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Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!watdcsu!kishore2
From: kishore2@watdcsu.UUCP (K.Singhal - Systems Design)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: Calendar reform. (was Counting years)
Message-ID: <2518@watdcsu.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 5-Sep-86 10:19:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: watdcsu.2518
Posted: Fri Sep  5 10:19:15 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Sep-86 04:50:06 EDT
References: <745@tekla.UUCP>
Reply-To: kishore2@watdcsu.UUCP (S.Lang - Systems Design)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 55
Summary: 

In article <745@tekla.UUCP> dant@tekla.UUCP (Dan Tilque) writes:
>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 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
>

Hey, I like this one. Now if only we could change our genes so that we have
only one finger and a thumb on each hand and only two toes on each foot.
Then it would be natural for us humans to count in binary too !  :-)



-- 
 ============================================================================= 
|  Sherman Lang                     |					      |
|  Systems Design Engineering       |  "A screaming comes across the sky..."  | 
|  University of Waterloo           |					      |
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