Comment by halosghost | Hacker News Reader

Comment by halosghost | Hacker News Reader

At this point, I doubt there will ever be any proposal as easy to adopt and as radically-improved as Symmetry454 [1].

One day, I hope to live in a world where I get to use this calendar and the average response isn't for people to look at me funny…

For anyone looking for a tl;dr, Symmetry454…

- is perpetual; one printed calendar will work, more or less, indefinitely

- preserves the 7-day sabbatical week cycle (no intercalary days like IFC)

- simplifies the leap rule to a formula which should work for a very long time (at least a few millenia from now)

- preserves 3 months in a quarter, and 4 equal quarters making up a year

- results in every week, month, quarter, year, etc. beginning on a Monday and ending on a Sunday; this also means knowing just the day number tells you exactly what day-of-week it is

- ensures all months now consist of a predictable, whole-number of weeks

… it's just… so much better…

All the best,

[1]: http://individual.utoronto.ca/kalendis/symmetry.htm

I'm not a fan of having some months be 25% longer than most, but it is predictable. One thing to consider in calendar reform is monthly payments. They could easily be transferred to weekly payments in this system, or increased 25% for extended months.

This certainly isn't a great reason to avoid perennial calendars, but I honestly very much like that anniversaries fall on different days of the week each year. As a child a 'weekend' birthday gave me something to look forward to for multiple years to be able to party like Elton John or the Bay City Rollers. With a perennial calendar, if I were born on a dull workday, I'd be stuck celebrating in the middle of the school or work week for life! "No, cindy, I don't want to celebrate with the rest of the staff in the kitchenette with any more of your muffins."

My coworkers don't know my birthday lol.

Also due to infectious disease, celebrated my birthday with my family 3 months late recently.

What about this idea for a calendar: every year is 1 month, every month is 1 week, and every week is 1 day?

- Every year and month starts on a Monday

- No leap days needed at all

- You can use the same calendar every year (better yet, you might already have a blank piece of paper you can use)

- Every day is your birthday

You might be responding tongue-in-cheek, but you have essentially described an underspecified variant of FDN Rata Die [1].

FDN R.D. does have a place in calendrical calculations; namely, it serves as the narrow waist for converting between calendars.

All the best,

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rata_Die

Reply on news.ycombinator.com