Things from my mind

I admit, this is the second post within a month dealing with calendars and date systems, but I promise, this has nothing to do with the Mayans. It has to do with this new date system, as described here: http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/calendar.html

THE SCENARIO
Take some time to read the web page. Or don’t, in which case I’ll sum up this new calendar. Basically, the HH (Hanke-Henry) Calendar is a new calendar that makes every day of the year fall on the same day of the week, i.e. Jan. 1st is always on a Sunday, Feb 16th is always on a Wednesday, etc. This feat is accomplished by slightly adjusting the number of days in each month, keeping the JFMAMJJASOND month system, and on some years adding an extra week onto the end of the year, called the Extra “month”. Now, the only months with 31 days are March, June, September, and December. All the rest, even February, have 30 days.  To figure out which years have the extra week, just remember the Gregorian calendar, and if the year starts or ends with a Thursday, that year gets inflated. The upcoming years that get the Extra treatment are: 2015, 2020, 2026, 2032, 2037, 2043, 2048, 2054, and 2060.

Also, our time system is changed, too. Hanke and Henry suggest dropping time zones entirely, and instead use the GMT time everywhere. This means that when Greenwich time hits 00:00, everyone is in a new day, everywhere.

PROS
This date system is creative, and I applaud the creators for the effort that went into making this. With a system where every day is on the same day of the week every year, holidays that used to depend on a particular day of the week (Easter, Thanksgiving, etc) will always be on the same numerical day. When you give a date, there’s no more fumbling to figure out if it’s going to be a Monday or a Tuesday.  Times, being standard everywhere, will make phone calls and business shenanigans easy.

CONS
HH says they want to have a global switch by 2017. Getting a ~7 billion planet to switch to a new date would be EXTREMELY hard. They argue that a system switch was done before, with the system we have today. True, but in 1582, the world has a lot less people and was definitely less complicated. Today, you’ve got so many things you’d need to change, it would not be practical. Another thing is this “Extra” system. The Gregorian’s leap years are easy to remember, every four years, February gets another day. With this system, you have to remember a weird pattern that goes 56656656565… instead of 44444444444…

Personally, I think it won’t fly. Too much of a hassle. Considering not very many people have heard of this, acomplishing a full-blown world switch is near-impossible.

Anyways, those are my thoughts for today.