You advocate a
( ) solar ( ) lunar ( ) atomic
approach to calendar reform. Your idea will not work. Here is why:
( ) solar years are real and the calendar year needs to sync with them
( ) solar days are real and the calendar day needs to sync with them
( ) the solar year cannot be evenly divided into solar days
( ) the solar day cannot be evenly divided into SI seconds
( ) the length of the solar day is not constant
( ) the length of the solar day is more than 86,400 seconds on average
( ) the length of the solar day is ultimately unbounded
( ) the length of the solar day frequently decreases
( ) there can be negative leap seconds
( ) the lunar month cannot be evenly divided into solar days
( ) the solar year cannot be evenly divided into lunar months
( ) having months of different lengths is irritating
( ) having months which vary in length from year to year is maddening
( ) having one or two days per year which are part of no month is stupid
( ) your name for the thirteenth month is questionable
( ) that would destroy numerous birthdays and retcon the rest
( ) the lunar month cannot be evenly divided into seven-day weeks
( ) the solar year cannot be evenly divided into seven-day weeks
( ) every civilisation in the world is settled on a seven-day week
( ) having one or two days per year with no day of the week is asinine
( ) requiring people to manually adjust their clocks is idiotic
( ) local time should not be discontinuous
( ) local time should not go backwards
( ) local time should not repeat itself
( ) local time should not be ambiguous
( ) "7am" is a social construct
( ) social constructs are actually very important
( ) no amount of clock-moving can increase the amount of solar energy received by Earth
( ) "daylight saving" doesn't
( ) UTC already solves that problem
( ) zoneinfo already solves that problem
( ) rearranging time zones yet again would make the zoneinfo database larger, not smaller
( ) the day of the week shouldn't change in the middle of the solar day
( ) this would further ambiguate the word "day"
( ) local "midnight" should be the middle of the local night
( ) timetables would become unreadable
( ) no matter what, there will always be at least one time zone
( ) nobody would agree to pick your time zone over theirs
( ) how will I know when I can call you?
( ) there needs to be a year 0 and negative year numbers
( ) no, we don't know what year the Big Bang happened
( ) years which count down instead of up are not very funny
( ) years which count down instead of up make date arithmetic infuriating
( ) by that logic, 2000 was the final year of the Nineties
( ) Discordianism is not very funny
( ) years must have numbers
( ) the calendar must be predictable
( ) planetary-scale engineering is impractical
( ) not every part of the world has four recognisable seasons
( ) "sunrise" and "sunset" are meaningless terms at the poles
( ) Greenwich is not unambiguously inferior to any other possible prime meridian
( ) time zones exist specifically to resolve the problems with that scheme
( ) coordinating geographically dispersed events would become nearly impossible
( ) all time-and-distance calculations would become twice as complex
( ) all timetables would become twice as complex
( ) I shouldn't need to adjust my wristwatch every few miles
( ) many clocks do not have line-of-sight to GPS satellites
( ) you can't put a GPS chip in a mechanical clock
( ) clocks on planes would literally run backwards
( ) what happens during an inserted leap second if the offset isn't a round number of minutes?
( ) civil time and solar time have to remain in synch to better than a second
( ) Unix time doesn't respect leap seconds
( ) leap seconds have been a fact of life for more than forty years
( ) leap seconds are more frequent than leap years
( ) leap minutes would cause absolute chaos
( ) TAI already solves that problem
( ) the Earth is not, in fact, a cube
( ) time travel is impossible
( ) high-tech applications need far more accuracy than your scheme allows
( ) 13-digit numbers are difficult for humans to compare, even qualitatively
( ) most of history can't be renumbered with atomic accuracy
( ) clocks based directly on astronomical observations are inaccurate
( ) clocks based directly on astronomical observations are unpredictable
( ) everybody in the world is already used to sexagesimal time divisions
( ) date formats need to be unambiguous
( ) abbreviated date formats should be possible and still unambiguous
( ) a leading zero on the year number only delays the inevitable
( ) date arithmetic needs to be as easy as possible
Specifically, your plan fails to account for:
( ) humans
( ) clocks
( ) computers
( ) space
( ) the inconsistent rotational and orbital characteristics of Earth
( ) rational hatred for arbitrary change
( ) unpopularity of weird new month and day names
( ) total incompatibility with the SI second
( ) general relativity
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) BC and AD aren't
( ) technically, that's how it already works
( ) they tried that in France once and it didn't take
( ) nobody is about to renumber every event in history
( ) good luck trying to move the Fourth of July
( ) nobody cares what year you were born
( ) time cannot be stopped, nor can clocks be abolished entirely
(x) the history of calendar reform is insanely complicated and no amount of further calendar reform can make it simpler
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) sorry, but I don't think it would work
( ) this is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it
( ) please just shut up and fix your broken date/time code
With apologies to the original.
Discussion (24)
2013-12-09 11:47:52 by qntm:
2013-12-09 12:42:19 by jymbob:
2013-12-09 12:44:34 by jymbob:
2013-12-09 13:09:20 by Zache:
2013-12-09 13:22:06 by Rafe:
2013-12-09 13:39:25 by dsr:
2013-12-09 14:10:57 by jymbob:
2013-12-09 14:14:24 by qntm:
2013-12-09 14:43:01 by Bauglir:
2013-12-09 14:45:36 by Bauglir:
2013-12-09 15:51:43 by Michael:
2013-12-09 16:58:27 by ducken:
2013-12-09 17:49:54 by IdolRevolver:
2013-12-09 21:51:50 by Moti:
2013-12-10 03:35:01 by Sean:
2013-12-10 05:23:46 by peitro:
2013-12-10 05:54:00 by Artanis:
2013-12-10 09:09:41 by jonas:
2013-12-13 04:45:29 by EternalDensity:
2014-01-01 21:07:36 by DragonDave:
2014-01-15 03:31:05 by Randall:
2014-02-11 23:01:25 by ANONYMOUS:
2014-02-20 05:42:04 by BlitzGirl:
2015-05-11 22:36:28 by Argent:
This discussion is closed.