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You advocate a [blank] approach to calendar reform
- aurizon 11y agoglobal Metric time...;)
- Sanddancer 11y agoWhich would require reprinting every science book, re-deriving every mathematical equation, replacing every road sign, ruler, measuring cup, scale, etc. Because metric time would involve altering the second, you would need to alter pretty much every other constant to match.
- nsns 11y agoRight, but note that almost anywhere outside the (christian) west uses (at least) two concurrent systems without much trouble (e.g. India: Western/Shaka calendar, Israel: Western/Jewish Lunar calendar, etc.).
- chillaxtian 11y agomy favorite line: ( ) the length of the solar day is ultimately unbounded
- jheriko 11y agothis even works if your approach is to not change anything! :)
- shpx 11y agoI agree that calendar reform is futile, it's more useful to have a universal standard than trying to get everyone to agree on a marginally better one. But it's fun to think about how you could design the calendar from scratch, or how we should do it on Mars. Besides social inertia, I have not heard a good argument for lunar months. I convert months to day numbers (feb 29 becomes day 60) in my head, which makes reasoning about longer time scales a little easier.
- david-given 11y agoI like that this comes preticked: > the history of calendar reform is insanely complicated and no amount of further calendar reform can make it simpler
- brownbat 11y ago( ) having months of different lengths is irritating ( ) having months which vary in length from year to year is maddening People toy with calendar reform exactly because so many boxes are already ticked in our current system, and other boxes are questionable: ( ) having one or two days per year with no day of the week is asinine Meanwhile, happy day that only happens once every four years. I always see it as a half serious pursuit, but it's fun to try because our current system is an irrational historical accident that predates almost everything we've learned about math, astronomy, sociology, and usability.
- spacehome 11y agoThe majority of these complaints also apply to our current system.
- AstroJetson 11y ago()The past will always exist, and they'll never adopt your new calendar. FTW!
- m6w6 11y agoThat made me laugh out loud, causing some suspicious glances: ( ) years which count down instead of up are not very funny
- emergentcypher 11y agoThe only time I could ever see us adopting new calendar systems is when (if) we eventually migrate off-planet into space colonies or onto other bodies in the solar system. Why? Because only then will each colony have a completely different notion of what a solar year is, and different (or even entirely artificial) notions of solar days. In these colonies a standardized calendar system may arise. Or a chaotic web of independent calendar systems.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoPerhaps just a count of seconds from some zero point. Mark intervals in kilosecs and megasecs. Then the computer time-counter register will be the only clock anybody needs. Never mind 'Wednesday'. "See you in a megasec!" which is about 11.6 of our 'days'.
- tekromancr 11y agoThe problem there is that seconds are relative to movement. If you are traveling faster than earth, your clock is going to lose sync.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoThat is a problem that cannot be solved!