done, so the company printed a handy little reference calendar each year with 52 or 53 weeks with the months and holidays color-coded on it however they happened to fall.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf a general alternative calendar took hold in some segment of society, perhaps in science or medicine or, more likely, business, and people saw the value of it, they might start to observe it more than the religiously based calendar we have now. After all, a week only has 7 days because of a phrase in Genesis.
I was thinking of a 10 month year. Each month would have 6, 6 day weeks. Every other month would have a 37th day treated as a Holiday. Leap Day would fall on the 38th day of the last month, thus extending New Years to a 2 day holiday. Every month starts on Sunday the 1st, and there will be no Friday the 13th's
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this