Reforming the Gregorian Calendar

Originally posted by Kewpie
A decimal system would be great if it could be made to work. How would you deal with:
1. length of a working week and "weekend"
2. the odd 5 (and 6) days to come back to a standard year

There are many different solutions that would have to be compared. One solution is to drop the solar year, another would be to have a day count from the start of the year instead of months and have an odd week at the end of the year with 5 or 6 days. But leap years would remain a problem.
Another solution is to have a raw day count (rather like unix) from a given date and ignore days, weeks months and years for most purposes.
But of course this gets back to the problem of traditions being based around years/months/days etc.

Originally posted by twhitehead
So instead of simplifying anything they are proposing to make it all more complicated?

Looks like it. It's even more illogical than the current calendar, which at least has the reason of being tied to the irregularity of the sun. The H-H system only goes off on even more of a tangent, all for the chimera of "regularity".

Things like school holiday schedules would be the same from year to year,
Not necessarily they wouldn't. Not in South Africa anyway. School holidays are not necessarily going to be fixed just because the calendar is changed. Here in SA we even have two different school calendars for coastal or inland provinces. I don't know why.

We even have that in the Netherlands, which is a lot smaller than SA. The reason over here is that, by spreading the holidays over different periods for different areas, you don't get the entire country grinding to a halt at the same time and you don't get everybody trying to cram onto the beaches all at the same time. Of course, it would be unfair if one province had its holidays in June every year and another always had them in August; so they shift them around on a yearly basis. Adopting the H-H calendar would not remove either reason, and therefore would not solve this irregularity at all.

Richard

Originally posted by Kewpie
The other thing that really needs to be done is the 24-hour clock for everyone. We're a bit past only being able to count up to 12.

Meh. That, like having 13 inches to the perch and 7 1/14th puddles to the pint (English, not USA - that's 6 3/29th puddles), is an Anglo-Saxon problem. The rest of us have been used to having a 24-hour clock, where applicable, for decades. Trust me, it's no problem at all having to know that half three in the arvo is 14.30.
Richard

Originally posted by twhitehead
One solution is to drop the solar year,

That's not a solution, that's a problem. All calendar reforms must address this one fact: our Earth turns around itself in a period which does not go nicely into the perious in which it turns around the Sun, yet both periods are of critical importance to human behaviour, business and culture. (And that's not even taking into account that both periods vary - our planet doesn't just turn, it wobbles as well.)

But of course this gets back to the problem of traditions being based around years/months/days etc.

It's not just traditions. You could make a point of that concerning the month, but the year and day at least have real importance.

Richard

Originally posted by Shallow Blue
That's not a solution, that's a problem. All calendar reforms must address this one fact: our Earth turns around itself in a period which does not go nicely into the perious in which it turns around the Sun, yet both periods are of critical importance to human behaviour, business and culture. (And that's not even taking into account that both periods vary - our planet doesn't just turn, it wobbles as well.)

It may be important to know when the seasons are, but that does not mean the calendar has to reflect this. I must also point out that the earth has different seasons in different parts, and quite often us Southerners have to bow down to the calendar of the North.
But seriously, how many things are there that depend on the solar year? Not many that I can think of here in SA. Maybe it matters much more in the far north.
And as I pointed out, many religious holidays are not fixed with the solar year anyway.

Originally posted by twhitehead
There are many different solutions that would have to be compared. One solution is to drop the solar year, another would be to have a day count from the start of the year instead of months and have an odd week at the end of the year with 5 or 6 days. But leap years would remain a problem.
Another solution is to have a raw day count (rather like unix) fro ...[text shortened]... of course this gets back to the problem of traditions being based around years/months/days etc.

Oh, I don't know. I think the Star Trek "star date" system may have some merit.

"Where were you on the night of star date 5377.23?"