Richard Conn Henry has a potentially revolutionary new idea, with a few bugs…
Richard Conn Henry (he credits others on the site, but I will just mention his name here) has created a new calendar system so that every date is the same weekday, every year. The idea is similar to the one familiar to any huge LotR buffs as the calendar of the hobbits. The difference is that instead of having days that are not part of the year, you end up with a whole extra week in its own ‘mini-month’ ever 5 or 6 years. The whole thing is worked out, except for a few quibbles I have with it, listed below as taken from an email I sent him. I may have thought of other stuff, but this is my main analysis:
– You mention the problem of people born on Jauray 31, etc. You solution (just celebrate on the new last day of the month) is very good, but there is the other option of celebrating when your birthday WOULD be, according to the Gregorian calendar date (i.e., the first of the next month)
– Most of the point of C&T is convenience, however you suggest the elimination of time zones… how is this convenient? I, for one, think waking up at midnight being normal is just plain inconvenient. Everyone already uses UTC for international dealings, why change how it is done locally?
– I really like the idea of going to 24hr time everywhere.
– The idea that everyone born on a Newton week should celebrate their birthday on the 4th of July is, in my opinion, a bigoted American idea. It would be the same situation as someone born on leap-day according to the current calendar. They would probably just move to the closest day.
– I like the idea of removing daylight savings time, however changing working hours in its place may be a problem. Most employers would simply refuse to do it.
– Although yyyy-mm-dd is ISO standard, I don’t see the problem with using the worldwide (excluding north america) standard of dd-mm-yyyy, it is just the same thing backward.
– Moving Christmas to a Sunday is not such a hot idea, for two reasons. One, it ceases to be a real holiday and is just a special weekend. Two, we Christians (who pretty much invented the original holdiay) will no longer be able to have a special Christmas service to celebrate the birth of Our Lord. We will be required to ‘specialise’ the normal Sunday service, thus degrading the holdiday.
– Are you aware that JRR Tolkein created a calandar based on a similar idea for use by the hobbits in LotR?
I found the original article on it at: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041222/news_1c22singular.html
and the site for the calendar itself is at: http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/calendar.html
Tags: Research
One Response
He actually replied to my email! Here?s what he said about each of my points (italics is what I said, bold is what he said, normal are my comments):
– You mention the problem of people born on Jauray 31, etc. You solution (just celebrate on the new last day of the month) is very good, but there is the other option of celebrating when your birthday WOULD be, according to the Gregorian calendar date (i.e., the first of the next month)
fine, or just celebrate it when you wish.
– Most of the point of C&T is convenience, however you suggest the elimination of time zones… how is this convenient? I, for one, think waking up at midnight being normal is just plain inconvenient. Everyone already uses UTC for international dealings, why change how it is done locally?
I don?t intend anyone to wake up at midnight! Work hours would remain the same, they would just be labelled differently
^^ Uh, ok, he didn?t understand what I meant here 😛
– I really like the idea of going to 24hr time everywhere.
thank you; lots of people don?t!
– The idea that everyone born on a Newton week should celebrate their birthday on the 4th of July is, in my opinion, a bigoted American idea. It would be the same situation as someone born on leap-day according to the current calendar. They would probably just move to the closest day.
Sure, anything anyone likes. The Queen of England celebrates her official birthday in June, for good weather!
– I like the idea of removing daylight savings time, however changing working hours in its place may be a problem. Most employers would simply refuse to do it.
Actually, flextime and things like this are making DST irrelevant anyway, I think.
Could someone explain to my what flexitime is? I never heard of it…
– Although yyyy-mm-dd is ISO standard, I don?t see the problem with using the worldwide (excluding north america) standard of dd-mm-yyyy, it is just the same thing backward.
I believe China uses yyy-mm-dd (if you find out I?m wrong, please let me know!)
Ian has informed me that China uses yy-mm-dd, but it was probably a typo on his part to have the extra ‘y’.
– Moving Christmas to a Sunday is not such a hot idea, for two reasons. One, it ceases to be a real holiday and is just a special weekend. Two, we Christians (who pretty much invented the original holdiay) will no longer be able to have a special Christmas service to celebrate the birth of Our Lord. We will be required to ?specialise? the normal Sunday service, thus degrading the holdiday.
shucks, here I thought I was doing you a favor!
– Are you aware that JRR Tolkein created a calandar based on a similar idea for use by the hobbits in LotR?
Yes, a couple of eamils have pointed that out to me. His system, though, was one that did NOT preserve the cycle of days of the weeks.
Who cares if there are a couple of days that aren?t assigned to weeks? But he seems to think that if we have those in the proposal a lot of ppl would refuse to accept them…