General / Off-Topic 13 months in a year?...

[beelbeebub]

Ok bear with me.......

It's always annoyed me that the months are so irregular and that the astronomical end of the year (winter solstice) doesn't line up with the calender end of the year.

The other day I had a thought......

If we had 13 months of 28 days in a year that would give us 364 days in a year.

If "new year's Day" (the winter or summer solstice depending on your hemisphere) was an "extra" day (the zeroth of January) then we would have 365 days in a year with a much more regular (4x7days per month plus one 1 extra day for NY).

Leap years would be handled by an extra day at the other solstice every 4 years.

Now I'm pretty sure I may have an uphill battle on my hands to get the world to adopt this....... but is it a "good", in the sense that it could work millennia of tradition and inertia aside, idea or is it fatally flawed?

 

[Ian Skippy]

Ok bear with me.......

It's always annoyed me that the months are so irregular and that the astronomical end of the year (winter solstice) doesn't line up with the calender end of the year.

The other day I had a thought......

If we had 13 months of 28 days in a year that would give us 364 days in a year.

If "new year's Day" (the winter or summer solstice depending on your hemisphere) was an "extra" day (the zeroth of January) then we would have 365 days in a year with a much more regular (4x7days per month plus one 1 extra day for NY).

Leap years would be handled by an extra day at the other solstice every 4 years.

Now I'm pretty sure I may have an uphill battle on my hands to get the world to adopt this....... but is it a "good", in the sense that it could work millennia of tradition and inertia aside, idea or is it fatally flawed?

Not sure if Caesar and Augustus would approve, but it would make sense.

 

[Chris Simon]

Matt Parker made an excellent video about leap years, leap hours and other nonesense that makes our outdated units of time impractical.

 

[Polygonal Spaceship]

It's pretty logical, and in some ways quite helpful - the first of the month, for instance, is always a Monday, and the "movable feasts" of the Christian calendar suddenly get nailed down, as do the dates of Bank Holidays. (Other religious or cultural events dependent on the lunar calendar, however, may continue to rove.)

However, you can bet that whilst anyone demanding a monthly payment - Netflix, for instance, or your landlord - suddenly decides that 13 months means you owe them an additional sum, your employer will not be so charitable; those who are paid weekly or four-weekly notice no change, but anyone who is on a monthly salary finds their wage packet reduced as the annual value is divided into 13.

The calendar and diary industry would probably put a bounty on your head for totally destroying their revenues, whilst computer programmers breathe a sigh of relief that they no longer need to do complex things with calendars, dates, and reminders for public holidays.

And the less-logical members of the general public, and those who follow non-Julian calendars, just look at you as if you're a nutter.



(But I like it. It appeals to my rigid sense of order and logic.)

 

[verminstar]

The bakers dozen...same number. Actually it does make sense but m8 I gotta be honest...theres lost causes and theres hopeless campaigns but this is closer to how the Romans used to pit the christians against the lions level hopelessness.

It makes sense to someone who likes order...(shrugs) I prefer chaos and unpredictability but that doesnt make sense...if it made sense, it wouldnt be chaos after all.

The financial quarter in the UK seem to mess up using two decade old servers...they certainly due an upgrade so theres certainly a window of opportunity here, and ye certainly sound enthusiastic enough. I just wanna ask one thing though...are ye keeping to the meds as per the timetable ok?

 

[Pyrotiger]

The only chance of this system being adopted is if the OP and that Matt Parker bloke are the sole survivors of WW3.

I'd prefer 11 months. Sod January. It's just awful. Stick the 31 days on Summer so we'd have a better climate. Genius, me.

 

[Gun Star]

I think we should just go with a Julian Calendar and remove all holidays and weekends. Easy. Nobody would get confused, everyone would be productive.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Anyway, the time passes inexorably

 

[Fenris Wolf]

Dave Gorman did a whole thing about this a few years ago. Was very funny

 

[AJW]

I think everyone is looking at the problem from the wrong angle. What we need is 10 days in a week, 10 weeks in a month, and 10 months in a year. Not too difficult to achieve, with a little ingenuity. Since keeping the length of the day the same while increasing the year to 1000 days would require moving the Earth's orbit out rather a long way (out of the Goldilocks Zone, I suspect), the obvious solution is to instead shorten the the day, by increasing the rate of rotation of the Earth. Given the Earth's mass, this is clearly going to involve a little work, and it would probably be wise to bring it up to speed relatively slowly. It would also probably be wise to avoid using polluting power sources to add the spin. Taking these concerns into consideration I therefore propose that we initiate a 'Walk Eastwards for the New Calendar' campaign, where volunteers are asked to spend at least one hour a week walking in said direction, at as brisk a pace as they can comfortably manage: with volunteers all heading east, simple Newtonian physics dictates that the Earth must accelerate westwards, increasing its rate of rotation. As a side benefit, not only will volunteers be hastening the Golden Dawn of the Rational Decimal Calendar, but they will arrive there fit and healthy due to exercise...

 

[Fenris Wolf]

Since keeping the length of the day the same while increasing the year to 1000 days would require moving the Earth's orbit out rather a long way (out of the Goldilocks Zone, I suspect)

Hmmmm... that might not be a bad idea. Would certainly help with the global warming!

 

[Dirk Braben]

OP you mean the International Fixed Calendar?

 

[beelbeebub]

OP you mean the International Fixed Calendar?

Pretty much. I assumed somebody else would have a similar idea.

Though that calender is fixed with the days falling on the same date each year. This would lead to a gradual drift as each year would be 1 day shorter than the solar year.

Because the solar year is not even an interference of days it is impossible to come up with a system that fixes the days to dates and doesn't drift.*

I added the "zeroth of January" to fix that and an extra day on the summer solstice every 4 years for leap years.

So days of the week would advance by one every year

*UNLESS we have a special "leapsday" that occurs only on a leap day i.e Monday 27th>Tuesday 28th>Leapsday 0th>Wednesday 1st

 

[Dirk Braben]

Pretty much. I assumed somebody else would have a similar idea.

Though that calender is fixed with the days falling on the same date each year. This would lead to a gradual drift as each year would be 1 day shorter than the solar year.

Because the solar year is not even an interference of days it is impossible to come up with a system that fixes the days to dates and doesn't drift.*

I added the "zeroth of January" to fix that and an extra day on the summer solstice every 4 years for leap years.

So days of the week would advance by one every year

*UNLESS we have a special "leapsday" that occurs only on a leap day i.e Monday 27th>Tuesday 28th>Leapsday 0th>Wednesday 1st

Like this?

Leap year in the International Fixed Calendar contains 366 days, and its occurrence follows the Gregorian rule. There is a leap year in every year whose number is divisible by 4, but not if the year number is divisible by 100, unless it is also divisible by 400. So although the year 2000 was a leap year, the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 were common years. The International Fixed Calendar inserts the extra day in leap year as June 29 - between Saturday June 28 and Sunday Sol 1.

 

[beelbeebub]

Yup. Though that's leap year right? What do they do with normal years? 13x28 is 364 so you need an extra day every year.

 

[Polygonal Spaceship]

You know, I think this might be more of an IT challenge than I first thought.

Our system at work requires certain data to be input spanning a 12 month period. It dislikes leap years - as far as it is concerned, a period ending on 28 February must have begun on 1 March the previous year. However, if that previous year was a leap year (2008, 2012, 2016), it won't accept 1 March as the start date; it knows that there was a leap year, insists that the correct start date is 29 February... and then complains when you set the start date to a date other than 1 March.

How you'd cope with "irregular" dates - an annual "0 January" to make up the tally to 365, for instance, or a new leap year day - might actually be tricky to implement. Current software can't deal with dates that you can't express in numeric format (our system, not being American, does dd/mm/yy or yyyy, depending on which bit of it you're in). Without a lot of work, computers might really hate a month that begins on 0, or a date which isn't expressable as a number (e.g. if you just called it New Year Day, Leap Day etc. - software wouldn't accept NYD/2020 as a valid date, so you'd need to create a month, but will the software like a month 0? Does anyone want a month 13 or 14?)

Yeah, I'm at a loose end today... as I'm sure you can tell. I'm thinking way too much about this.

 

[beelbeebub]

You know, I think this might be more of an IT challenge than I first thought.

Our system at work requires certain data to be input spanning a 12 month period. It dislikes leap years - as far as it is concerned, a period ending on 28 February must have begun on 1 March the previous year. However, if that previous year was a leap year (2008, 2012, 2016), it won't accept 1 March as the start date; it knows that there was a leap year, insists that the correct start date is 29 February... and then complains when you set the start date to a date other than 1 March.

How you'd cope with "irregular" dates - an annual "0 January" to make up the tally to 365, for instance, or a new leap year day - might actually be tricky to implement. Current software can't deal with dates that you can't express in numeric format (our system, not being American, does dd/mm/yy or yyyy, depending on which bit of it you're in). Without a lot of work, computers might really hate a month that begins on 0, or a date which isn't expressable as a number (e.g. if you just called it New Year Day, Leap Day etc. - software wouldn't accept NYD/2020 as a valid date, so you'd need to create a month, but will the software like a month 0? Does anyone want a month 13 or 14?)

Yeah, I'm at a loose end today... as I'm sure you can tell. I'm thinking way too much about this.

yeah, dates are a nightmare on computers. The add/drop an hour for summer/winter time is a particular nightmare as every country does it differently

In my one world government with me as supreme ruler I'd definitely ditch daylight savings time!

As for the issue with zero as a date, again, my secret police would mercilessly seek out and "aggressively interview" any developer who didn't include the zero case as valid. Alternatively the extra day could always be the 29th of a month but I quite like the idea that the "extra" day sort of doesn't exist it would be a bank holiday across my dominions for my adoring subjects to celebrate their beloved ruler.

 

[AJW]

The fun really starts when you have to deal with timezones:

[video=youtube;-5wpm-gesOY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY[/video]

 

[Polygonal Spaceship]

I quite like the idea that the "extra" day sort of doesn't exist

Try teaching the computer that. Or explaining it to people who were born on those days, or anyone needing an electronic record creating or amending involving a "nonexistent" date (for example, if you were the victim of a crime, had to make an insurance claim, or required urgent medical treatment).

Some IT systems already struggle enough if you were born, married, divorced, hired or fired, or if you died or retired, on a leap day; I can think of at least one major UK system which, up until the early 90s, would incorrectly calculate your age if your birthday was 29 February, and as a result would claim that you were not old enough to hold motor vehicle insurance, claim a pension, take out a student loan, be in full time employment, or join the armed forces until you were in your mid to late 60s. Our system at work denies it's a valid day - any record which absolutely has to be on that date has to be manually hard-coded by IT.

 

[beelbeebub]

Try teaching the computer that. Or explaining it to people who were born on those days, or anyone needing an electronic record creating or amending involving a "nonexistent" date (for example, if you were the victim of a crime, had to make an insurance claim, or required urgent medical treatment).

Some IT systems already struggle enough if you were born, married, divorced, hired or fired, or if you died or retired, on a leap day; I can think of at least one major UK system which, up until the early 90s, would incorrectly calculate your age if your birthday was 29 February, and as a result would claim that you were not old enough to hold motor vehicle insurance, claim a pension, take out a student loan, be in full time employment, or join the armed forces until you were in your mid to late 60s. Our system at work denies it's a valid day - any record which absolutely has to be on that date has to be manually hard-coded by IT.

Sorry, when i said "doesn't exist" I meant from a social point of view.

Obviously the day would exist. People would still have to go to work (even on a bank holiday), be born, die, get married, get robbed and all the other things.

More from the point that it would be considered a holiday because it is a "non existent day" outside the ordinary.