Hi everyone,
It is possible that we may have an entirely new calendar in the future if these guys have their way.
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20151222-the-case-for-an-entirely-new-calendar***********
If Richard Henry had his way, we wouldn’t be celebrating the New Year quite yet. The Johns Hopkins University physics and astronomy professor along with his colleague Steve Hanke, an economics professor, have come up with a calendar they believe would simplify scheduling and accountancy once and for all.
More than four centuries ago Pope Gregory XIII designed the calendar we use today as a fix to the Julian calendar, which had miscalculated the number of days it takes for the Earth to revolve around the sun. He wanted to keep Easter in the Spring, but also created a calendar riddled with idiosyncracies.
In the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar, every date would fall on the same day of the week every year. The pair want their calendar adopted worldwide by January 1, 2017 — the next time that New Year’s Day falls on a Sunday. Their goal is to do away with scheduling problems and financial reporting errors that result from using a calendar system, where quarters and months are different lengths and dates jump to a different day every year.
The pair say their calendar improves upon previous efforts because it preserves the 12 month, seven-day week idea, while eliminating what they call “calendar confusion.”
Christmas, for example, would always be on a Sunday. Calculations would also be easier, they claim. Bond, mortgage and other interest rate calculations are often based on a 30-day month, which Hanke said leads to tricky sums and errors with months that have 28 or 31 days.
“The real objection is that people say ‘my birthday would always be on a Wednesday,’” he said.
Another barrier is the cost and coordination associated with switching calendars globally. With today’s networked global economy, every country around the world would have to agree on the new calendar to coordinate business meetings and airplane schedules among a host of other events.
“It would be a lot of work for one year,” said Henry, as the world would need to reprint and adjust to new calendars and software makers would need to rewrite lines of code.
************
Cheers.
Sriram
