
You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform (2013) - zdw
https://qntm.org/calendar
======
efitz
I advocate a solution similar to proposals floated years ago on
alt.pave.the.earth on UseNet.

1\. Disintegrate the moon, anyone who has ever advocated for lunar calendars,
and anyone who fails to convincingly support this Plan(tm), converting their
mass to energy that we can use for productive purposes such as orbital
adjustments. 2\. Adjust the rotational period of the earth to an aesthetically
pleasing multiple of the length of the solar year. Adjust the axial tilt and
orbital eccentricity of the earth to eliminate "seasons". 3\. Adjust the
definitions of time units to aesthetically pleasing multiples of the now-
constant solar year and rotational day.

Problem solved.

~~~
progval
> ( ) planetary-scale engineering is impractical

~~~
Y_Y
Well that's just a matter of time. I posit that given sufficient time for
technology to develop, anything can be practically engineered.

~~~
kang
If one combines theory of evolution and biological rhythms, then planetary
scale engineering would be a drastic health effect.

~~~
gruez
I doubt there's going to be any issues if we made days longer by 1.46% so
there would be 360 days in a year rather than 365.25.

------
tom_mellior
> ( ) by that logic, 2000 was the final year of the Nineties

<rant> I'm annoyed by this argument, which came up again at the start of this
year in dumb Twitter discussions about whether 2020 marks the beginning of a
new decade.

2000 _was not_ the final year of the Nineties. 2000 _was_ the final year of
the second millennium, and of the 20th century, and of the tenth decade of the
20th century. The Nineties were the years 1990-1999, the tenth decade of the
20th century were the years 1991-2000. These are different ranges, but we also
use different terms to refer to them. There is no logical problem. There is
only a problem with the assumption that these different terms "should" refer
to the same concept.

So did 2020 mark the beginning of a new decade? Yes, it marked the beginning
of the decade we might call the Twenty-Twenties. It did _not_ mark the
beginning of the third decade of the 21st century; that will be 2021. </rant>

~~~
kstenerud
And yet people will say that 2000 is the beginning of the millenium, and 2020
is the beginning of a decade, because colloquially it's easier and
understandable. And no amount of begging, pleading, or berating will change
that (although it might get you punched in the face). That pope Gregory XIII
neglected to include a year 0 in his calendar doesn't have to condemn us to
suffer the mental gymnastics in our daily lives.

~~~
chrisseaton
> 2020 is the beginning of a decade, because colloquially it's easier and
> understandable

But 2020 _is_ technically the start of a decade, not just informally.

~~~
dTal
Well, technically every day is the start of a decade.

~~~
chrisseaton
No that's what it _informally_ means. Technically, decades start on the first
day of a ...0 year, so not all days are the start of a decade.

~~~
jfengel
What technique is this? I am unaware of any Office of Decades charged with
deciding precisely what constitutes the sole definition of "decade".

~~~
chrisseaton
> I am unaware of any Office of Decades charged with deciding precisely what
> constitutes the sole definition of "decade"

ISO 8601 defines what a 'decade' is.

I mean you're free to ignore it of course, like you're free to say March has
34 days if you want... but you may have trouble communicating with people and
integrating with existing systems.

~~~
jfengel
8601's definition of a decade is somewhat different from common parlance.
They're using it only to mean "the first digit of a two-digit year", and
doesn't really apply it beyond that. If you stick to only that definition of a
decade, you're going to have communication problems with human beings.

~~~
dtech
Nah. 99/100 people will say the 90's decade is 1990-1999

------
kibwen
_> your name for the thirteenth month is questionable_

In my plan for twelve 30-day months, I intended to call the leftover 5/6 days
"Etcember", for et cetera. :P

(This submission appears to be a riff on the classic "Programming Language
Checklist":
[https://www.famicol.in/language_checklist.html](https://www.famicol.in/language_checklist.html)
)

~~~
LeoPanthera
Which in turn is a riff on the "spam solutions" checklist:
[https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt](https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt)

~~~
pjscott
I remember seeing that posted often, back when email spam was a big problem,
and it always bothered me. Whenever people were discussing possible fixes,
someone would post that checklist -- and you could _always_ find some way to
apply the checklist, even if it was just by invoking the generic "Eternal arms
race involved in all filtering approaches" objection. Every sophisticated
person knew that the email spam problem was intractable. Your inbox would
always be full of spam, and it was considered foolish to think otherwise.

I haven't had much spam hit my inbox lately, though. So much for the
checklist.

~~~
sdenton4
Was there a checkbox for: 'capture a significant part of the market for All
Email and use it to build a graph that you can use for bayesian
classification'?

~~~
jacobush
Closely related to “make everyone use my email service”

------
isidor3
> having one or two days per year which are part of no month is stupid >
> having one or two days per year with no day of the week is asinine

These don't sound like real reasons to me. If it costs having a 13th month
with just a few days in it or a NO_DAY_OF_WEEK constant in my DAYS_OF_WEEK
enum, I'd take it if it meant all of the weirdness was limited to a few days
always located at the end of the year. Sounds like a convenient place to put
leap seconds as well! While you're at it, make those days holidays for most
people, so that when tech inevitably breaks due to the weirdness, those of us
who get paged for such things can fix them in peace before the rest of the
world starts back up a few days later.

~~~
msla
> These don't sound like real reasons to me.

They are if you have to write date-handling code or, worse, use the date-
handling code of others.

Date-handling code is hard enough without NULLs.

~~~
ketzu
This does not only concern code, but regulation, tradition, contracts etc. The
mutual understanding of weeks, days, months of roughly equal lengths is baked
into a lot of our things and it's not enough to change it in some header
file/law to clean up the rest.

------
avs733
I'm surprised to see no mention in here of the international fixed calendar
[0](sometimes called the 'Kodak calendar').

Kodak adopted it in part because Georgia Eastman (founder) was a big
proponant, but also because for corporate scheduling the regularity made
things like maintenance and long run chemical/manufacturing processes simpler
to plan.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar)

------
nl
My favorite calendar disaster was the Swedish calendar[1] between 1700 and
1753.

They had a somewhat (?) reasonable plan:

 _In November 1699, the Government of Sweden decided that, rather than adopt
the Gregorian calendar outright, it would gradually approach it over a 40-year
period. The plan was to skip all leap days in the period 1700 to 1740. Every
fourth year, the gap between the Swedish calendar and the Gregorian would
reduce by one day, until they finally lined up in 1740. In the meantime, this
calendar would not be in line with either of the major alternative calendars
and the differences would change every four years._

Then war started and they stopped, after starting the process, so they were on
their own calendar that no one else in the world used.

Then the king decided it was a bad idea, so reverted to the Julian calendar.
Then they decided to jump to the Gregorian outright.

There's a bunch of other details, like Easter being calculated by one calendar
but Easter Sunday by the other.

Oh yeah, and they had February 30 one year[2] (which was Feb 29 in a Julian
calendar or March 11 Gregorian).

And in 1753 they finally sorted it all out by skipping all the days between
February 17 and March 1.

Good luck writing billing software for that.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_calendar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_calendar)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_non-
standard_dates#Swe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_non-
standard_dates#Swedish_calendar)

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Good luck writing billing software for that.

How often do you need to bill someone for events that took place 300 years
ago?

~~~
nl
It's a joke. As is the story it is posted on. Enjoy.

------
Arcorann
(2013)

Previous discussion (the only substantial one at any rate):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11193152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11193152)

The main problem with calendar reform as I see it is that network effects and
lock-in mean that unless everyone changes at once it'll never stick. I've long
felt that the optimal time for calendar reform was several decades ago -- with
increasing computerisation the cost of switching has gone up over time, much
faster than any potential benefits.

------
irrational
If the USA can’t convert to metric, despite passing laws to that affect, my
belief that the world will adopt a new calendar system is less than non-
existent.

~~~
hinkley
I hate to scapegoat, but there are a bunch of odd things the US does because
boomers like things the way they've always been.

Why were a bunch of new Christmas songs written 60 years ago and barely a song
a decade has been added to the repertoire since? George Michael is dead, and
Mariah Carey seemed touch and go for a while, and those are pretty much the
last two people to create a successful Christmas song (and the less said about
Do They Know It's Christmas, the better)

~~~
gizmo686
US copyright terms:

1978+: Author's life + 70 years. 95 years if work-for-hire

1967-1977: 95 years

1924 - 1963: 28 years if never renewed. Maximum 95 years.

Pre-1924 - All copywrights have expired

~~~
munk-a
US copyright terms:

Pre-Mickey Mouse: Expired

Post-Mickey Mouse: Copyrighted for eternity.

~~~
dhosek
Disney finally gave up that fight. Barring a last minute lobbying effort,
_Steamboat Willie_ will be in the public domain on 1 January 2023. Of course
the trademarks on Mickey Mouse will be valid in perpetuity.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Barring a last minute lobbying effort,

There's always a last-minute lobbying effort.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
The copyright laws in the US are actually Mickey-Mouse laws.

------
bhaak
> ( ) planetary-scale engineering is impractical

I find your lack of vision disturbing.

Given that we likely need planetary-scale engineering anyway in the next
50-100 years, getting a few asteroids to nudge the earth’s orbit a bit over a
long period of time isn’t that much of a stretch.

With asteroid mining it might even pay for itself.

Note: I didn’t do any calculations but over millions of years we’ll need to
stabilize earth’s orbit anyway, otherwise our calendars will get out of sync
even more.

Of course we’ll have to deal with the inaccuracies of the Gregorian calendar
rather soon, in 7000 to 8000 years.

~~~
jerf
"I find your lack of vision disturbing."

Author does not lack vision:
[https://qntm.org/destroy](https://qntm.org/destroy)

------
taveras
If you are interested in calendar reform and enjoy world history, the French
Revolutionary calendar is fascinating to read about.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar)

~~~
dhosek
I used to use a bastardized version of this on our team calendar on the
whiteboard at work (just the month/year, ignoring the fact that French
Republican months don't correspond neatly to Gregorian months). I was able to
get away with it because the month/year were not really functional parts of
the calendar. I doubt I could have gotten the team to fully adopt the French
Republican calendar, although it would have been fun to try.

~~~
msla
Your next Death March might have lead to a Thermidorian Reaction.

------
ddevault
Newcomers to qntm.org are advised to browse around a bit. There's some great
stuff here. Here's one:

[https://qntm.org/responsibility](https://qntm.org/responsibility)

~~~
creade
The Antimemetics Division series on SCP is great [http://www.scp-
wiki.net/antimemetics-division-hub](http://www.scp-wiki.net/antimemetics-
division-hub)

------
legulere
I really like the discordian calendar as it replaces chaotic months with
regular 73 day long seasons, which are based on numerology. The only thing
that was overlooked was the beginning of the year. The day which is the first
of the year is pretty arbitrary as well, using the day of winter solstice
would make much more sense.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordian_calendar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordian_calendar)

~~~
opk
The winter solstice isn't even a precise thing. It can be a different day
depending on whether you're going by sunset or sunrise for example.

------
twic
> ( ) civil time and solar time have to remain in synch to better than a
> second

No, they don't. Proof of this is that they already aren't: there is a band no
more than 15 arcseconds wide in each timezone where it is true, and everywhere
outside that, civil time does not correspond to solar time.

------
Razengan
Must a calendar only represent the physical positions of heavenly bodies?

What happens after we propagate to other planets?

Why should there be only one calendar?

Why can’t we have, say, a Social Calendar alongside a Astronomical Calendar?

We could have a sane, logical calendar with even and regular divisions for
determining working days, holidays, financial calculations and political
durations etc.

And there could be another calendar for the galactic rotation, orbital period,
lunar cycle etc. that only people who need to care about such things would use
(astronomers, farmers).

~~~
Ruthalas
I tend to agree with the concept, but you'd probably have to address holidays
that are season-specific.

Perhaps 'Christmas is always in the third winter time-block', or something to
that effect.

~~~
rodgerd
() Your solution shows you don't understand hemispheres or seasons.

~~~
Razengan
_() Your solution shows you don 't understand hemispheres or seasons._

I don't. Who does??

When was the last time a city dweller needed to worry about where the Earth or
moon was?

Things we do need to know:

• How many days in a row do I have to work

• When do I get my next paycheck

• When is X product coming out

• How long do we have to put up with X politician

• When should I plan a vacation

• When will it get colder or warmer

Except for maybe the last 2 questions, all of the above can be answered by a
calendar that has nothing to do with astronomy whatsoever.

Farmers and scientists can continue to use the astronomical calendar of their
choice. Perhaps make one that is specifically designed for them, in maybe a
S%.M% format, where S% is the percentage of Earth's solar orbital period we
are currently at, and M% is the moon's orbit.

For the rest of us ordinary folk, we would be fine with a "Human Calendar"
that is simply a cycle of working days <-> weekends, with some holidays thrown
in every N weeks.

Say a 4/2 or 4/3 (work/rest) day week, 4 weeks in a Human Month, and an 8-10
day holiday every 3 such months.

A Human Year could be the equivalent of 9 or 10 months of the current
calendar, the average duration a new person takes from conception to birth. :)

------
zzo38computer
I like the solar hijri calendar (not to be confused with the lunar hijri).
Better than anno domini would be a anno mundi system, but to make a new
scientific anno mundi system rather than the old way, due directly to the
Earth going around the Sun, because that is how the year is considered, so to
count years starting from that, too. For time keeping, use local time based on
mean solar time, with no daylight saving time (I hate daylight saving time),
with 12:00 being mean solar noon. Perhaps make half hour time zones. Continue
using UTC with a "Z" suffix when you need to use the time that isn't local
time (and if you do need to explicitly note local time, you can use a "J"
suffix, or use the + and - and number of hours if you need to specify the
timezone explicitly too). My idea for dealing with leap seconds in Unix time
is to allow the number of nanoseconds to exceed one billion during a leap
second; at all other times, the number of nanoseconds is less than one
billion. Don't be over-civilization.

My ideas do perhaps have some (maybe most, or even all) of the problems
mentioned in that document, but nevertheless, this is my ideas.

~~~
patrickthebold
I'm a big proponent of continuous time zones, so that noon drifts ever so
slightly as position changes.

Seems like a no-brainer to me.

~~~
Arcorann
Already addressed: [https://qntm.org/continuous](https://qntm.org/continuous)

Suffice to say, we stopped doing that in the 19th century for very good
reasons.

~~~
patrickthebold
I didn't even think about the international date line.

------
new_realist
A time scheme in which sunrise is always at same time (skewing the clock by a
few seconds or minutes every day at three a.m.) is likely a boon to human
health. Smart watches and Alexa/Siri take care of time zone calculations. The
fact that two dimensional time zones skew a bit more at the poles is a silly
reason to dismiss the idea. The poles are weird for a bunch of other reasons
and no time works there.

~~~
gizmo686
> coordinating geographically dispersed events would become nearly impossible

> I shouldn't need to adjust my wristwatch every few miles

> many clocks do not have line-of-sight to GPS satellites

> you can't put a GPS chip in a mechanical clock

> clocks on planes would literally run backwards

There is a reason most timezone offset by hours. It is very convinient for
everyone to agree on the time when ignoring the most significant digits.
Otherwise, you end up having meetings start at 17 past the hour, and be much
harder to mentally calculate the offset.

You would also need to know the location of the other party much more
presicily. At the moment, I know how to offset my schedule when planning a
meeting with a customer in Texas.

~~~
TylerE
In fact, historically time WAS just set in each location, at local noon.

This was done away with by the railroads because it made scheduling a complete
nightmare.

The first use of "Standard Time" was by the Great Western Railway in the UK.
Even in a relatively small country like the UK - only about 100 miles wide in
most places - that was still enough to shift "local" noon by about 15 minutes.

------
egypturnash
> ( ) having one or two days per year which are part of no month is stupid

Are you calling the Ancient Egyptians stupid? I think you are.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_calendar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_calendar)

And the Aztecs.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nēmontēmi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nēmontēmi)

------
mbar84
I recently learned that the rate of rotation of the earth depends on how much
water vapor is in the atmosphere. I suggest we use this information to turn
the earth into a precision time keeping instrument. Instead of regularly
adding/removing leap seconds every so often, we geoengineer the atmosphere to
increase/decrease the rate of rotation of the earth, so that it on average
rotates _exactly_ 86400 SI-Seconds per day.

------
hinkley
Becoming a Class 2 stellar civilization so that we can alter the orbit and
rotation of the earth to be exactly 365 days, 24 hours.

------
every
I've played this game twice:

[https://every.sdf.org/Geekish/sol13cal.txt](https://every.sdf.org/Geekish/sol13cal.txt)

[https://every.sdf.org/Geekish/lunasolcal.txt](https://every.sdf.org/Geekish/lunasolcal.txt)

------
geogra4
Too bad we never seriously adopted the French Republican calendar

There's a twitter account that posts wonderful artwork along with the
republican day of the week.

[https://twitter.com/sansculotides](https://twitter.com/sansculotides)

------
sixstringtheory
I like the solutions that have extra days that don’t fit anywhere else. Those
should just be legally recognized paid holidays.

------
kthejoker2
To the author, if he's reading this:

Hey Sam512, it's kthejoker from E2, hope you're well!

------
kwhitefoot
What is the problem for which calendar reform is a solution?

------
guerrilla
Am I supposed to be able to select an option?

~~~
evan_
The premise is that this would be pasted in its entirety into a reply to a
usenet or listserv post, with the text of the appropriate line- or lines-
modified from "( )" to "(x)".

The implication is that amateur calendarists, who do not fully grasp the
enormity of the task, frequently post to this list with proposals for a new
calendar. The regular contributors to this list see so many ill-conceived
proposals that they have prepared a post with all of the common mistakes and
oversights so they may shoot the theory down without having to type them all
over again.

In reality this list is prepared and posted as a joke for the members of the
community and a deterrent to posting calendar proposals at all, at least those
that do not consider all of these common errors ahead of time.

~~~
zzo38computer
What is the newsgroup for writing calendar proposals?

------
annoyingnoob
> having one or two days per year which are part of no month is stupid

There are some valid points in there but this kind of thing is not productive.
No need to be rude.

~~~
evan_
how about we just do away with months altogether. One or two days per year
that aren't in a month would be weird but 365ish days should be fine, right?

~~~
annoyingnoob
I'm referring to the name calling. I'm not looking to change any dates or
calendars. I found this approach of 'old man screaming at cloud' while name
calling offensive.

You don't need to be condescending to make a point - and that is my point.
This person shared this rant and I gave feedback about the rant, not the
subject of the rant.

------
peterburkimsher
Obligatory link to Falsehoods programmers believe about time:

[https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-
program...](https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-time)

------
staycoolboy
metric.

all hail the kiloday.

~~~
jaggederest
A year is 31.54 megaseconds, who needs months :)

~~~
iso947
Months are fine. Leap years are fine. It’s leap seconds that annoy me.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Leap years are fine. It’s leap seconds that annoy me.

The implementation of leap seconds is obviously worse than the implementation
of leap years, though. (This might make more sense if leap seconds had come
first...)

In a leap year, February 28 is followed by February 29, a day that doesn't
ordinarily exist. It has the same weight as any other day. If you had a
dentist appointment on the 29th, then on March 3rd people will all happily
admit that the 29th happened and you might have had a dentist appointment on
that day.

In a leap second, 23:59:59 is followed by 23:59:59 2, 23:59:59 Harder. Then, a
few seconds later, everyone agrees to just pretend the whole thing never
happened. The POSIX standard specifies that there are 86400 seconds in a day,
and God forbid we deviate from the standard just because some days might --
but only in reality! -- have 86401 seconds.

~~~
zzo38computer
I think I have seen it written as "23:59:60" during a leap second. In Unix
time, you could code it as the previous second but +1 billion nanoseconds, or
as the next second but -1 billion nanoseconds (if you use this option, the
number of nanoseconds must be a signed type).

