Calendar critics say we ought to date around
Share with others:
As we all know, New Year's Day fell on a Sunday this year.
And if Richard Henry and Steve Hanke had their way, it would fall on Sunday next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, instead of the Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday sequence we'll face under the 430-year-old Gregorian calendar that we now use.
Mr. Henry, an astrophysicist, and Mr. Hanke, an economist, are the latest in a long line of calendar reform advocates. Yes, the Johns Hopkins University professors say, we may be used to "30 days hath September, April, June and November" and having our birthdays fall on different days each year, but does it really make sense?
In their scheme, each quarter would consist of two 30-day months and one 31-day month, for a 364-day year. There would no longer be an extra day in February in leap years, as there is this year, but to keep the calendar aligned with the seasons, every fifth or sixth year, they would throw in an extra week at the end of December. (See a PG graphic of the Hanke-Henry permanent calendar.)
Over the past several decades, there have been many attempts to reform the annual calendar, none of which has made much headway.
The last serious assault was the World Calendar proposed in the 1950s by the United Nations.
Like the Hanke-Henry Calendar, the World Calendar would have had 364 days with equal quarters, but would have added one extra unnamed day a year, or two in leap years.
That ran afoul of Jewish and Christian leaders, who said the extra days would interfere with the required seven-day cycle between sabbaths, which was enough for the Eisenhower administration to shy away from the proposal.
The same problem had derailed an earlier attempt by George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak Co., to implement a calendar of 13 months of 28 days each. He, too, needed an extra day or two each year, and ran into the same religious opposition.
By periodically adding an extra week instead of extra days, the Johns Hopkins professors say their plan avoids that pitfall.
Mr. Henry, who normally studies ultraviolet background radiation in the universe, got involved in calendar reform about seven years ago, when he was revising his annual lecture class.
First Published January 9, 2012 12:00 am
