In this press release, Better Calendar Proposed, Richard Conn Henry is proposing a new calendar system for the world. As someone who's cursed dates and scheduling systems before, I can certainly understand his desire, but what most caught my eye was that his target date for this switch would be Jan 1st of 2006! That's certifiably insane!
I can't imagine that the massive infrastructure around calendaring could possibly be changed in one year. That would make the Y2K fiasco look like a tiny little blip. This would be a truly enormous undertaking. And "Newton week"? Where does that fit into my monthly billing cycle? It's a hack onto his system to correct the fact that there aren't really 365 days in a year. Until that happens, dates are going to be 'approximate', and the system will need periodic adjustments.
And switch everyone around the globe to UTC (or GMT)? Why? I really don't want to wake up at 2AM and avoid the 11PM after-work traffic.
People fear change. Our busted, convoluted, and very firmly entrenched calendar is here to stay, I'm afraid.
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