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From: dant@tekla.UUCP (Dan Tilque)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Calendar reform. (was Counting years)
Message-ID: <745@tekla.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 3-Sep-86 17:25:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekla.745
Posted: Wed Sep  3 17:25:54 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 5-Sep-86 20:29:20 EDT
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR
Lines: 51

From: joel@peora.UUCP (Joel Upchurch)
>        The only really elegant solution to the problem would be  to
>        move  the earth slightly closer to the sun, so that the year
>        is exactly 364 days long.  Of course you could get the  same
>        effect  by  slowing  down the Earth's rotation slightly, but
>        that would mess up all the clocks. |->


A truly elegent solution to calendar reform could be done in three simple(?)
steps:

	1) Change the definition of the second to be 2 of the current
	   seconds (this is the easy part).

	2) Change the rotation of the Earth to be 65536 of the new seconds.

	3) Move the Earth (away from the sun) so that there are exactly
	   256 of the new days in the year.  Note that this step is
	   unneccesary if the constant in step 1 is changed from 2 to
	   approximately 1.881.

	The year would then be made up of 8 months of 32 days.  Each month
	would have 4 weeks of 8 days each.  People would work 6 days and
	get 2 off (a longer work week is a small price to pay for a truly
	rational calendar).  Work days would only be 5 new hours long (about
	1/3 day) anyway.  You would also get 12 days of vacation every year.

	The day would be made up of 16 hours each of which would have
	64 minutes.  Each minute would have 64 seconds.


	The advantages to this system are obvious: computers would only need
	3 bytes of memory to keep track of the current date and time.
	(All days, hours and minutes would be counted from zero, of course.) 
	The savings of computer memory and date conversion routines would be
	tremendous.

	The disadvantages of this are minor.  After all, we change our
	calendars every year anyway; everyone would just have to get
	a new watch at the same time.


 Dan Tilque		UUCP:		tektronix!dadla!dant
			CSnet:		dant%dadla@tektronix
			ARPAnet:	dant%dadla%tektronix@csnet-relay

 Mass extinction; it's not just for dinosaurs anymore.


Disclaimer: I didn't put any smileys in the above.  (I have a nickel that
	    says that someone will take it seriously).