Horse 3306 - February 30th

I hate today. Boo!

Today is the 29th of February, which is the 60th day of the year. Of itself that shouldn't be a problem but the fact that this is a extra-calculic day, in a month which three-quarters of the time only has 28 days, is maddening to me.

The Gregorian Calendar, with its corrections for leap years, and then uncorrections from leap years at the end of the century, and then uncorrections for uncorrections for leap years at the end of every fourth century, is a bodge on a bodge on a bodge. Why do we persist with this? Because although it is apparently easy to change from Imperial to Metric, of from PAL to Digital, changing the abstract fabric of the calendar is too hard. Predictably when England came late to the party in 1752, there were riots. 

It is one thing to complain about a thing but most of the time if you want to justify the complaint, you had better have a better fix for the same problem. As usual, I have a fix and it is a good fix.

There are very close to 365¼ days in the year. However, as humans do not want to mark the year to that degree of exactitude, then the idea of 365 days in a year is practically sensible. Since we also want to overlay smaller divisions of months and weeks, we find that 12 divisions does not work properly and neither does 7.

The answer therefore is to use that principle of arithmetic called the 'common multiple' and lo and behold we have a common multiple of 7 and 4 which is dangerously close to 365. 

364 = 7 multiplied by 52

364 = 4 multiplied by 91

And because multiplication is commutative and 52 is a multiple of 4, each of those four subdivisions divides into 13 sets of 7.

The very very obvious solution for the calendar, which retains months and weeks, is thus:

In every quarter there are 91 days. The first two months of the quarter both have 30 days and the last month of the quarter has 31; which acts as a reminder that the quarter has ended. 

You will also notice that at the bottom right hand corner of this table there is one Bonus Day which isn't part of any month or week. Functionally it would be part of December but as nothing ever gets done on New Year's Eve, then this is almost moot. All the rules for leap years would be applied by adding another extra-calculic Bonus Day after that

Since this solution solves the problem of weeks not matching up with the year, and since it also has the bonus of creating four identical quarters, then this would be a perpetual calendar. 

For those critics who would say that this mucks with the nature of the abstract fabric of the calendar, may I remind you that calendar reform has happened before and the most visible evidence of this is that the October Revolution in Russia is celebrated in November because the Russian Orthodox Church was even later to the party than the Church Of England, and 14 days were added to the calendar and not 11.

Granted that 2/7ths of the population will perpetually win as their birthday always falls on a weekend, while 5/7ths of the population loses because theirs do not, but seeing as this is really a minor concern and people will hold parties on the weekend anyway, although it matters a non-zero amount it is still not critical. As Easter is defined as a Sunday and based upon the moon which is no respecter of the calendar, that does not change. As a bonus, Christmas is now always on a Sunday; which ought to make the church happy. 

The beauty of this calendar is that as it begins on January 1 (or even April, July, or October 1), it can simply be adopted at the beginning of the year (or quarter). We lose no days. As it also retains the extra-calculic corrections and uncorrections, it never has to be adjusted once adopted. 

As it is, the accounting package that I use has a 20 month calendar with 40 days per month. This is so that you can process journal entries without disturbing any monthly figures. 40/20/2024 is already a valid date; which means that the idea of February 30th, or May 35th is not a foreign thing to me.

Today should be February 30th. The current calendar is bonkers hat-stand crazy making.