My wife said she missed me writing about non-tech things. The monkey’s paw curled.
Last night I came up with what can only be described as man’s most brilliant idea in the last century: CalendarFiasco. The Gregorian calendar — while a marked improvement over the Julian calendar — sucks. It makes no sense.
What’s in a name?
Thankfully, there’s precedent for changing the calendar. That’s part of what got us here. There was a time when September was the 7th month, October the 8th, November the 9th, and December the 10th. Those names made sense once upon a time.
Another thing that doesn’t make sense about them: they contain the sound “bər”. What do you say when you’re cold? Brr. But the northern hemisphere mid-latitude weather during many of those months isn’t particularly cold. So let’s start by re-arranging the names such that the “brr” months are the coldest months.
November and December can stay put. But we’ll replace January with September and February with October. Now the cold months are appropriately named. “But, Ben,” you whine, “what about the southern hemisphere?” Well, I guess they should have thought of this first, huh?
“Okay,” you plead, “but the names still don’t make sense from a numerical standpoint.” So what? I’ve improved some parts of it without making anything else worse. The ordinals didn’t make sense before and they don’t make sense now.
But wait! There’s more! You know what’s light and airy? Late spring. Right now, our calendar buries January and February — the “airy” months — in a pile of snow. Tragic. Since we’ve displaced those two months already, let’s move them to a more appropriate place. April and May can shove off to where September and October were. January and February will take their spot.
So my new calendar now has month names that make a lot more sense:
- September
- October
- March
- January
- February
- June
- July
- August
- April
- May
- November
- December
Where it all begins
Earth orbits the sun in a regular path. We could start the year at any arbitrary point. But January 1 is such a silly point. It’s less than two weeks after the winter solstice, which is a meaningful part of the orbit. Why not simply move the start of the year?
It is important to my wife that the winter solstice remain in December, so in the interests of marital harmony, I will make September (formerly January) 1 the first day after the (typical day of the) solstice. To make the transition easier, I put together a handy mapping of Gregorian dates to CalendarFiasco dates for your reference.
Feedback
…is not allowed. This proposal is perfect and I will not tolerate any dissent.
Nah. Still too much held over from Pope Gregory XIII. Why not just adopt a digital calendar, like the Stardate system. That accounts for fractional days without resorting to Leap years.
Just kidding, of course. I assume your wife would not approve.
We’ll get there, don’t worry!