[bluejekyll]

Yeah agree completely. And keeping zones is important to understand workdays. I wouldn't mind dropping named time zones completely in favor of UTC+Offset, I always end up looking that up, annoyingly.

Or just name the zones based on the offset. So NY would be -5. We could for humans write time with the ecoding, similar to ISO-8601, but it would just be 15:30-5 for 3:30pm EST.

While we're at it. Can we make all the months standard lengths too? 30 day months, with 1 New Year's Day (for a fun party) and every four years a bonus New Year's Day! For an especially big party :)

Edit: as stated below I screwed up my (basic) math. 13 months 28 days is better. What should we call the 13th month?

[zeta0134]

Your math doesn't work out there though. If we had 30 day months, we would end up with 360 days spread among 12 months, and an extra 5 days leftover.

28 day months make far more sense, would align nicely with your proposed single New Year's day, and have the added bonus of aligning with our 7-day week system quite nicely. This ends up with 13 months altogether, and hey, it turns out that 28 days is closer to a lunar cycle, so the full moon would end up happening at roughly the same time every month. Not perfectly of course, but with the chaos that is our solar system, I'll take what I can get. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar

[jhbadger]

That first example (12 30 day months with 5 or 6 days outside months) was actually used in practice in post-revolutionary France (and again during the Paris Commune). I'm not sure keeping 7-day weeks is really a plus -- the French Revolutionary calendar used 10-day "decades" which align with the metric system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar

[cafard]

I will just point out for the benefit of those who run Emacs and haven't yet discovered it, that in calendar mode, "p f" will tell you, for example, that November 7, 2016 is 17 Brumaire, year 225 of the revolution.

[wernercd]

Metric? Yeah... us Americans would never go for that garbage... :)

[vidarh]

But you do.. Sort of. One of the original signatories of the treaty of the metre, and all of your silly units for length and mass at least are defined in terms of SI units as of 1959 [1] [2].

So when you give someone an inch, you're specifically giving 25.4mm ;)

[1] https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/si-units-lengt...

[2] https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/documents/pml/wmd/m...

[bluejekyll]

I think you mean "we Americans..."

And yeah. I mean 10 is only divisible by 2 and 5 where 12 is much more flexible in giving us 2, 3, 4, and 6. At least that was my grandfather's argument.

I annoying need to keep Metric and Standard wrenches and such for working on various things. Eventually it won't matter as the US will mostly source parts built over-seas where it will only make sense to adopt metric. And then the Standard system will only be left on road signs and temeratures, oh that's pretty much already happened.

[wernercd]

> 10 is only divisible by 2 and 5 where 12 is much more flexible in giving us 2, 3, 4, and 6.

Now that is some good ole American ingenuity :)

[serge2k]

Americans do come up with the best dumb arguments why their busted idiotic system is better.

My "favorite" is "Well farenheit just makes more sense for humans".

[bluejekyll]

Ah. I screwed up my math. 28 sounds perfect.

I rely on unit tests for this stuff these days ;)

[restalis]

Why having (7-days) "weeks" at all? Divide 28 into 7 groups of 4 days each and use these. Three days of work followed by one off, how does it sound?

[placeybordeaux]

Like something that is not going to happen. Religious days are the reason we have weekends where they are. They are not going to change because "why not have 4 day weeks".

[restalis]

Religious groups may stay with their own calendar if they wish, it wouldn't be the first nor the last thing kept conservative out of religious reasons. The secular society, however, may look for whatever works best.

[nfixx]

Actually, in ETHIOPIA, it already is 13 MONTHS always!

https://encrypted.google.com/#newwindow=1&q=ethiopia+13+mont...

I was shocked, being a visitor here, when sometime about a month ago, we celebrated new year (after the 13th month), while the rest of the world was in the middle of the Gregorian calendar!

[Houshalter]

28 is perfect because it's divisible by 7. So every day lands on the same day of every month and every year. Every 1rst is a Sunday.

But really, while we are on the topic of reform, is there any particular reason the week should be 7 days? Or that there should be a week at all?

Time keeping is also weird. Base 24 and 60 is so arbitrary. Make it base ten, and you can express date and time easily. Right now is 6.976. The 9 is the hour, the 76 is the minute, etc.

And then if we are talking about radical standards reform, let's do away with base 10 entirely and go to 12. It carries more precision in less space, is much more divisible, and has more patterns in the multiplication tables.

I love thinking about how more optimal the world could be if not for coordination problems and other issues.

[m_eiman]

Every 1rst is a Sunday.

Except the week starts with Monday. At least in the civilized world…

[grzm]

ISO, and many places, yes, but not everywhere. Is it necessary to add "At least in the civilized world"? Seems unnecessarily inflammatory. And the gp is proposing a new system anyway.

[m_eiman]

The point was that the proposal is based on assumptions that don't hold true in ever culture, but would be forced onto those cultures if it were implemented. This is of course true for most, if not all, proposals for changing the way we handle time.

According to Wikipedia there are at least three "first day of the week" in use, sorted by (my assumption of) affected population:

Monday: EU and most of other European countries, most of Asia and Oceania

Sunday: Canada, USA, Korea, Japan, Israel, South Africa, most of Latin America

Saturday: Much of the Middle East

[Nition]

Wikipedia says the first day of the week in New Zealand is Monday, but our calendars usually start on Sunday and personally at least, I've always thought of Sunday as the first day of the week. So I'm not sure I'd trust that page too well.

[Houshalter]

It's really not important at all... The point is this calendar would line up the week cycle with the month cycle, which has a ton of advantages. You can't throw that away just because you can't agree what day of the week should come first.

Hell, while we are at it we can just rename the days firstday, secondday, etc, and not have to deal with that issue.

[scottmf]

You want to switch time to base 10 and everything else to base 12 even though you consider it to be arbitrary?

We use 12, 60 (and 360deg) because our fingers are divided into 12 sections on the palm side.

You can use your thumb to point to each section on your right hand, counting to 12, while using the number of fingers on your left hand to keep track of how many 12s (up to 5) hence base 60.

[grzm]

This sounds interesting, but I'm skeptical. 12, 60, and 360 have nice mathematical properties independent of human morphology. Do you have references to cite this?

[scottmf]

The articles I've read all seem to cite print books. The Wiki articles on finger counting, and duodecimal list some:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal

[grzm]

Thanks for the reference! Not convinced that this is the sole reason, but it is interesting nonetheless.

[Houshalter]

I want to switch time to whatever base people use. If we switch to superior base 12, we should also switch to superior base 12 clocks.

[wan23]

Your radical time standard reform undoes your first change - it's already based on the number 12, remember? 24 is two 12-hour periods - A.M. and P.M. and 60 minutes/seconds is 12 five-minute/second periods (the numbers on a clock).

[Houshalter]

It's based on 24, which is divisible by 12. But that's not quite the same as having a clock that is based on the base you use. A base 12 clock would work just like a decimal clock, just with 2 extra symbols. It would not look like the base 24 clock with base 60 minutes and base 60 seconds.

[restalis]

Having 7-days week concept is not necessary. That 28 days being divisible by 7 can be used to create a smaller group of days that we currently use for week. I presume that in such a 4-days group the ratio of 3 days for work and 1 for leisure should both increase the efficiency and to thin out the work stress.

[Asooka]

Having Sunday as the first day would mess up our week, because we call Tuesday, Thursday and Friday second, fourth and fifth respectively. If you really want 1st each month to be first day of week, either America will have to adopt Monday as first, or vary the day of week by region.

[filmor]

Wednesday is called "Mittwoch" in German, which is a shortened form of "middle of the week". Only works if Sunday is the first day of the week, though the common convention is also having the week start on Monday. Confused me quite a bit as a child :)

[usrusr]

Middle of the working days part of the week, no need to go all American and make half of the weekend the beginning!

[galfarragem]

The same in Portuguese: Monday = Segunda (Second); Tuesday = Terça (Third) and successively till Friday = Sexta (Sixth).

[mark-r]

When I was a kid, I toyed with the idea of metric time. I realized it wouldn't work when I thought about TV shows - a 30 minute show would need to be condensed into 2 14.4 minute centi-days. That would require losing 1.2 minutes of commercials, never gonna happen.

[Houshalter]

A half hour in decimal time (half a deciday), would be 72 minutes normal time. A quarter decimal hour/deciday would be 36 normal minutes, which is pretty close and gives even more time for ads.

You could also split time further into thirds, which would work even better with a base 12 system.

[mark-r]

I assumed you'd be breaking the units into tenths all the way down, not quarters as you advocate here. Would certainly solve the problem though, maybe even too well.

[Houshalter]

The units are based on 10, but nothing stops people from dividing it further. Just as someone might use a unit of "half a kilometer" or "half a liter", which are other base 10 units.

[mark-r]

After giving this some more thought, I realize you're right. We already deal with programs starting on xx:30, now we'd just get used to things starting at x.25, x.50, and x.75. Instead of running from 8:00 to 8:30 PM, a show might run from 8.00 to 8.25.

6 minutes is too much time though, if you tried to fill that with ads you'd lose your audience fast.

Dividing into thirds doesn't really work in a decimal system.

[rocqua]

A 7 day work week seems to be optimal for most. Specifically, the 5 days on / 2 off. Apparently, medical staff working 10 / 4 have issues, and attempts at running e.g. 7/3 also don't go over very well.

[mhurron]

That's only if a 40 hour week is the optimum. Since no one is really working 8 hours, 5 days a week, that's doubtful.

[Kadin]

The 40-hour workweek is a direct function of (1) that it's advantageous to have the fewest employees possible, because each additional employee has overhead costs; (2) you can't make employees work more than 8 hours/day (a number that was arrived at through significant strife and is unlikely to change substantially); (3) everyone gets two days off in a 7-day period.

The 40-hour workweek isn't an arbitrary quantity, it's an empirically derived quantity. And the process of deriving it literally involved people killing each other. I don't see it changing very soon, except in edge cases.

[reflexive]

> let's do away with base 10 entirely and go to 12

Why not hexadecimal, to help accelerate the singularity?

[fsiefken]

12 is the most optimal and usable base for humans - James Grime explains it at Numberphile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6xJfP7-HCc

[eutropia]

http://www.mithrandir.com/Tranquility/tranquility.html

I think you're proposing this, 13 months named for scientists, one day outside the year.

[bluejekyll]

Yes. Perfect. I've never seen that before. Thanks for sharing. It will never sell in the US though, the mere inclusion of Darwin will make it a political nightmare as people would be convinced we're atheists trying to kill their god.

[reflexive]

> people would be convinced we're atheists trying to kill their god

When the reality is much less exciting... replacing the old gods with a deified version of Science.

[Asooka]

Or, we use Latin names of numbers. So, Unusber, Duober, Tresber, Quattorber, Quinber, Sexber [rename as necessary for America], September, October, November, December, Undecimber, Duodecimber, Tredecimber.

[talideon]

These would be better names from a purely phonological point of view: Unusper, Tresper, Quattober, Sexper. That way you don't have awkward clusters of both voiced and unvoiced consonants. The -ber affix having originally come from mensris (-mens-ris > *-membris > -ber), devoicing the initial 'b' to 'p' in those circumstances is reasonable enough. 'Quattober' is a simplification that makes it fit the pattern better.

Alternatively, you would rely on the ordinals, dropping the -us ending and replacing it with -ilis as in Sextilis and Quintilis.

[fao_]

  Unusber

It might not be correct, but I would prefer "Unober"

[boterock]

four decembers would endorse extremely premature christmas decoration

[vidarh]

Introduce it as a means to purge the name of non-Christian gods from their current months and days, and suggest any opponents can't be monotheists after all given that they give other deities such a prominent position in their lives.

[serge2k]

I'd vote against it.

Mostly cause it's lame though.

[flukus]

Aldrin gets a day but Gargarin doesn't?

[programmer_dude]

The 0th month should be dedicated to Aryabhata: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryabhata#Place_value_system_a...

[arjunnarayan]

I was thinking Al-Khwarizmi.

[calanya]

For male scientists. Feels weird

[bench_soup]

You can start using the 'calendrier pataphysique' :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'Pataphysics#Pataphysical_cale...

[logfromblammo]

I believe this "new calendar" idea has already been tried several times. Religion and agriculture always seem to be the sticking points.

Months are hardly necessary, anyway. Wouldn't quarters be better?

Have 4 quarters of 13 * 7-day weeks each. Designate the vernal equinox as day 0 of the calendar, follow it with the 4 91-day quarters, and tack on leap days after the 4th quarter according to the Gregorian calendar rules.

So you end up with dates like the 41st of Spring, or the 82nd of Summer. New Year's Day would be the 0th (nilth) of Spring, and Leap Day the 92nd of Winter.

[restalis]

"Months are hardly necessary, anyway. Wouldn't quarters be better?"

Months are, more or less, related to the moon periods, just like the year is to earth period. And most of the world has year quarters, called seasons. Seasons are there (in front of our eyes) to stay, regardless of how we'll choose to distribute the days of the year.

[edoceo]

Smarch.

From the Simpsons

[ywain]

> What should we call the 13th month?

Undecimber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undecimber

[xom]

While we're at it, how about defining the offsets the other way around, so we can write 15:30+5 == 15:30 EST == 20:30 UTC?

[mahyarm]

You can do 19 months with 19 days with a 4 or 5 day holiday time in between. That way the number of months are equal to the number of days.

[hollander]

The only problem is that nobody would agree on the holidays.

[restalis]

The only problem I thought of was the month/moon period disconnection.

[perilunar]

> 30 day months, with 1 New Year's Day

And the other 4 days?

[cheiVia0]

Workdays are not worth keeping either. With the gig economy, you can't know if someone works at night or during the day, or morning or Sundays or whatever.

[ISL]

12*30+1 = 361.

One solar year: 365.24219 x (86400s days).

[irascible]

I vote a 256 day year, of 8 , 16 day months. Each month is 4, 4 day weeks, with odd weeks being mandatory global time off. New years is a one bMonth long global celebration, also time off.

This has a beneficial side effect of making date handling easier for 8 bit microcontrollers, so when the singularity happens, the superAI will take pity on us because we showed mercy to its ancestors.

[bbcbasic]

That's a hell of a lot of Earth angular momentum you need to destroy!