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[Starver]

Why would you start the new year when the world is dying?

Why not start it during its symbolic rebirth? (Spring)

Ah, yes. New Year will be on the first of what is now September.

There's more of us in the northern hemishphere than (presumably) you in the south, so I think I could claim to outvote you.

But didn't you mean twenty-first of September?

(If not, then you're back to working with the arbitrary and changing biospheric clock.  There's nothing of objective import on the 1st of September, or the 1st of any month.  Whereas September 21st is my Dad's birthday usually when one or other of the equinoxes occurs, depending on where you are.)

[RedKing]

Why not a "Racial Suicide Calendar" which resets to year zero every time a genocide is commited, war is started, nuclear/chemical/biological superweapon is used, etc.? That would be perfect for the world, methinks; a larger scale version of "X Days since our last accident!" signs at factories and power plants, for the benefit of any xenos excavating ruins a few thousand years from now, to display exactly how much/little (pssh, yeah right) we tended towards self-destruction.

History books would be problematic. "And the 57th Congolese Civil War was a long one, lasting from 0 to 0."

Ah, idea. We have BC and AD (or if you prefer, BCE and CE). Let's have an abbreviation for each major incident (say the Holocaust or any or genocidal activity)

We'd run out of abbreviations relatively quickly I think, depending on what qualified as a "major" incident. Would this be 7 IW? Or 3 TR? Or maybe 0 LR? Or if you limited it to genocides, how *big* of a genocide does it have to be to count? According to The Wiki, there have been at least 22 different campaigns that could be argued as genocides just in the latter half of the 20th century.

[Leafsnail]

What is now June will be renamed to September so as to retain the Fourth of July on its actual date. Other holidays of the like (Not merely holidays that take a date, ones which are synonymous with a particular date. I have no familiarity with any besides the 4th of July) will be checked too.

If you're intending for this to be a worldwide system, I'm pretty sure you'll find something relevant for every month.

If you want to "rationalize" the month names you should surely change all of them (so January can be Unember or whatever, since there's nothing suggesting the number 1 about Janus).  I don't get why you should just change the ordinal ones.  Or if you're so bothered about the months not matching their numbers you could just say the year begins in March.  Then all the ordinal ones fit.

Ah, idea. We have BC and AD (or if you prefer, BCE and CE). Let's have an abbreviation for each major incident (say the Holocaust or any or genocidal activity)

The reason AD works it's because it's based on the year an event happened (...well, almost certainly not the year that event happened, actually, but at least everyone agrees on the wrong year) and everything else can be dated relative to that.  If you started counting from other random dates it would be much harder to see the time difference between dates without conversion tables and the like.

[Blargityblarg]

Sorry, but if you want to make seasons match months, you need to start with "January 1st" on[1] what is currently December 21st.

In Australia (i.e. where Dsarker and I are) seasons start on the first of the month- i only learned that Americans (and the rest of the world?) do it differently a couple of months ago.

[Dsarker]

What is now June will be renamed to September so as to retain the Fourth of July on its actual date. Other holidays of the like (Not merely holidays that take a date, ones which are synonymous with a particular date. I have no familiarity with any besides the 4th of July) will be checked too.

If you're intending for this to be a worldwide system, I'm pretty sure you'll find something relevant for every month.

If you want to "rationalize" the month names you should surely change all of them (so January can be Unember or whatever, since there's nothing suggesting the number 1 about Janus).  I don't get why you should just change the ordinal ones.  Or if you're so bothered about the months not matching their numbers you could just say the year begins in March.  Then all the ordinal ones fit.

Janus means door, start. So indeed it does fit.

Ah, idea. We have BC and AD (or if you prefer, BCE and CE). Let's have an abbreviation for each major incident (say the Holocaust or any or genocidal activity)

The reason AD works it's because it's based on the year an event happened (...well, almost certainly not the year that event happened, actually, but at least everyone agrees on the wrong year) and everything else can be dated relative to that.  If you started counting from other random dates it would be much harder to see the time difference between dates without conversion tables and the like.

Game point.

[ed boy]

Why are months necessary? If you're going to be overhauling the calendar system, then you might as well overhaul the month and week system. After all, it only matters how you divide the days up.

Since there are 365 days in a year, and 365 has prime factors 5 and 73, then I would reckon that the most efficient calendar system would be if the week would be divided into 73 weeks of five days each. Instead of referring to 'the fourth of march', one would refer to 'thursday of 53rd week', or whatever 4th march would correspond to.

[scriver]

Why would you start the new year when the world is dying?

Why not start it during its symbolic rebirth? (Spring)

If that's a response to me, December 21st is (give or take a day) that point.  Days get longer.  It is the first day of winter (by some conventions[1], just like "Midsummer's Day" is the first day of summer, and the point that days start get shorter again) but actually less depressing than autumn, which starts off at the point the daylight hours are effectively shortening the most and ends at the worst point.

The fact that (at least here in the UK) the inertia of climate means that we seem to get more snow in Jan/Feb than in the technically more day-lacking Nov/Dec is a peculiarity.  And of course plants do their own thing, but you can't get a definite and yet non-arbitrary day is anywhere as significant as far as the biological year goes.

Spring has a lot more to do with temperature than daylight.

[SirAaronIII]

I agree with the guy who said Slate, Granite, Felsite, etc.

Kidding of course. Anyway I say dont fix it if it ain't broke. Seems fine to me now. If for some reason it breaks or something, we should deal with it then.

[LordBucket]

If you'll forgive me for posting before reading through the thread...

I would like the time system to be changed. 60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours is awkward.

10 hours per day, 100 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute with new seconds @ .864 the current second, would be much easier to work with.

[scriver]

Go metric time go!

[Dsarker]

If you'll forgive me for posting before reading through the thread...

I would like the time system to be changed. 60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours is awkward.

10 hours per day, 100 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute with new seconds @ .864 the current second, would be much easier to work with.

Yes. That's another great idea! Soon we shall have an orderly world!

[Leafsnail]

I don't get how arbitrarily uprooting the old system and forcing everyone to buy new timing equipment is "orderly".

[Heron TSG]

What, Heisei 23 isn't orderly enough? It makes more sense than 2011 "In the year of [some people's] Lord", as it denotes the start and continuation of a particular event. (That of an emperor's reign.)

[Flying Dice]

Why not a "Racial Suicide Calendar" which resets to year zero every time a genocide is commited, war is started, nuclear/chemical/biological superweapon is used, etc.? That would be perfect for the world, methinks; a larger scale version of "X Days since our last accident!" signs at factories and power plants, for the benefit of any xenos excavating ruins a few thousand years from now, to display exactly how much/little (pssh, yeah right) we tended towards self-destruction.

History books would be problematic. "And the 57th Congolese Civil War was a long one, lasting from 0 to 0."

Ah, idea. We have BC and AD (or if you prefer, BCE and CE). Let's have an abbreviation for each major incident (say the Holocaust or any or genocidal activity)

We'd run out of abbreviations relatively quickly I think, depending on what qualified as a "major" incident. Would this be 7 IW? Or 3 TR? Or maybe 0 LR? Or if you limited it to genocides, how *big* of a genocide does it have to be to count? According to The Wiki, there have been at least 22 different campaigns that could be argued as genocides just in the latter half of the 20th century.

Each new calendar could be identified with a 50 character randomized alphanumeric sequence. Because I like being dickish to future sociology students. By the time we ran out of combinations, either we will all have transcended, or we will all be dead. Or we can just bump it up to 1000 if we run out.

[Dsarker]

Why not a "Racial Suicide Calendar" which resets to year zero every time a genocide is commited, war is started, nuclear/chemical/biological superweapon is used, etc.? That would be perfect for the world, methinks; a larger scale version of "X Days since our last accident!" signs at factories and power plants, for the benefit of any xenos excavating ruins a few thousand years from now, to display exactly how much/little (pssh, yeah right) we tended towards self-destruction.

History books would be problematic. "And the 57th Congolese Civil War was a long one, lasting from 0 to 0."

Ah, idea. We have BC and AD (or if you prefer, BCE and CE). Let's have an abbreviation for each major incident (say the Holocaust or any or genocidal activity)

We'd run out of abbreviations relatively quickly I think, depending on what qualified as a "major" incident. Would this be 7 IW? Or 3 TR? Or maybe 0 LR? Or if you limited it to genocides, how *big* of a genocide does it have to be to count? According to The Wiki, there have been at least 22 different campaigns that could be argued as genocides just in the latter half of the 20th century.

Each new calendar could be identified with a 50 character randomized alphanumeric sequence. Because I like being dickish to future sociology students. By the time we ran out of combinations, either we will all have transcended, or we will all be dead. Or we can just bump it up to 1000 if we run out.

Sociology students deserved to be dicked around.

Lets do it!