Static Calendar

December 21, 2004 11:58 AM

Static Calendar Proposal as seen on Slashdot This is something I found on Slashdot and thougt was interesting. Judging by the savvy website of the new calendar's creator, I doubt we'll be having "Newton" months anytime soon. Check it out.
posted by Glibaudio (30 comments total)

It's only benefit is that it ensures that the days of each month stay the same every year. Saturday, March 3rd (my birthday) will always be Saturday, March 3rd. While I suppose this is nice, I don't see anyone getting frustrated or confused about the shifting of days in the Gregorian calendar. Certainly a 7 day Newton month would cause more headaches.

Unless, of course, Newton was set aside as a week long national holiday. Apples and universal gravitation for everyone!
posted by aladfar at 12:15 PM on December 21, 2004

They don't need to be four days off in spring planting. They just check the date on their calendar that is painted on the wall (painted, since it remains identical from year to year), and then they check what the Gregorian Date is, to see if it is planting day yet. The Gregorian Calendar does not cease to exist, it just isn't ordinarily used. Except by hicks.

This man is a genius. Right now I'm writing him a check for everything I own.

Oh yes? I vividly remember phoning my elderly mother, in my native Canada, some years before she died: and with astonishment hearing her quite casually say, "it was very hot today, 30 degrees."

It CAN be done, folks, and the decision is YOURS, not mine. Each of you.

It CAN be done, folks. Your mothers WILL die.
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:19 PM on December 21, 2004

October 31st disappeared, but since Hallowe'en is the eve of All Hallows or All Saints day, could it just be moved to October 30th? There has been a concerted effort in the last few years to promote this occasion, but the retailers should not mind losing one day of sales.
With the change to 30 days in February, could those already born on the 29th adjust to having an annual birthday instead of a bit of uniqueness?
posted by Cranberry at 12:31 PM on December 21, 2004

Can someone please help me? I was looking for Metafilter and somehow ended up here.

Check it out.

Link broken already, of course. This was a Slashdot article, after all.
posted by dreish at 12:35 PM on December 21, 2004

I think that site is getting slashdotted right now.

There have been quite a few proposals for calendar reform over the years. Obviously none of them have gotten much traction. I admit that I think our current calendar could be improved upon by fixing the days of the week to the days of the month, but there are a surprising number of different interests that need to be taken into account (like feast days and lunations, in addition to year-length accuracy), so it's a tough balancing act.
posted by adamrice at 12:36 PM on December 21, 2004

O..K... obviously I am the only one that read the headline as "Satanic" calendar...

I need to get away from my terminal.
posted by niteHawk at 12:42 PM on December 21, 2004

As long as we're turning into a link farm for Slashdot, here's my favorite dismissal of the concept so far.

"Satanic" would be a more accurate adjective to describe this calendar than "static".
posted by dreish at 12:46 PM on December 21, 2004

He is waging a Web-based campaign to make this happen by Jan. 1, 2006. Henry points out that this transition date is ideal, because New Year's Day 2006 falls on a Sunday on both the old and proposed calendars, facilitating a seamless transition.

Yeah.... seamless transition.... riiiiiiiiiight...
posted by Doohickie at 12:50 PM on December 21, 2004

Wouldn't it be convenient if your birthday, Christmas, and the Fourth of July--not to mention most other major holidays--all fell on the same day of the week, year after year? Wouldn't it make life--or at least planning--easier, for instance, to know that Dec. 17 would always fall on a Saturday or that January 1--New Year's Day--would always be celebrated on a Sunday?

No, not really.

All major proposals involved breaking the seven-day cycle of the week, which has always been--and probably will always be--completely unacceptable to humankind because it goes against the Fourth Commandment of the Bible about keeping the Sabbath Day," Henry said. "C&T never breaks that biblical cycle."

Ookaaaay.
posted by signal at 12:59 PM on December 21, 2004

i don't understand why this is static. Newton weeks arise every 5 or 6 years. i guess weeks are static, but i color him crackpot.

however, it reminded me of an interesting part in James Gleick's Faster, when he talks about the change in the length of a second in 1955, when they standardized it on cesium (?) vibrations and now we have to add a "leap second" or more at the end of each year. previously, a second was defined as 1/86400 days, i think. it looks like we're slowing down, however, and might have to institute negative leap seconds one day.
posted by mrgrimm at 1:07 PM on December 21, 2004

If we could incorporate the 4-day Time Cube clock, I'm in.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 1:14 PM on December 21, 2004

I have not read the article, since the site seems to be down, but I read the slashdot "commentary".

The rationalization given for the proposal in the slashdot summary is that it'll make it easier for programmers to write code that deals with times, dates, days of the week, and other calendar-related matters.

People shouldn't adapt their systems to make things easier for computers or programmers. It's the job of computers to make things easier for people.

Secondly, the re-tooling necessary to make all the existing software in the world conform to this system would make the Y2K crisis look tiny by comparison. Indeed, it's a hassle to calculate with the Gregorian calendar, but it's a solved problem.
posted by chrchr at 1:20 PM on December 21, 2004

which allows the permanent, rational planning of annual activities, from school to work holidays.

Thank God, I'm so sick of the rampant irrationality in my holiday planning. I'm sick of the non-permanence, the agonizing over when to buy a Christmas tree, when to celebrate that resurrection, whether it's ok to just celebrate the first night of Passover in the Diaspora now that communication is instantaneous. God, I hate irrationality. It's like myth, you never know what to believe.
posted by OmieWise at 1:23 PM on December 21, 2004

Gee, it would be nice to read the link :/
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 1:24 PM on December 21, 2004

the Y2K crisis look tiny by comparison

I seem to remember that the Y2K 'crisis' turned out to be tiny by comparison to almost everything. Did anything actually stop working?
posted by signal at 1:29 PM on December 21, 2004

signal, the threat of the Y2K 'crisis' was probably overstated, but, in part, there were no problems because everyone spent a lot of money fixing affected systems. There were whole armies of people working on fixing two-digit year problems for three or four years.

The Prophets of Gloom and Doom actually had the effect of averting the disaster, at least to some extent, and wound up looking like fools for their efforts. Some of these people were clearly self-promoting fearmongers. Some of them knew what they were talking about, and enough people listened that there were no widespread disasters.
posted by chrchr at 1:35 PM on December 21, 2004

Next they'll be promoting bringing back Swatch Time!
posted by drinkmaildave at 1:43 PM on December 21, 2004

The Department of State announced on March 21 that the U.S. Government had informed the United Nations on that day that it does not favor any action by the United Nations to change the present calendar. The United States made its position known in a note transmitted by Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., U.S. Representative to the United Nations, to the U.N. Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold, who had asked all governments for their views on proposals to revise the existing calendar. . . . The text of the U.S. reply to the Secretary-General is as follows:
posted by DV8 2XL at 1:46 PM on December 21, 2004

Remember how much IT work was involved in making sure everything was Y2K compliant? (Largely successfully, to the credit of the people who did the work.) This would be, oh, about a thousand times harder. On preview, what chrchr said.

There's a number of principles which the various calendars used by human societies, as well as those proposed for calendar reform, have tried to achieve. These cannot all be achieved in a single calendar, so when you're looking at designing a calendar (notwithstanding the huge IT problems), perhaps the first thing is to ask yourself which principles are the most important.

1. Minimizing the variation in the length of a year
2. Average length of a year as close to a solar year as possible
3. Minimizing the variation in number of months in a year
4. Minimizing the variation in the length of a month
5. Average length of a month as close to a lunar month as possible
6. Seven-days-a-week cycle conserved (e.g., seven days after a Sunday is always a Sunday)
7. Same date always falls on same day of week
8. Rule for which year you insert something extra (leap day, Newton month, extra month) is relatively easy to remember

Even if we generously consider his "Newton month" to be an extra week tacked onto an existing month from time to time, rather than a completely separate month, the Gregorian calendar still beats the static calendar in 1, 4, and 8 (the Gregorian calendar's rule for leap years is not as easy as the Julian calendar's, but it's still better than the static calendar's, apparently). The static calendar is better at 7 only, while 2, 3, 5, and 6 are washes.

The Islamic calendar holds to 3, 4, and 5 at the expense of 2. (The Islamic year is only 12 lunar months, ~355 days long, so Ramadan moves back ~10 days relative to the Gregorian calendar every year.) Hebrew and Chinese calendars keep to 2, 4, and 5 at the expense of 1, 3, and 8. (The majority of years have ~355 days, but to keep the same holidays in the same part of the year over the long run, throw a whole extra month into a year from time to time.)
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 1:57 PM on December 21, 2004

Secondly, the re-tooling necessary to make all the existing software in the world conform to this system would make the Y2K crisis look tiny by comparison. Indeed, it's a hassle to calculate with the Gregorian calendar, but it's a solved problem.

As a programmer, I wholeheartedly agree. Also, I remember the boom times leading up to y2k in programming (followed by the inevitable bust as IT budgets had been exhausted).

Therefore I am totally behind this stupid idea.
posted by Bonzai at 2:02 PM on December 21, 2004

it looks like we're slowing down, however, and might have to institute negative leap seconds one day.

We add leap seconds because the rotation is slowing down and the days are getting longer. Negative leap seconds would mean rotation is speeding up.
posted by cardboard at 2:23 PM on December 21, 2004

Same date always falls on the same day of the week is the worst. idea. ever. Not only does it solve a problem that doesn't exist, it's cool that holidays move days of the week. Variety! If they didn't move, would we put them on the good days at least? Who's looking forward to a nice Friday New Years Eve this year? Woo hoo! That cranks engage in this sort of planned micro optimization of human society is amusing. That real organizations like the UN do it is pathetic.
posted by Wood at 3:11 PM on December 21, 2004

planned micro optimization of human society

Awesome phrase, and a scarey concept. People who try not only meet a fiery end, they look stupid doing it, too.
posted by cosmonik at 4:01 PM on December 21, 2004

Yes, but will Thermidor and Brumaire still be the same time every year?
posted by Sidhedevil at 6:16 PM on December 21, 2004

a scarey concept.

"Those who know what's best for us
Must rise and save us from ourselves."
-Rush
posted by Doohickie at 7:34 PM on December 21, 2004

I say we scrap the whole thing and specify all times and dates as a large integer representing the number of Planck times since the Big Bang.
posted by flabdablet at 8194771287034234819270627558562920012390539415084925276514918


Hit him again, Jack, he's crazy.
posted by flabdablet at 4:31 AM on December 22, 2004

Having your birthday on Tuesday every single year, while someone else always gets Friday or Saturday would suck. I like that it shifts around.

That said I'm all for 13 months of 28 days each though.
posted by ModestyBCatt at 5:16 AM on December 22, 2004

Therefore I am totally behind this stupid idea.

(Bonzai, get with the program, man!)
posted by lodurr at 9:06 AM on December 22, 2004

People who try [to enact the "planned micro optimization of human society"] not only meet a fiery end, they look stupid doing it, too.

Alas, I'd love to agree with you, but I fear that's not true: We are more and more "optimized" all the time. Though we do tend to do it without grand accomodations like changing the calendar....
posted by lodurr at 9:09 AM on December 22, 2004

Someone already linked to the World Calendar - but the Thirteen-Month Year also looks interesting.

The static calendar proposal seems rather half-hearted. If we are going to revise our clocks and calendars we might as well go the whole way to a decimal-based 10-hour and 10-month system. As he pointed out, we don't want to lose our 7-day week because of religious reasons. Any calendar that tries to preserve some uniformity among the months/years is going to have to have leap days to keep the weeks consistent, which a lot of people won't like.

Ah, religion.
posted by aerify at 7:22 AM on December 29, 2004