Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days(edition.cnn.com)
edition.cnn.com
Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/28/us/calendar-overhaul/
173 comments
that "new memory load" is functionally zero, since no one would have to remember that. By the time the Extra week actually arrived, people would have been looking forward to it for an entire year, and it would not catch anyone by surprise. No memory required. Even subterranean cave trolls would be aware it is coming.
I think it's a nice idea especially if we could have a big weeklong worldwide party once every 5 or 6 years
I think it's a nice idea especially if we could have a big weeklong worldwide party once every 5 or 6 years
The corporate drone pessimist in me thinks that the extra week would just be another work week, with the best case being "Ah yes, you get an extra half-day worth of PTO this year."
Humans are slaves to traditions. If it's introduced as a world wide party week from the start then people will feel like "it's always been done that way" and be less likely to fight it.
I also immediately thought of a big celebration occurring during that week
Indeed, it is a corporate-friendly calendar.
They say their calendar would make it easy to plan annual activities, from holidays to academic schedules to financial calculations.
They say their calendar would make it easy to plan annual activities, from holidays to academic schedules to financial calculations.
I like this idea. Unfortunately, it can't coexist with the Gregorian calendar in its current form; if a small fraction of the world switched to it, they'd always have to wonder which calendar someone writing "Jan 1" was referring to.
When a date is written down, it needs to be immediately obvious which calendar it's referring to. It needs a special notation that doesn't overlap with any of the currently-used notations for dates, so that it will be unambiguous (and so that the old calendar will remain unambiguous). I propose doing this by giving each month a letter, A-L, and writing dates like this:
When a date is written down, it needs to be immediately obvious which calendar it's referring to. It needs a special notation that doesn't overlap with any of the currently-used notations for dates, so that it will be unambiguous (and so that the old calendar will remain unambiguous). I propose doing this by giving each month a letter, A-L, and writing dates like this:
2012-A01 = New calendar, first day of first month of 2012
2012-L30 = New calendar, thirtieth day of twelfth month of 2012
2012-01-01 = Gregorian calendar, first day of first month of 2012
C30 = New calendar, thirtieth day of third month of whatever year this is
This problem has been seen before, when countries adopted the Gregorian calendar at different times:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_dating
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_dating
Obviously, the calendar ambiguity can be resolved by some sort of calendar NAT.
You know, let's just use Unix timestamps when marking future dates. Removes all ambiguity from calendar types, time zones, etc.
I like your idea, let's get together and discuss it over drinks. Hows your 1325357149?
I retract my previous suggestion.
It seems silly they didn't just drop the concept of months and just refer to everything like the 5th Monday.
One of the points of the calendar though is to keep the months and days of the week the same.
I just pointed this out to a friend and she gladly brought up the Shire calendar from Tolkien's works, which according to her has 12 months, 30 days a month, 7 days a week, 365 days a year with the date of each month staying the same weekday due to the separation of the five other days as holidays that are separate from the months (including leap-day, which doesn't belong to any day of the week).
Which actually solves the exact same problem in a much cleaner fashion than this proposal.
Which actually solves the exact same problem in a much cleaner fashion than this proposal.
No it doesn't. Making a day not be part of any week breaks the strict 7 day cycle, and will be rejected be the vast majority of the world.
But if its only for seasonal holidays (lets say the two equinoxes, the solstices, and leap day) they'd make for worldwide accepted celebration points that wouldn't disrupt the "working week"
It'd be a little strange, but its really not any worse than adding a day in February every four years.
It'd be a little strange, but its really not any worse than adding a day in February every four years.
No, it would not be accepted. The 7 day cycle is strict - you can not add or remove days from it. It might be fine for work, but it will not be fine for religious observance.
If you tried then those who observe religious days will keep their cycle, and will not go to work on the real weekend (even those who otherwise wouldn't care would make a point about it), which will be out of sync with the new calendar weekend. It won't take many people doing that for the calendar to fail to be accepted.
If you tried then those who observe religious days will keep their cycle, and will not go to work on the real weekend (even those who otherwise wouldn't care would make a point about it), which will be out of sync with the new calendar weekend. It won't take many people doing that for the calendar to fail to be accepted.
Dammit. This is why we can't have nice things.
The real innovation in this calendar, which I don't rememebr seeing in previous perpetual calendar proposals, is the system for 7-day-week seasonal drift adjustment. Adding an "extra" 5 days to every year is much more common, but not popular.
What I can't figure out is what algorithm they use to calculate when to add an extra week. It seems slightly irregular, but I asssume there must be a simple formula I could use in a date library to account for it.
What I can't figure out is what algorithm they use to calculate when to add an extra week. It seems slightly irregular, but I asssume there must be a simple formula I could use in a date library to account for it.
Well, with 364 days that means there's 1.25 days pushed into the buffer every year. That means that the buffer would be full (mathematically) every 5.6 years hence the "every five or six years." In order to keep general season alignment, I figure they vary between the two. This decimal doesn't go away until after 28 years - so I assume some combination of fives and sixes that add up to 28. Lets say three sixes and two fives. (18+10). So in order to make any pattern they might do something like 6 5 6 5 6 6 5 6 5 6. And now, looking at the leap years, I think my theory is confirmed: 2015-2020 (5)
2020-2026 (6)
2026-2032 (6)
2032-2037 (5)
2037-2043 (6)
2043-2048 (5)
2048-2054 (6)
2054-2060 (6)
wow, I like it more: http://shire-reckoning.com/calendar.
We're already used to stat holidays; "Days of Yule" are much less intrusive than leap weeks
We're already used to stat holidays; "Days of Yule" are much less intrusive than leap weeks
I was going to mention this alternative (have read it long long time ago in some amateur astronomy book), but I had no idea about its origin. Thank you for providing it :)
All I can think of is xkcd 927 ( http://xkcd.com/927/ )
There are already lots of calendars if one cares to look. Why bother with a 7 day week other than the biblical mandate? Why not use a lunar calendar? It would certainly simplify 'calculating' Easter. Having a leap day is a lot less intrusive than a leap week and does anyone actually bother to memorize the Metonic cycle? Is it because lunisolar calendars are uncommon or because they're a pain or both?
I think having timezones benefits us in the sense that we can say "It is lunch in city A when it is dinner in city B". Knowing when people are likely to be sleeping/working/playing in different places helps more than having One Timezone. Pilots use UTC because they're between timezones too much for them to follow a 'standard' schedule according to our approximations of the Sun's movements.
There are already lots of calendars if one cares to look. Why bother with a 7 day week other than the biblical mandate? Why not use a lunar calendar? It would certainly simplify 'calculating' Easter. Having a leap day is a lot less intrusive than a leap week and does anyone actually bother to memorize the Metonic cycle? Is it because lunisolar calendars are uncommon or because they're a pain or both?
I think having timezones benefits us in the sense that we can say "It is lunch in city A when it is dinner in city B". Knowing when people are likely to be sleeping/working/playing in different places helps more than having One Timezone. Pilots use UTC because they're between timezones too much for them to follow a 'standard' schedule according to our approximations of the Sun's movements.
Compliance with biblical mandates is a popularity hack. You need popularity if you want a new calendar to be adopted (or you need massive power on the level of an emperor^Wdictator.
So in a matter of a few thousand years we have gone from Emperors (Caesar) dictating calendars to scientists proposing new ones. :)
These type of reforms were quiet popular in the beginning of the 20th century. E.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Calendar
Had this proposal been suggested a century ago. I would have a good feeling it would have been made a reality since it doesn't interfere with a 7 day work weak.
Today with computers, it isn't really necessary. Anyone is able to check when July 1st will be in 2500 without calculating. So it is not likely to gain to much interest except in by theorists.
This proposal introduces an artificial calendar that is neither solar or lunar but realigns every few years. It is quiet a novel idea.
The Jews did similar engineering in their calendar system. The rabbis did not want some holidays to fall out on certain days of the week because of varied reasons. So they engineered rules for the leap years and new months to happen in a pattern to prevent this.
The Jewish calendar is lunar but realigns itself with the solar calendar. It need to be certain Jewish holidays always accure in the same season.
These type of reforms were quiet popular in the beginning of the 20th century. E.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Calendar
Had this proposal been suggested a century ago. I would have a good feeling it would have been made a reality since it doesn't interfere with a 7 day work weak.
Today with computers, it isn't really necessary. Anyone is able to check when July 1st will be in 2500 without calculating. So it is not likely to gain to much interest except in by theorists.
This proposal introduces an artificial calendar that is neither solar or lunar but realigns every few years. It is quiet a novel idea.
The Jews did similar engineering in their calendar system. The rabbis did not want some holidays to fall out on certain days of the week because of varied reasons. So they engineered rules for the leap years and new months to happen in a pattern to prevent this.
The Jewish calendar is lunar but realigns itself with the solar calendar. It need to be certain Jewish holidays always accure in the same season.
The former calendars were proposed by scientists, but named after the ruler that forced them:
Julian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar
"The Julian calendar began in 45 BC (709 AUC) as a reform of the Roman calendar by Julius Caesar. It was chosen after consultation with the astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria and was probably designed to approximate the tropical year (known at least since Hipparchus)."
Gregorian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar
"The Gregorian calendar reform contained two parts, a reform of the Julian calendar as used up to Pope Gregory's time, [...]. The reform was a modification of a proposal made by the Calabrian doctor Aloysius Lilius (or Lilio)."
Julian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar
"The Julian calendar began in 45 BC (709 AUC) as a reform of the Roman calendar by Julius Caesar. It was chosen after consultation with the astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria and was probably designed to approximate the tropical year (known at least since Hipparchus)."
Gregorian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar
"The Gregorian calendar reform contained two parts, a reform of the Julian calendar as used up to Pope Gregory's time, [...]. The reform was a modification of a proposal made by the Calabrian doctor Aloysius Lilius (or Lilio)."
Interesting. :)
Any rulers out there want a calendar named after them?
Any rulers out there want a calendar named after them?
Why preserve the seven-day week? The appropriate factorization of 365 is 73*5.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordian_calendar
Plus, the Discordian calendar has the advantage of already being implemented in Linux!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordian_calendar
Plus, the Discordian calendar has the advantage of already being implemented in Linux!
if you read the linked article, you see the explanation: the fourth commandment specifies resting on the seventh day. any proposed calendar that doesn't have a seven day week will never be adopted as long as religion still exists.
and even if it weren't for religion, everything is structured around a seven day week. changing that would mean a drastic lifestyle change for most people.
and even if it weren't for religion, everything is structured around a seven day week. changing that would mean a drastic lifestyle change for most people.
Then make the week 73 days long. You can rest on 7th day, and corporations would really like it.
This would be great if we had already achieved the 1950s dream of the three-day work week.
Brought to you from a country that has not adopted SI units.
That depends on what you mean by adopted. The federal government/education establishment/etc. all use SI units. It's the general populace which couldn't care less.
Which means this proposal has the same probability of adoption as me winning the lottery. And I don't buy lottery tickets.
Which means this proposal has the same probability of adoption as me winning the lottery. And I don't buy lottery tickets.
Here's a revolutionary thought - the calendar is already fixed. Sporting events (etc.) don't have to happen on the same weekday, they can just always happen on the same date. Voila, predictable time planning that doesn't have to be redone every year.
And I love the idea of eliminating timezones, especially the example that pilots already use UTC. Ever considered this might be because the concept of "day" doesn't really apply when you change 10 timezones in 10 hours?
Personally I think eliminating timezones would make relating to people internationally very difficult. It's already weird enough that Australians think of December as a summer month. Consider half the world thinking of 20:00 (8PM) as the morning. How does "everywhere is the same hour" even remotely fix the fact people sleep at night and work at day anyway?
And what do you do with an extra week "every five or six years"?
And I love the idea of eliminating timezones, especially the example that pilots already use UTC. Ever considered this might be because the concept of "day" doesn't really apply when you change 10 timezones in 10 hours?
Personally I think eliminating timezones would make relating to people internationally very difficult. It's already weird enough that Australians think of December as a summer month. Consider half the world thinking of 20:00 (8PM) as the morning. How does "everywhere is the same hour" even remotely fix the fact people sleep at night and work at day anyway?
And what do you do with an extra week "every five or six years"?
What's the difference between needing to know what timezone some place is in, vs. needing to know about where their day falls?
What particularly annoys me about timezones is that times are already useless. When does the day start? (And I mean the normal cultural day, not your personal day.) Be it 7am, 8am, 9am, or whatever your answer may be, it sure isn't anything sensible like 0 or 1. If those are anything, that's when the day ends. If the sun rises at 03:00 in one place, 10:00 in another, and 22:00 in another (presumably we'd stop using "am" and "pm" as the a & p would become useless), who really cares? It's not like we're taking away the 00:00 sunrise that you can set your watch by from anybody.
What particularly annoys me about timezones is that times are already useless. When does the day start? (And I mean the normal cultural day, not your personal day.) Be it 7am, 8am, 9am, or whatever your answer may be, it sure isn't anything sensible like 0 or 1. If those are anything, that's when the day ends. If the sun rises at 03:00 in one place, 10:00 in another, and 22:00 in another (presumably we'd stop using "am" and "pm" as the a & p would become useless), who really cares? It's not like we're taking away the 00:00 sunrise that you can set your watch by from anybody.
Removing time zones would break any kind of cultural joke and reference to time. "omg, i woke up at 4am today!"... Especially in todays internet connected world.
Swatch tried to intruduce timezone-free time many many years ago called "swatch internet time", Ericsson even had it as default on some of their cell phones to promote it. Needless to say it didn't work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time
Swatch tried to intruduce timezone-free time many many years ago called "swatch internet time", Ericsson even had it as default on some of their cell phones to promote it. Needless to say it didn't work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time
IRC time is pretty convenient: Greet with good morning when joining, good night when leaving.
> Here's a revolutionary thought - the calendar is already fixed. Sporting events (etc.) don't have to happen on the same weekday, they can just always happen on the same date. Voila, predictable time planning that doesn't have to be redone every year.
Except you want work days off to be near a weekend. I'd rather have a 3 day weekend than Wednesday alone off...
Except you want work days off to be near a weekend. I'd rather have a 3 day weekend than Wednesday alone off...
In all seriousness, it would be easier to adopt this proposed calendar than it would be to:
- Not have football on Sundays
- Tell students that they have to go to school Thursday
through Monday this year (But church is still on Sundays!).
- a bunch of other weekday/weekend-aligned activities.In the UK there have been discussions about stopping DST. The main problem is that in places Scotland it would be darker for longer in the morning which could lead to more traffic accidents.
The affects on crime and traffic accidents would be huge. And it would never be possible to get half of the planet to agree that they will forever work while it's dark and sleep while it is light.
The affects on crime and traffic accidents would be huge. And it would never be possible to get half of the planet to agree that they will forever work while it's dark and sleep while it is light.
I don't think the suggestion is that the working day everywhere should start at X:00. The idea is that 4:00 in California is 4:00 in Britain and 4:00 in China. When the day starts would vary from place to place; perhaps 1:00 somewhere and 12:00 somewhere else. The point is to eliminate the confusion caused by timezones, especially those like Nepal's which are 15 minutes off other time zones for no good reason.
Actually, China did get rid of timezones and daylight savings: officially, everywhere is on "Beijing time" (GMT+8).
This understandably causes problems in the far western provinces such as Xinjiang, so everyone just observes an unofficial GMT+6 time instead. This wreaks utter havoc on conversationd about time: bus schedules, shop opening hours, etc. Aside from the ambiguity, since it's not an official time zone, people overseas just assume they can call you to discuss business at 9am, even though you've barely woken up.
Time zones are complex because, well, the world is a big and complicated place. But theanswer is certainky not to just get rid of them!
This understandably causes problems in the far western provinces such as Xinjiang, so everyone just observes an unofficial GMT+6 time instead. This wreaks utter havoc on conversationd about time: bus schedules, shop opening hours, etc. Aside from the ambiguity, since it's not an official time zone, people overseas just assume they can call you to discuss business at 9am, even though you've barely woken up.
Time zones are complex because, well, the world is a big and complicated place. But theanswer is certainky not to just get rid of them!
Aside from the ambiguity, since it's not an official time zone, people overseas just assume they can call you to discuss business at 9am, even though you've barely woken up.... But theanswer[sic] is certainky not to just get rid of them!
Add metadata to all phone records that makes it easy to specify and query the hours in which one would like to be called.
Add metadata to all phone records that makes it easy to specify and query the hours in which one would like to be called.
That's just substituting one sort of confusion for another, I think.
Instead of DST, we will be starting work and school one hour later for half of the year. We have universal time. It's GMT.
There are many people who don't care what time it is in another country (domestic jobs and the unemployed). There is no real incentive to have everyone relearn what time they get up and go to sleep.
There are many people who don't care what time it is in another country (domestic jobs and the unemployed). There is no real incentive to have everyone relearn what time they get up and go to sleep.
I've been using an independent calendar for my own records for over a decade now - it's the day-of-year, written base 7. It fits in with weeks; if we reset weeks every year (why not? we do worse things already with leap days and seconds) then dates become equivalent with weekdays. One number expresses the day-of-year, day-of-week, week-of-year, and month-of-year, using a 49-day month.
http://tylerneylon.com/b/archives/122
I don't really expect many other people to use this, despite being a better designed system. I think hardcore math/cs people would like it, though. I've written some small pieces of code that work with this system, if anyone's interested.
http://tylerneylon.com/b/archives/122
I don't really expect many other people to use this, despite being a better designed system. I think hardcore math/cs people would like it, though. I've written some small pieces of code that work with this system, if anyone's interested.
If everything is a 0-based index (e.g. first day being 0), why aren't the years?
The 7date doesn't say much about how we count years. It's all about how you count days and other sub-year units. You could combine it with any method of counting years that you like. I defaulted to using the year system I'm used to because it's convenient.
Wow, after reading the comments it's amazing how difficult it is for most people to understand that eliminating time zones doesn't mean that anyone will change when they work. You will just have a different number for the time you do things than in than other parts of the world. In England you might start at 09:00, but on the other side of the world they would start at 20:00 which would be morning for them.
Why is this better though? When scheduling a meeting, I still have to figure out what "zone" another place is in so as to schedule an event during a normal workday.
I can imagine the faces of the staff (who are too scared to speak up) when the CEO from overseas calls to organise a meeting at 3.30am in the morning the next day.
The problem is that these are still timezones. It's actually a very trivial change. Instead of saying you're in a different timezone, I say you wake up at 20:00 instead of 8:00 like I do.
That's not a very significant change ...
That's not a very significant change ...
[deleted]
The scientific part is simple, its just a little maths.
The difficult part is to get 8 billion people to agree to pull in the same direction. And my guess is, that it will never happen, unfortunately.
The difficult part is to get 8 billion people to agree to pull in the same direction. And my guess is, that it will never happen, unfortunately.
Hey look, it worked when the Chinese government in the early 20th century switched to the Gregorian Calendar... Or did it? Paper calendars in China generally represent both Gregorian and Chinese calendar dates.
I'm going to assume when this new calendar is adopted, the chinese will then be able to buy three calendars in one.
I'm going to assume when this new calendar is adopted, the chinese will then be able to buy three calendars in one.
It was done mainly by force and in a society that had almost no reading skills back then. The same methods are (thankfully) difficult to apply in the West today.
And it only "kinda" worked, because in the Chinese countryside, where most people live, 80 years later they still mainly use 农历, not the Western calender, despite all government stuff being done in Western calender dates. (I lived in China for some 6 years, just left the country yesterday, walking across the border to Vietnam).
And it only "kinda" worked, because in the Chinese countryside, where most people live, 80 years later they still mainly use 农历, not the Western calender, despite all government stuff being done in Western calender dates. (I lived in China for some 6 years, just left the country yesterday, walking across the border to Vietnam).
I would tend to agree, but then we have things like DST shifting around all the time. The government just states they are making a change, and everyone does. Every software that isn't based on a network time server breaks, and is fixed, and we move on. The same could happen with this new calendar, the government simply mandates that by a certain year it has to be in place.
The largest burden will be on legacy software and getting that patched. That very well could be reason enough for the reversal of this calendar, as every government software breaks, and they find out how slow they are to keeping up with their own mandates.
The largest burden will be on legacy software and getting that patched. That very well could be reason enough for the reversal of this calendar, as every government software breaks, and they find out how slow they are to keeping up with their own mandates.
I remember when I lived in Mexico some 12 years ago and the government introduced DST there. Some schools would actually start an hour later to sync their starting time with before-DST-time, people where complaing about being totally confused, etc. Don't know if there is still DST now or if they abandoned it because of the many (often totally irrational) protests. Its not easy to change people's habits.
The gov adapted to Y2K, so they know exactly what they need to fix.
The difference between adapting to Y2K and adapting to the HH calendar is minor. If the gov survived Y2K they would survive the HH-adoption.
The difference between adapting to Y2K and adapting to the HH calendar is minor. If the gov survived Y2K they would survive the HH-adoption.
The whole "everybody should adopt UTC" business makes no sense to me. If a business needs to use UTC because of time zones or whatnot, they already are. It'd be weird having the day of the week change in the middle of the day in Japan, too.
That's an excellent point: "We'll need to be ready by Tuesday morning"... does morning mean 'sunrise' or does it mean 'time near where Tuesday 'starts'?
Agreed with the general proposal: the only time periods that are important to preserve are the day (coz of morning/night), the week (coz of work-week and religious days), and the year (coz of seasons). The month is pretty arbitrary.
They propose a 364-day year with 8x 30-day months and 4x 31-day months. If they're okay with a 364-day year, wouldn't it be better to have 8x 28-day months and 4x 35-day months. Or you could have 13x 28-day months. That way the day-of-week would be even more predictable.
They propose a 364-day year with 8x 30-day months and 4x 31-day months. If they're okay with a 364-day year, wouldn't it be better to have 8x 28-day months and 4x 35-day months. Or you could have 13x 28-day months. That way the day-of-week would be even more predictable.
Yeah, except you lose the morning/night distinction, because they also suggest that the entire world use one timezone. This, in my humble opinion, seems to a very cumbersome and onerous system. Yes, there are obvious business advantages to having just one timezone, but it also completely robs us of heuristics that have been developed over centuries.
For any purposes which require clear unambiguous time values, we already have UTC. This is just not a problem.
Interesting but it won't happen. It would have to be adopted throughout the world (especially where religious days are affected) and there would never be agreement on which holidays fall on which day (NYE on Friday or Saturday?).
I don't fully understand the other point in the article about ridding the world of time zones to improve business and trade. How would that work? Do they expect certain countries to agree to work while the sun is down?
I don't fully understand the other point in the article about ridding the world of time zones to improve business and trade. How would that work? Do they expect certain countries to agree to work while the sun is down?
I think you understood the point about timezones backwards. The point is for everybody to use, for instance, UTC time. So instead of working the proverbial 9am to 5pm, if you are in Japan you would work from 0am to 8am (UTC).
It makes sense to me, but I can see how lots of people would have a very hard time understanding and accepting this.
It makes sense to me, but I can see how lots of people would have a very hard time understanding and accepting this.
Lovely, the Esperanto of calendars. It's bad enough my birthday falls on Christmas Eve, now it's forever to be on the Sabbath too? No thanks.
I love this idea, but there are a few things that aren't covered in the comments that I want to know about.
1) How does this calendar align to the phases of the moon? How many moons are there per-year? Is this variable? This is important due to archaic calendar systems and dates that are based on solar-lunar calendars (e.g. China & Japan)
2) Is there a quick and easy algorithm for re-mapping dates? My birthday was on Mar 30, 1991 - for example. Would I simply keep the old date, or adopt a new one? I assume keep the old since its still on the calendar, but what about people born January 31st?
3) How do seasons align and fluctuate along these new datelines? And how does this floating week influence it?
1) How does this calendar align to the phases of the moon? How many moons are there per-year? Is this variable? This is important due to archaic calendar systems and dates that are based on solar-lunar calendars (e.g. China & Japan)
2) Is there a quick and easy algorithm for re-mapping dates? My birthday was on Mar 30, 1991 - for example. Would I simply keep the old date, or adopt a new one? I assume keep the old since its still on the calendar, but what about people born January 31st?
3) How do seasons align and fluctuate along these new datelines? And how does this floating week influence it?
As long as my birthday is on a Saturday it works for me.
(seriously though, imagine how mad people will get when a particular event happens on the "wrong day" every year)
I like it though. I'd even take a Tuesday birthday to make it happen.
(seriously though, imagine how mad people will get when a particular event happens on the "wrong day" every year)
I like it though. I'd even take a Tuesday birthday to make it happen.
In Malaysia, if holiday falls on Sunday, it'll be "carried forward" to Monday (you still celebrate on Sunday, but Monday will be extra holiday).
And in some companies, if holiday falls on Saturday, you get extra 1 day leave entitlement.
Now, you can see conflicting interest here, especially between employees and employers :)
And in some companies, if holiday falls on Saturday, you get extra 1 day leave entitlement.
Now, you can see conflicting interest here, especially between employees and employers :)
This is not far from how most of Sweden operates. Most offices comply to the idea of "half-day before holiday" notion and as where fixing the dates wouldn't interfere with that too much, I doo believe that fixing Christmas to a Saturday would make a lot of Swedes angry.
For one, we celebrate the 24th, and having the 25th on a Saturday sure gives Friday and half of Thursday off. But the 26th is also a holiday, which would then be on a regular Sunday. New Years Eve is not a holiday, and having that on a constant Friday would open the days between Christmas and NYE as a work week. Where as now some years you can have a nice long (10-14 days) vacation with only a couple days of actual leave, because the rest are considered national holidays. (Example: 2012 I can get 14 days off with only 5 days of leave.)
For one, we celebrate the 24th, and having the 25th on a Saturday sure gives Friday and half of Thursday off. But the 26th is also a holiday, which would then be on a regular Sunday. New Years Eve is not a holiday, and having that on a constant Friday would open the days between Christmas and NYE as a work week. Where as now some years you can have a nice long (10-14 days) vacation with only a couple days of actual leave, because the rest are considered national holidays. (Example: 2012 I can get 14 days off with only 5 days of leave.)
> Now, you can see conflicting interest here, especially between employees and employers :)
Why would there be a conflict of interest? The point is that employees always get the same number of "days off" per year is it not? The conflict of interest would arise in countries where holidays are not carried forward (or stashed in leave entitlements), employers interest would be to have all of them fall on week-ends, whereas employee interest would be to have all of them fall on week-days.
Or did I miss something?
Why would there be a conflict of interest? The point is that employees always get the same number of "days off" per year is it not? The conflict of interest would arise in countries where holidays are not carried forward (or stashed in leave entitlements), employers interest would be to have all of them fall on week-ends, whereas employee interest would be to have all of them fall on week-days.
Or did I miss something?
Same for the federal government in the US.
For people who are apparently enlightened enough to realize that no calendar, however rational and perfect, will be accepted if it violates a certain religious rule (the sabbath), they are apparently quite ignorant in their advocacy of UTC for all purposes.
It's all well and good to eliminate time zones as such and have each region operate on a fixed clock, but to suggest that people will simply stop paying attention to the sun is insane. If you want wide adoption you can't expect people to make radical change in their lives. Most people prefer to wake with the sun and sleep when it's dark; some studies suggest that we are biologically predisposed to want or need this. Whether it's 05:00 when I wake or 16:00 when I wake is immaterial to me (that's just a number, just what you call it) but whether it's daylight when I'm out and about just plain matters.
In effect you'll probably always need a way to divide the world by when the sun is up, even if the clock doesn't change.
It's all well and good to eliminate time zones as such and have each region operate on a fixed clock, but to suggest that people will simply stop paying attention to the sun is insane. If you want wide adoption you can't expect people to make radical change in their lives. Most people prefer to wake with the sun and sleep when it's dark; some studies suggest that we are biologically predisposed to want or need this. Whether it's 05:00 when I wake or 16:00 when I wake is immaterial to me (that's just a number, just what you call it) but whether it's daylight when I'm out and about just plain matters.
In effect you'll probably always need a way to divide the world by when the sun is up, even if the clock doesn't change.
I'm pretty sure they're not advocating screwing with the Circadian cycle. You still wake up and go to sleep with the sun; just now you wake up at 13h00 instead of 8:00 AM.
Read it again, they are.
Quote from the proposal: "For example, the adoption of Universal Time would give new flexibility to economic management in the vast East-West expanse of Russia: everyone would know exactly what time it is everywhere, at every moment. Opening and closing times of businesses could be specified for every class of business and activity. If thought desirable, banks and financial institutions throughout the country could be required to open and to close each day at the same hour by the world time. This would mean that bank employees in the far East of Russia would start work with the sun well up in the sky, while bank employees in the far west of Russia would be at their desks before the sun has risen. "
The article omits this in its summary.
Quote from the proposal: "For example, the adoption of Universal Time would give new flexibility to economic management in the vast East-West expanse of Russia: everyone would know exactly what time it is everywhere, at every moment. Opening and closing times of businesses could be specified for every class of business and activity. If thought desirable, banks and financial institutions throughout the country could be required to open and to close each day at the same hour by the world time. This would mean that bank employees in the far East of Russia would start work with the sun well up in the sky, while bank employees in the far west of Russia would be at their desks before the sun has risen. "
The article omits this in its summary.
A world in which the state mandates that your work day begins before the sun rises...
Where do I sign up??
sarcasm off
Where do I sign up??
sarcasm off
Ah I missed that part. Crazy!!
They would drop the quadrennial 366-day leap years entirely in favor of an extra week at the end of December every five or six years.
and
The two men also propose eliminating time zones and adopting a universal time around the world to streamline international business.
indicate that there are some fundamental things they don't understand about business.
and
The two men also propose eliminating time zones and adopting a universal time around the world to streamline international business.
indicate that there are some fundamental things they don't understand about business.
I'd like to know how much extra complexity these leap weeks add to the calculations that would supposedly be easier... I would imagine that it is non-trivial.
Am I the only one that likes the fact that dates occur on different days? This way everyone's birthday will occur over a weekend every few years.
Am I the only one that likes the fact that dates occur on different days? This way everyone's birthday will occur over a weekend every few years.
Some people, groups, or governments could change over on a case-by-case basis to a week-based system, without a sudden change to the worldwide date system. Just label the weeks with numbers, e.g. 1-Wednesday, 27-Monday, or 52-Sunday for Christmas this year.
It seems Chinese people generally don't remember the time of week so much as the Month and date. Whenever someone in China tells me "this is happening on the 28 November", in my mind I have to work out what day of week it is before I can internalize it in my memory. Chinese seem to just remember the month and date. Schools often say "Monday's and Tuesday's timetable will be shifted to the previous Saturday and Sunday, respectively".
And of course their idea is Western-centric. Chinese and Muslims both have their own calendars for festivals.
It seems Chinese people generally don't remember the time of week so much as the Month and date. Whenever someone in China tells me "this is happening on the 28 November", in my mind I have to work out what day of week it is before I can internalize it in my memory. Chinese seem to just remember the month and date. Schools often say "Monday's and Tuesday's timetable will be shifted to the previous Saturday and Sunday, respectively".
And of course their idea is Western-centric. Chinese and Muslims both have their own calendars for festivals.
I don't know how popular this is at other companies, but Intel (or at least my group) does use a week-based system for all dates. Today (December 28) would be "WW53.3". WW53 is the work week and .3 means Wednesday. Weeks start on Monday as ".1", whereas Sunday is ".0" and Saturday is ".6".
While this system should in theory make it easy to calculate the days need to complete a task, I still find myself converting to Month-Day every time. On the other hand, I don't have a clue what day of the week March 2nd is going to be, but if it's called WW9.5, then I immediately know that it's on a Friday 9 weeks from now.
While this system should in theory make it easy to calculate the days need to complete a task, I still find myself converting to Month-Day every time. On the other hand, I don't have a clue what day of the week March 2nd is going to be, but if it's called WW9.5, then I immediately know that it's on a Friday 9 weeks from now.
That is because most the Chinese are hard working and do not work on a 7 day work week. Most Chinese get X days off per month or X days per 10 days if more than 3 days off per month. Not X days per week.
I believe most Ayis get 1 day off per month. Factory workers 1 day off per 10 days. Office workers 1 day off per week.
Actually, with the bigger factories their workers are getting 1 day off per week (e.g. established textile factories, foxconn, etc.).
I believe most Ayis get 1 day off per month. Factory workers 1 day off per 10 days. Office workers 1 day off per week.
Actually, with the bigger factories their workers are getting 1 day off per week (e.g. established textile factories, foxconn, etc.).
Have they come up with any estimate of the global cost of the switch, and compared that to the benefit of the new calendar? It seems to change a bunch of stuff, and add a complicated new "leap week", for no particularly good reason. Yeah, it might reduce the cost of printing calendars slightly, though a lot of people use new calendars yearly so they can write on them, and a lot more just use their computer.
The cost of the transition would not be insignificant. In the Western world, we've had two major calendar changes in the past 2200 years or so. The most recent one, the transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, lasted for about 400 years, as different countries transitioned at different times, with, I'm sure, plenty of friction caused by the lack of synchronization. Is it really necessary to go through all of that again?
Also, while this proposal would make holidays based on the solar calendar fall on the same day every year, it would do nothing for the holidays based on the lunar calendar. They would still drift around.
Reading their proposal on cato.org linked to from the article, it seems that a large part of their motivation is the synchronization of calendars for various financial instruments. But that doesn't require changing everyone's calendar; you can fix just the financial instruments, which already don't follow the ordinary calendar, without wreaking havoc on every other use of the calendar.
And I'm not sure how this extra week in December ever few years is supposed to help solve the problems with financial instruments. Under the current system, you need to deal with the fact that months may differ in length by up to 3 days, and that needs to be dealt with every month; in the new system, months would regularly vary by 1 day, but suddenly vary by another 7 days once every 5 years or so.
I think one of the reasons we've gotten ourselves into this mess is that we keep on trying to fit together different cycles of arbitrary length such that they match up exactly, which is impossible, so we add hacks on top of hacks to try to fix the problem. We try to make the cycle of days match the cycles of years, we try to make the cycle of months match the cycle of days (and years), and this proposal tries to shoehorn the cycle of weeks into that too, with a hack that adds an extra week every 5 or 6 years seemingly at random (while there is a regular rule for it, it's not as easily remembered as the Gregorian "leap year every 4 years, except for years divisible by 100, but an exception to that exception for years divisible by 400").
Instead of trying to do hacks to get all of these cycles to line up, why not move in the other direction and take the approach of having regular cycles at different frequencies that do not line up? You can have a financial calendar of 30 solar days (or whatever period is most convenient for you), a lunar calendar of one lunar month, the 7 solar day week, the tropical year that aligns with the seasons, the sidereal year that aligns with the orbit of the earth around the sun (which differs from the tropical year due to precession of the earth's axis). We have computers that can keep track of how all of these things line up when we care these days; instead of trying to simplify everything to fit together discretely with hacks added to fix it up, just let the computers deal with the precise details and allow each cycle to be simple and independent.
Now, moving to a single worldwide time standard (just use UTC for everyone for everyday use) seems to make a little more sense. While I understand the desire to make the hours line up with the solar day in a reasonably uniform way around the world, timezones (and daylight savings time) are an ugly hack that add a lot of cost and give you only a very rough approximation of what you are trying to achieve.
The cost of the transition would not be insignificant. In the Western world, we've had two major calendar changes in the past 2200 years or so. The most recent one, the transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, lasted for about 400 years, as different countries transitioned at different times, with, I'm sure, plenty of friction caused by the lack of synchronization. Is it really necessary to go through all of that again?
Also, while this proposal would make holidays based on the solar calendar fall on the same day every year, it would do nothing for the holidays based on the lunar calendar. They would still drift around.
Reading their proposal on cato.org linked to from the article, it seems that a large part of their motivation is the synchronization of calendars for various financial instruments. But that doesn't require changing everyone's calendar; you can fix just the financial instruments, which already don't follow the ordinary calendar, without wreaking havoc on every other use of the calendar.
And I'm not sure how this extra week in December ever few years is supposed to help solve the problems with financial instruments. Under the current system, you need to deal with the fact that months may differ in length by up to 3 days, and that needs to be dealt with every month; in the new system, months would regularly vary by 1 day, but suddenly vary by another 7 days once every 5 years or so.
I think one of the reasons we've gotten ourselves into this mess is that we keep on trying to fit together different cycles of arbitrary length such that they match up exactly, which is impossible, so we add hacks on top of hacks to try to fix the problem. We try to make the cycle of days match the cycles of years, we try to make the cycle of months match the cycle of days (and years), and this proposal tries to shoehorn the cycle of weeks into that too, with a hack that adds an extra week every 5 or 6 years seemingly at random (while there is a regular rule for it, it's not as easily remembered as the Gregorian "leap year every 4 years, except for years divisible by 100, but an exception to that exception for years divisible by 400").
Instead of trying to do hacks to get all of these cycles to line up, why not move in the other direction and take the approach of having regular cycles at different frequencies that do not line up? You can have a financial calendar of 30 solar days (or whatever period is most convenient for you), a lunar calendar of one lunar month, the 7 solar day week, the tropical year that aligns with the seasons, the sidereal year that aligns with the orbit of the earth around the sun (which differs from the tropical year due to precession of the earth's axis). We have computers that can keep track of how all of these things line up when we care these days; instead of trying to simplify everything to fit together discretely with hacks added to fix it up, just let the computers deal with the precise details and allow each cycle to be simple and independent.
Now, moving to a single worldwide time standard (just use UTC for everyone for everyday use) seems to make a little more sense. While I understand the desire to make the hours line up with the solar day in a reasonably uniform way around the world, timezones (and daylight savings time) are an ugly hack that add a lot of cost and give you only a very rough approximation of what you are trying to achieve.
Timezones are not an ugly hack.
When you travel to a different timezones you just have to adjust your clock and, without asking, you know that shops open at 8~10am until 4~8pm with or without a midday stop for lunch (12~3). You have dinner at 18~22, and breakfast at 8~10. All the divergences depend on the country you are in but you can get good aproximations that work for 90% of them (breakfast 9, open shops 10, lunch 13, close 17, dinner 20).
But, if you go for an universal timezone, you've got to learn the different times for the different activities again and again and again. You change a one step correction (change time on your watch) to a constant struggle.
With universal timezone: You wake up when travelling, it's 17:30 and you don't remember the country unless you do the mental effort to wake up, it's time to get up or not? You start to calculate and... too late to decide, you are already woken and could not get back to sleep even if you wanted.
With different timezones: You wake up when travelling, it's 2:30 and you don't remember the country unless you do the mental effort to wake up, it's time to get up or not? No, time to sleep some more.
When you travel to a different timezones you just have to adjust your clock and, without asking, you know that shops open at 8~10am until 4~8pm with or without a midday stop for lunch (12~3). You have dinner at 18~22, and breakfast at 8~10. All the divergences depend on the country you are in but you can get good aproximations that work for 90% of them (breakfast 9, open shops 10, lunch 13, close 17, dinner 20).
But, if you go for an universal timezone, you've got to learn the different times for the different activities again and again and again. You change a one step correction (change time on your watch) to a constant struggle.
With universal timezone: You wake up when travelling, it's 17:30 and you don't remember the country unless you do the mental effort to wake up, it's time to get up or not? You start to calculate and... too late to decide, you are already woken and could not get back to sleep even if you wanted.
With different timezones: You wake up when travelling, it's 2:30 and you don't remember the country unless you do the mental effort to wake up, it's time to get up or not? No, time to sleep some more.
I ran into a big problem with timezones when I was in the Navy.
I was in charge of a big supply database server on an aircraft carrier, and every time we changed timezones I had to update the timezone on the server. Heading from East to West was no problem, but when we went from West to East I had to shut the server down for an hour when changing timezones, to prevent timestamps from overlapping.
Admittedly, this was partially due to bad programming, but it's just a small real-world example of problems caused by the existence of timezones.
I was in charge of a big supply database server on an aircraft carrier, and every time we changed timezones I had to update the timezone on the server. Heading from East to West was no problem, but when we went from West to East I had to shut the server down for an hour when changing timezones, to prevent timestamps from overlapping.
Admittedly, this was partially due to bad programming, but it's just a small real-world example of problems caused by the existence of timezones.
It's wholly due to bad programming. Put the timestamps in epoch time - that never changes, then read them back in whatever your current timezone is. If you're in a situation like you were where timezones change frequently, you'll also need to record the timezone when the entry was made for reference.
Given that servers frequently changing timezones can be sorted out by a modicum of thought by programmers and is actually pretty rare in the grand scheme of things, I don't think it's too heavy a price to pay.
Given that servers frequently changing timezones can be sorted out by a modicum of thought by programmers and is actually pretty rare in the grand scheme of things, I don't think it's too heavy a price to pay.
Best practice - whatever time zone the people are using, keep the internal time stamps on a single time zone (usually UTC). Then just convert the times from and to the local zone for input and display, respectively.
> keep the internal time stamps on a single time zone (usually UTC)
Or UNIX time. While not monotonically increasing (it has issues with UTC leap seconds), it's pretty good.
Or UNIX time. While not monotonically increasing (it has issues with UTC leap seconds), it's pretty good.
Just store all the dates and times in UTC, then convert to local time
With time zones, you have to know which time zone you're in and set your watch accordingly. With no time zones, you have to know what time local noon is and interpret your watch accordingly. The amount of information required, and the difficulty of using it, appears to be the same to me.
For the common case of infrequent changes in time zones (relative to the number of times one does a time lookup or talks about time), I think what we use now is less difficult to use. You only have to make the adjustment once, instead of every time you talk about times.
It seems to me like the opposite is the case. I have to coordinate times across time zones way more often than I actually travel (for online meetings and such). If there was a single time zone, I'd never have to make adjustments for those, and only adjust things when traveling.
The problem there is that in a lot of cases you pretty much use timezones implicitly anyway. If you want to call someone in China from North America, for instance, if it's 3pm where you are, you might know that it's 3pm in China (in this hypothetical no-timezone world), but that still doesn't tell you if it's a reasonable time to call. You have to think, "Well, people in China usually work from time X to time Y, so their time X is my 9am, which means the offset is Z, which means 3pm in China is equivalent to my 3pm + Z, which means it is/isn't a good time to call."
You basically have to reinvent timezones every time you make any kind of calculation involving people in another timezone.
You basically have to reinvent timezones every time you make any kind of calculation involving people in another timezone.
Right, so you do the same calculations in those cases, but, when someone proposes meeting at 3PM, you don't have to do any conversions. Some upside, no downside, unless I've missed something.
OK. So you are traveling and your plane goes at 15:00 (with this hypothetical clock, I would drop the PM stuff). Do you have time for lunch beforehand? Should you try to?
Similarly, you are on holiday and someone tells you a museum is open till 04:30. Can you go to dinner first?
I guess that a main question is what kind of query is more frequent: "What time is it now in X", or "At what time is X where I am now?". I thought the former was way more frequent, but now, I do not know anymore.
Maybe the best thing to do is to drop absolute references altogether. IMO, "Shall we meet in 3 hours" is easier for handling across timezone discussions, and will work equally well for "in a different timezone than the one I am used to".
Of course, your SMS/ping/twitter/email client would have to automatically count down such timers for you.
Similarly, you are on holiday and someone tells you a museum is open till 04:30. Can you go to dinner first?
I guess that a main question is what kind of query is more frequent: "What time is it now in X", or "At what time is X where I am now?". I thought the former was way more frequent, but now, I do not know anymore.
Maybe the best thing to do is to drop absolute references altogether. IMO, "Shall we meet in 3 hours" is easier for handling across timezone discussions, and will work equally well for "in a different timezone than the one I am used to".
Of course, your SMS/ping/twitter/email client would have to automatically count down such timers for you.
Your travel examples are indeed more difficult, but I travel much less than I coordinate times across time zones, and I suspect most other people do as well, even if it's something as simple as calling family in another state.
For someone who travels a lot, a single time zone may well be more inconvenient, hard to say.
Times relative to now would work well but could be unwieldy. How do you do it if you're e-mailing or texting? If you want to meet next Monday afternoon, do you say "in 2 days and 5 hours"?
For someone who travels a lot, a single time zone may well be more inconvenient, hard to say.
Times relative to now would work well but could be unwieldy. How do you do it if you're e-mailing or texting? If you want to meet next Monday afternoon, do you say "in 2 days and 5 hours"?
>Instead of trying to do hacks to get all of these cycles to line up, why not move in the other direction and take the approach of having regular cycles at different frequencies that do not line up?
With that system, how do you refer to a particular date? YYYY-MM-DD doesn't make much sense anymore, since a month can span multiple years, and a day can span multiple months and/or years.
With that system, how do you refer to a particular date? YYYY-MM-DD doesn't make much sense anymore, since a month can span multiple years, and a day can span multiple months and/or years.
Mesoamerican (mostly known through Mayans, but others used the same calendar) had two ways of doing that.
First was the "Calendar Round", they had two non-synchronous "yearly" calendar of 365 days (Haab') and 260 days (Tzolk'in), giving a date in both calendars provided an exact identification in a repeating cycle (era) of 18980 days (~52 solar years).
Second was the "long count", a monotonically increasing calendar from a root date (think CE/BCE, except including days). A "long count" date is composed of a number of counters mostly in base 20: K'in (day), Winal (20 K'in), Tun (18 Winal), K'atun (20 Tun), B'ak'atun (20 K'atun) (dates have been found with even higher orders, but they're rare, those are the most common). A B'ak'atun unit represents ~394 solar years. This provides an unambiguous and very long term calendar. It's essentially what the UNIX system does, except starting from days (interestingly, a standard 5-units long count fits in just 22 bits, 31 bits [to account for signing] allows for 5.8 million years before wrap-around)
First was the "Calendar Round", they had two non-synchronous "yearly" calendar of 365 days (Haab') and 260 days (Tzolk'in), giving a date in both calendars provided an exact identification in a repeating cycle (era) of 18980 days (~52 solar years).
Second was the "long count", a monotonically increasing calendar from a root date (think CE/BCE, except including days). A "long count" date is composed of a number of counters mostly in base 20: K'in (day), Winal (20 K'in), Tun (18 Winal), K'atun (20 Tun), B'ak'atun (20 K'atun) (dates have been found with even higher orders, but they're rare, those are the most common). A B'ak'atun unit represents ~394 solar years. This provides an unambiguous and very long term calendar. It's essentially what the UNIX system does, except starting from days (interestingly, a standard 5-units long count fits in just 22 bits, 31 bits [to account for signing] allows for 5.8 million years before wrap-around)
The most recent one, the transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, lasted for about 400 years, as different countries transitioned at different times, with, I'm sure, plenty of friction caused by the lack of synchronization.
Sure, but back then there wasn't even a globally recognised calendar. Nor did they have a near-instantaneous global communications network, or a global governing body such as the UN. These days, if the UN decided to take such a step, they could give 10 years advance notice, and on the decided day everyone would just flick the switch. We've already shown that w are capable of managing this sort of change when we went through the y2k "bug" without any major dramas, despite this requiring a large percentage of the world's information systems needing to be updated / tested. So I personally wouldn't anticipate any significant friction after the UN signed-off.
Sure, but back then there wasn't even a globally recognised calendar. Nor did they have a near-instantaneous global communications network, or a global governing body such as the UN. These days, if the UN decided to take such a step, they could give 10 years advance notice, and on the decided day everyone would just flick the switch. We've already shown that w are capable of managing this sort of change when we went through the y2k "bug" without any major dramas, despite this requiring a large percentage of the world's information systems needing to be updated / tested. So I personally wouldn't anticipate any significant friction after the UN signed-off.
The UN is not a "global governing body." It has no real power; and it doesn't deal with things like calendar standards. And it would take a lot more than "sign off" from some global standards body to get people to actually switch. It would require completely re-writing every piece of date handling software ever.
The Y2K bug is a very different case. That's a case in which the calendar system was perfectly able to deal with reality, but some people had buggy code implementing it. All it took was those people fixing their bugs, mostly completely independently, not some big coordinated effort.
The Y2K bug is a very different case. That's a case in which the calendar system was perfectly able to deal with reality, but some people had buggy code implementing it. All it took was those people fixing their bugs, mostly completely independently, not some big coordinated effort.
Sigh. You know what, I actually tried to find a better term than "governing body" but at the end of the day, I didn't really find an alternative that wouldn't immediately get some peanut objecting to its exactness, so I went with governing body. Thankyou for being the peanut. So, international politics 101. The UN is a body whereby the nations of the planet can get together and discuss global problems and their solutions. This type of body did not exist 1500 years ago. Yes, like any reasonably well-educated adult on the planet I'm aware that the UN can't make laws, and couldn't enforce them if it did. But in the real world there are other means available to the UN to pressure member states to do the right thing. If 99% of nations voted for a new calendar, the remaining 1% are going to look pretty silly if they stay on the old calendar.
As for y2k, you know what, I could have stuck a load of different examples in there. Changes to http for example. Or how about the switch from national currencies to the Euro in Europe. Each one is different, but they all demonstrate that important changes can be made to large interconnected systems, and that the change can be activated at the flick of a switch if the need for synchronisation exists. Also, I assume you're too young to know much about y2k if you can talk so blithely about people working independently in an uncoordinated manner. Y2k was huge - if you change one system to requiring 4 digit years, but just one of the systems it communicates with requires two digit years, your system stops working. Both need to switch to 4 year dates on that interface simultaneously. When the systems you're talking about are command and control circuits, financial transfer systems etc, this was a major issue.
As for y2k, you know what, I could have stuck a load of different examples in there. Changes to http for example. Or how about the switch from national currencies to the Euro in Europe. Each one is different, but they all demonstrate that important changes can be made to large interconnected systems, and that the change can be activated at the flick of a switch if the need for synchronisation exists. Also, I assume you're too young to know much about y2k if you can talk so blithely about people working independently in an uncoordinated manner. Y2k was huge - if you change one system to requiring 4 digit years, but just one of the systems it communicates with requires two digit years, your system stops working. Both need to switch to 4 year dates on that interface simultaneously. When the systems you're talking about are command and control circuits, financial transfer systems etc, this was a major issue.
None of which ultimately matters. The United States, which for better or worse has significant influence on the world (UN included) could not even switch to the metric system on a time frame and manner of its own choosing. How well do you think we could transition from one system of time- and date-keeping to another, which is arguably more integral to people's lives than other types of measurement, especially when done by fiat through an external body?
You might be able to get Europeans to transition, you might even get the whole rest of the world to transition, but without the United States, it's not truly a universal system.
You might be able to get Europeans to transition, you might even get the whole rest of the world to transition, but without the United States, it's not truly a universal system.
Thank you for making such a good argument against his ridiculous straw man comparing the transition pre-globalization to a transition nowadays.
> These days, if the UN decided to take such a step, they could give 10 years advance notice, and on the decided day everyone would just flick the switch.
The UN doesn't have that authority, either politically or morally. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durban_Review_Conference
The UN doesn't have that authority, either politically or morally. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durban_Review_Conference
>Now, moving to a single worldwide time standard (just use UTC for everyone for everyday use) seems to make a little more sense. While I understand the desire to make the hours line up with the solar day in a reasonably uniform way around the world, timezones (and daylight savings time) are an ugly hack that add a lot of cost and give you only a very rough approximation of what you are trying to achieve.
This is the part that makes the least sense to me - I could buy the rest until then, but after that it starts to read like some sort of elaborate joke.
This is the part that makes the least sense to me - I could buy the rest until then, but after that it starts to read like some sort of elaborate joke.
"""Have they come up with any estimate of the global cost of the switch, and compared that to the benefit of the new calendar?"""
If there are ANY benefits at all from switching, then that benefit can be enjoyed every year forever, dwarfing the one-time cost of switching no matter how big that cost is.
If there are ANY benefits at all from switching, then that benefit can be enjoyed every year forever, dwarfing the one-time cost of switching no matter how big that cost is.
You forgot to discount future benefits. Interest is exponential, meaning bounded gains that last forever have finite present day value.
> If there are ANY benefits at all from switching, then that benefit can be enjoyed every year forever, dwarfing the one-time cost of switching no matter how big that cost is.
Give me $1000 and I'll give you (and your heirs, their heirs, etc) $0.01/year forever. Give me $10k and I'll sweeten the deal to $0.15/year. Give me $100k and go to $2/year.
What? You don't believe that any forever benefit justifies any one time cost?
Give me $1000 and I'll give you (and your heirs, their heirs, etc) $0.01/year forever. Give me $10k and I'll sweeten the deal to $0.15/year. Give me $100k and go to $2/year.
What? You don't believe that any forever benefit justifies any one time cost?
Did you actually read the article or is this: "Yeah, it might reduce the cost of printing calendars slightly, though a lot of people use new calendars yearly so they can write on them, and a lot more just use their computer." made to be a straw man on purpose?
It seems like you thought "redesigning the calendar of every single organization in the world" meant re-printing the shifted dates when it actually means doing all of the work that has to go into scheduling events.
You also missed: "From simple mortgages to complex financial derivatives, he said, calculations could be made much simpler if there were only one calendar to use, year after year."
And: "Hanke said drug prescriptions could be more accurate with a fixed calendar, sports teams could have a fixed playing schedule year after year, and schools and universities wouldn't have to waste time devising each new academic year."
It seems like you thought "redesigning the calendar of every single organization in the world" meant re-printing the shifted dates when it actually means doing all of the work that has to go into scheduling events.
You also missed: "From simple mortgages to complex financial derivatives, he said, calculations could be made much simpler if there were only one calendar to use, year after year."
And: "Hanke said drug prescriptions could be more accurate with a fixed calendar, sports teams could have a fixed playing schedule year after year, and schools and universities wouldn't have to waste time devising each new academic year."
I read the article. Most of the arguments seemed to be pretty dubious, like the "cost of printing the calendars" argument. I addressed the one that seemed most relevant, the one about financial calculations, by pointing out that it would be possible to set a different standardized calendar for just financial instruments without changing the calendar for everything else.
The rest of the arguments are really just throwaways. Not waste time devising new academic calendars? You're going to be devising new schedules each year anyhow, as the courses offered change, professors change, new students change and enroll in different classes, sports league pairings change, and so on. And the existing system doesn't require re-doing the basic calendar every year; you can devise 14 calendars up front (one for each day of the week, times two to account for leap years), and then do the scheduling within one of those 14 basic calendars. The cost of that is going to be pretty minimal, going from 14 calendars to 2 calendars isn't that big of a win.
Drug prescriptions? People are imperfect; they don't necessarily take drugs precisely and regularly, such that you can avoid all variance in the rate of drugs being prescribed. With many drugs, if you miss one dose, you just take your regular dose the next day, and are now off by a day from the prescription cycle. Or sometimes, people might take a little more of a drug than prescribed, or lose it and need a refill sooner. And drug prescriptions should be reviewed by doctors on a yearly basis anyhow. If prescription systems have to deal with that, there is basically no benefit to be gained from having months and days line up precisely year after year.
The rest of the arguments are really just throwaways. Not waste time devising new academic calendars? You're going to be devising new schedules each year anyhow, as the courses offered change, professors change, new students change and enroll in different classes, sports league pairings change, and so on. And the existing system doesn't require re-doing the basic calendar every year; you can devise 14 calendars up front (one for each day of the week, times two to account for leap years), and then do the scheduling within one of those 14 basic calendars. The cost of that is going to be pretty minimal, going from 14 calendars to 2 calendars isn't that big of a win.
Drug prescriptions? People are imperfect; they don't necessarily take drugs precisely and regularly, such that you can avoid all variance in the rate of drugs being prescribed. With many drugs, if you miss one dose, you just take your regular dose the next day, and are now off by a day from the prescription cycle. Or sometimes, people might take a little more of a drug than prescribed, or lose it and need a refill sooner. And drug prescriptions should be reviewed by doctors on a yearly basis anyhow. If prescription systems have to deal with that, there is basically no benefit to be gained from having months and days line up precisely year after year.
Yuck. The solstices and equinoxes would be on different dates from year to year.
And as far as making time calculations simpler for financiers -- that extra week "every five or six years" will be just as hard to deal with as leap years are now.
And as far as making time calculations simpler for financiers -- that extra week "every five or six years" will be just as hard to deal with as leap years are now.
People can accomplish the same thing after learning a mental algorithm to calculate the day of the week. Doomsday rule, invented by Mathematician John Conway, is one of the easier ones to remember.
I dont like this. All the people who have b'days on 29,30 and 31 are screwed. And its really hard to get whole of the world onto it. No country can force another country to follow something.
I am still typing on a QWERTY keyboard, and that standard only a hundred years old. The modern calendar is two thousand years old. We will see the singularity before we see a new calendar.
The modern calendar is nearly 430 years old, but I agree with your broader point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar
Seems unlikely, yet, Europe switched to the euro.
If we get better at software integration, different calendars might not be such a problem. We already convert between currencies, times and date formats.
Is this really that much different to a new date-format, just with deeper syntactic changes? (rhetorical)
If we get better at software integration, different calendars might not be such a problem. We already convert between currencies, times and date formats.
Is this really that much different to a new date-format, just with deeper syntactic changes? (rhetorical)
Except Europe didn't simply switch to the Euro. Some members of the EU (plus a few others who aren't in the EU) switched to it, over a twelve year period, with some others pegged to it (and maybe switching some day), some other countries adopting it 'unofficially' (i.e. it's their official currency, but they're not officially members of the Eurozone), and some countries who theoretically must join, voting against it in a local referendum, and thus deliberately failing to meet the entry conditions on an ongoing basis so as they can't join.
(And this is, of course, ignoring all the logistical hassles involved in switching, never mind the much bigger questions, now very pertinent, as to whether trying to do all this may have been a cause of the downfall of Western Society, etc.)
So I suspect this example gives more weight to the 'unlikely' side, than the 'yet...' side.
(And this is, of course, ignoring all the logistical hassles involved in switching, never mind the much bigger questions, now very pertinent, as to whether trying to do all this may have been a cause of the downfall of Western Society, etc.)
So I suspect this example gives more weight to the 'unlikely' side, than the 'yet...' side.
Computers have had to deal with multiple currencies from their inception, so the technical aspects of euro conversion were fairly minor. But they have never had to deal with an actual change in the rules of the calendar.
>yet, Europe switched to the euro
And isn't that working out really well.
And isn't that working out really well.
> "You have a whole area in the mathematics of finance that could be cleared up, and lots of confusion, lots of error, done away with by going to this calendar," he said. People don't realize the time they're wasting simply because of the variable calendar, Hanke said.
Most economic and political activity in Western countries is to give people something to do so they'll conform, be it accounting and tax rules, legal requirements, or ICT interfaces. The actual labor required to mine resources, manufacture things, and grow and distribute food is some small percentage of overall economic activity. Taking away this complexity would put people out of work, more likely to question governments or occupy Wall Street.
Most economic and political activity in Western countries is to give people something to do so they'll conform, be it accounting and tax rules, legal requirements, or ICT interfaces. The actual labor required to mine resources, manufacture things, and grow and distribute food is some small percentage of overall economic activity. Taking away this complexity would put people out of work, more likely to question governments or occupy Wall Street.
Classic academic waste-of-time project to solve a problem that doesn't exist. I hope they didn't have any federal grant funding for this (have skimmed half a dozen web postings about this and none really address this question).
What would happen with birthdays that occur on days that were cut out of the new calendar? Jan 31, May 31, Jul 31, Aug 31, and Oct 31.
Also, that extra week business seems more confusing than leap years. "Every 5 or 6 years" seems indefinite.
Also, that extra week business seems more confusing than leap years. "Every 5 or 6 years" seems indefinite.
what if your birthday is on that leap week that occurs every 5-6 yrs?
You would probably do exactly what people who are born on February 29 do.
I wonder what these leap year babies (I am one of them) would do were we to adopt this new calendar, as presumably that date would no longer exist.
And yet, the US still isnt on metric.
I saw something along these lines recently: a calendar-clock. http://clackcolander.tumblr.com/
This proposal doesn't have my vote.
The present system is good enough in that every one has an equal chance for special events in their lives to fall on a weekend.
The present system is good enough in that every one has an equal chance for special events in their lives to fall on a weekend.
Imagine living on a space ark. Any calendar would work, since there would be no incentive to line up with the motion of any particular planetary body.
Now, imagine we stopped caring about that anyway. Ok, leave days, but the rest? Superfluous. How about decimal time? 100,000 seconds in a day, count days and be done with it. When is Xmas? In 300 days.
Now, imagine we stopped caring about that anyway. Ok, leave days, but the rest? Superfluous. How about decimal time? 100,000 seconds in a day, count days and be done with it. When is Xmas? In 300 days.
Could someeone who is advocating for no time zones please explain how a normal work "day" that crossed actual days work in practice? So you want to wake up at 8 Utc and some else wakes up at 20 Utc. Ok, then they start work on Friday at 21 Utc and work until Sat 4:30. I'd imagine that you'd have to redefine weekend to mean Sun-Mon?
Imagine the cost of changing all the software in the world to use a new calendar system. This will never happen.
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I never remember if we have 30 days or 31 in most months... nope, actually I got everything right except for May and March.
http://www.calendarzone.org/calendar/2012-calendar-10.jpg
http://www.calendarzone.org/calendar/2012-calendar-10.jpg
Here's a trick for that (courtesy of Shari Lewis): hold your knuckles up in front of you, index fingers together, no thumbs. Each peak represents a month with 31 days. Each valley represents a month with 30 (or 28, for February) days.
My bday would always fall on a Monday on this calendar system and that is not fun
Happy Thermidor!
My thoughts, exactly. Those magical ("happy") days of The Terror were indeed too short. And UTC -- practically a symbol of British Naval prowess and Empire -- is really a nice touch, specially for the "brown/yellow" ones who get to toil happily at "midnight".
I wonder if calendar companies would lobby against this. I imagine people would still buy a new calendar every year or so, since they get worn/written on.
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Will this be somehow comparable to the Y2K bug if we switch? a bunch of software broken?
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So the dates of the first "extra week" would be Dec 32-38, 2015?
No don't do this. My birthday is on 31st 0_o
Whose in re-writing lot of software?
I am not :)
I am not :)
A more simple solution is to have 13 months of exactly 28 days, plus one day for new years day. That's even better because every month is exactly the same number of days which means semi-monthly and bi-weekly billing systems are the same thing. And because there's the same number of days anything billed per month can be easily prorated per day, and any billing cycle will match up with every other billing cycle... so basically everything imaginable becomes considerably easier.
The only real problem is coming up with a name for a new 13th month and where to insert it.
The only real problem is coming up with a name for a new 13th month and where to insert it.
Pretty nice! Too bad a non-trivial segment of the population won't be happy with 13. You might as well call the new month Deviluary. :D
Well, then they can all hide indoors for the month ala the ancient Incans and the rest of us can create some sort of new sort of month long Saturnalia/Yule/Winter Solstice remix.
We could even send a Krampus to go rattle their doors and windows on the appropriate day.
We could even send a Krampus to go rattle their doors and windows on the appropriate day.
Satanber?
> The only real problem is coming up with a name for a new 13th month and where to insert it.
The strange month is called 'Gidouille' and goes from june 15th to july 13th. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendrier_pataphysique
The strange month is called 'Gidouille' and goes from june 15th to july 13th. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendrier_pataphysique
This breaks quarterly cycles.
It doesn't. Quarters just become 13 weeks. They'd mostly correspond to existing quarters as well, give or take a couple of days at each end.
OK, it breaks the assumption that quarters are a whole number of months.
12 is a handy number of months to have in the year. 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. Not by 5, but you can't have everything (unless we had 60 months of 6 or 7 days each... let's not go there).
13 is prime.
I think not bothering with months at all would be better than having a 13 month year.
12 is a handy number of months to have in the year. 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. Not by 5, but you can't have everything (unless we had 60 months of 6 or 7 days each... let's not go there).
13 is prime.
I think not bothering with months at all would be better than having a 13 month year.
I like New York in weeks 22 to 25, how about you?
That sounds ridiculous now but it's actually not that bad when you get used to it. Besides, people would likely still keep the month names to refer roughly (if not even exactly) to periods of the year. The real benefit would be in dropping months from the business and commerce world.
I prefer late twenties London.
I think not bothering with months at all would be
better than having a 13 month year.
The phases of the moon are about 29½ days long.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon and see the synodic period (quoted to a tenth of a second even though full moon to full moon can vary by about ¼ day either way).)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon and see the synodic period (quoted to a tenth of a second even though full moon to full moon can vary by about ¼ day either way).)
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Tertiary?
I note too that the calendar would not "make it easy to plan annual activities" for any of the dates in the "extra week" proposed for the calendar, if by annual activities we mean activities that occur in every calendar year. The extra week occurs "at the end of December every five or six years," and the new memory load everyone would have to bear is remembering which years--2015, 2020, 2026, 2032, 2037, 2043, 2048, 2054, 2060, 2065, 2071, 2076, 2082, 2088, 2093, 2099, 2105, "et cetera" are the extra week years.