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New Calendar Proposal
belg4mit writes "An astronomy professor at Johns Hopkins is pushing for
the adoption of a new, static, calendar. The
press release is written better than his site
but a little short on details.
Interestingly he claims this should be easy to implement and points at the hoops coders must jump through for the Gregorian calendar." Nobody is taking my 10 hour day plan seriously either.
Timely and semi-related riddle.
Q - Why do computer geeks celebrate Halloween on Christmas?
A - Because OCT 31 equals DEC 25.
Thank you, thank you. I'm here all week.
Trolling is a art,
Nobody is taking my 10 hour day plan seriously either.
Actually, it was the one hour of work that your boss didn't like.
I'm going to write to my congressman and ask him to lobby the standards organizations to study this.
Straight away!
birthday on a Monday? feh.
Worse is if you're born during a Newton week.
That would do away with the little rhyme I use to remeber how many days are in a month. :-D
Kosh: "Understanding is a 3 edged sword, your side, their side, the Truth."
Don't worry about that. People wouldn't be allowed to have sex for 6-10 months leading up to a Newtown week to avoid it.
Thank you for submitting your idea for calendar reform. However, we must reject it for the following reasons:
- ( ) It changes the seven day week or adds days outside the week.
- ( ) It has a day or days that are not in a month causing problems for writing dates, etc.
- (X) It has an unusual number of months in all or some years making it hard to divide a year into quarters.
- (X) One or more months have significantly more or fewer days than the others causing problems for monthly fees, etc.
- (X) The number of days in a year varies greatly from some years to others.
- (X) Some months are only in certain years and therefore the number of months in a year varies from year to year.
- (X) The number of days between a date in one year and the next varies form year to year.
- (X) It makes people keep clock time that does match the daytime, i.e. sunrise at midnight or noon.
Congratulations on getting 5 out of 7!Lunch hours.
Is it digitally signed?
What's so complicated about the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox? Otherwise known as Easter Sunday ;-)
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I just KNOW my landlord will be looking for the Newton rent check...
He is not just a nut but a stupid fool! His head has been filled with educated stupidity that ignores the cubic wisdom of 4-day time! I have absolute proof of cubic time but the educated clueless stupids deny the obvious truth of 4 simultaneous earth-days. This is true evil and will perish.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
"Thou shalt not subject thine neighbour to unreasonable searches and seizures"?
As a believer in Christ, knowing that most of our calendar and most of the days of the week originate from names of ancient mythological gods, it makes me a little uneasy too.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
Wouldn't that be kilograms? ;)
Sinepaw.org: Grape Winos
It doesn't matter how hard it is; just call it Jesus Week, and watch 'em lap it up.....
Not that much of a hassle for ./ readers.
Are you seriously suggesting that ordinary people could add or subtract 3 digit numbers?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The fundamental problem with all calendar reform proposals is that the day, month, and year aren't integer multiples of each other.
However, with big enough rockets, we can fix this! Slow the day down a bit, move the moon out -- 30 days in a month, 360 days in a year. Nice and regular!
(Still seeking funding.)
It's about time we thought of the programmers! Let's bioengineer ourselves to have 16 fingers, and adopt hex for counting.
This would really mess up that digital sundial that we read about a few weeks ago...and what about the LEGO grandfather clock? He'd have to rebuild it. No, this new system just won't work.
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
Lousy Smarch weather!
Everyone wants a Friday or Saturday birthday.
Simple, then. We simply design a calendar whereby everybody's birthday is on a Friday or Saturday.
In the tradition of naming new months after emperors (i.e. July and August), I propose "George" instead of "Newton".
My USB printer wasn't detected today!
Get back to work!
You also get the bonus of being more in-sync with lunar changes. (which is easier to keep track of my gf's moods ;)
Wow, you're dating a werewolf?
Not to mention he's skewed it so both Xmas and New Years fall on Sundays. I suspect this loon is just some management efficiency expert in disguise, hoping to save corporations big $$ in needless holiday pay.
2. In international standard ISO-8601 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has decreed that Monday shall be the first day of the week.
Therefore, the ISO is more powerful than God. Q.E.D.
We could use the so-called Aztec Calendar. Mayhaps it is not as easy to code with, but far more accurate. Or the original Greater Sothic Cycle calendar of the Egyptians, on which the Julian Calendar of Rome was based, and in turn on which the Gregorian Calendar, codified during the time of Pope Gregory VII was based. Going further back there is the old Babylonian system (heck its already in base 64!), or to come back to almost the present there is the Revolutionary Calendar of the French Revolution. We could use the old Norse week which only had 5 days in it: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Washday (I am NOT kidding). We could use the Balinese ritual cycle calendar system, or the equally obscure yet similar system used in Tibet. Regardless of the Calendar chosen, most geeks STILL won't be able to get a date!
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Better idea, we cut off everyones pinkys and use OCTAL!
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Yea, with lines like The Gregorian Calendar does not cease to exist, it just isn't ordinarily used. Except by hicks., you really have to wonder if this guy wants to be taken seriously.
It's not any different than the statement "The Imperial system does not cease to exist, it just isn't ordinarily used. Except by hicks." Looking at the world, that's pretty much the case.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
There's no October 31 on his calendar, so Halloween would have to be October 30. LAME
He also wiped out my wedding anniversary, which is on a 31st. Do you think this would mean I wouldn't have to buy gifts?
Like Digital Freedoms? Then donate to EFF before they're gone.
I've just come up with a better idea. How about, instead of an arbitrary number, we invent a system where the hours are related to a physical phenomena? Kind of like how the meter is defined as the distance light travels in 1/299792458th of a second. We should pick something simple and easily reproducable. I propose we look at shadows cast by the nearest star. When the derivative of the length of shadows with respect to time is zero (i.e. at the local minimum or dl/dt = 0) we could all agree to call this time "noon". Any takers?
Yeah, right.
Interestingly enough, even with a 10 day week, the French still limited themselves to working 35-hour weeks.
You must be new here. Remember, /.ers aren't mentally above the age of 6, we live in our parent's basements, imagining a Beowulf cluster of everything, always talking about how everything is in Soviet Russia, obsessed with what is for the old people in Korea and can't even get a date, so we just look at Free Pr0n and imagine what happens to Natalie Portman when hot grits are used on her. On top of that, we play onto the FUD from Micro$oft wondering if it's digitally signed.
;)
So I say, Welcome to Slashdot.
Wow, you're dating a werewolf?
Naw, but she's almost as hairy
...do it right - go all the way.
... stardates!
;-). Of course, fractional dates correspond to time (.1 stardate = 2.4 old Earth hours).
I propose that we get rid of years, months, weeks, and just jump straight to
We can make stardate 1 be the date on which the first ST:TOS episode aired (September 8, 1966, old Earth calendar
I believe that that makes today (December 21, 2004) stardate 13985.
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
Before he gets to changing the calendar, I think he needs to push for a new, static web page.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Hey retard.
That was exactly his point.
I've maintained for YEARS that, as long as we're going to go screwing around with the clock twice a year anyway, why not set the clock back one hour, twice every month ? Let's say we set the clocks back one hour on the 1st of the month, and again on the 15th of the month, every month. In one year we'd be right back where we started (12 months X two hours each = 24 hours!), but we'd have gained a whole extra hour of sleep every two weeks (or so)...now who wouldn't like THAT? (and just to clarify: there'd be no restriction that you had to use the extra hour for sleep...) Sure, part of the year "first thing in the morning" would be just before sundown, and at a completely different part of the year (the opposite side of the year, in fact) you'd be sleeping all "day", but who cares? I mean, we all live by our clocks anyway, right? And you'd be getting that "fall back" boost twice every month !
Well, I'D vote for it...at least it's no crazier than thinking we're "gaining" or "losing" an hour by fiddling with the clocks.
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I give that idea the big 4.
Even worse is if you're born on January 31th. He got rid of your birthday forever.
It's April Fools, all you have to do is completely change the calendar so something inane and make it be the same day every day! Just think every day could be your birthday or Christmas! Even better is that every person could choose their own calendar and live life the way they want to! Forget having to work, EVER! I'm sure it won't effect anything important.
He's a nutcase, and his calendar is riddled with practical problems (which he even notes on his site amongst the "FAQs", and then brushes aside with illogical retorts)
I like his response to "Well I still don't think it's gonna work". He effectively states "I called my Grandmother in Canada once and she said it's cold there."
Now that's an answer for a nutcase!
I propose a year with 13 months of exactly 4 weeks plus the odd intercalary day. The year would start on the spring equinox, southern hemisphere (its our turn).
The advantage of my plan is that the thirteenth month would have no rent, interest or taxes payable.
Vote for Dave, world dictator!