A new plan woud untangle the calendar, once and for all

Let us think about the schedule of days.

This does seem a good time of year for it. While its history has been roundly considered and is colorful and sometimes amusing, what I have in mind is the future of the calendar.

It drew my attention last week when Johns Hopkins University issued a news release: "Time for a Change? Johns Hopkins Scholars Say Calendar Needs Serious Overhaul" while last Friday the island nation of Samoa skipped a day entirely so that its date will be the same as that of nearby New Zealand.

Scholars at Johns Hopkins have proposed an overhaul of the calendar, the first since the 18th century (not counting that absurdity promulgated by the unfettered loons of the French Revolution). The new schedule of days and months has been cooked up by an astrophysicist named Richard Conn Henry and an economist (I know, but they're not all nutty) called Steve H. Hanke.

Here's how it would work: The new year would begin on Sunday every year. The calendar would be unchanged from year to year.

The reason the calendar varies is that a year is not exactly 365 days long. It is, in fact, 365.2422 days long. Because of the spare quarter day every year, we have leap years every four years, when an extra day – February 29 – is inserted. (And here you thought that because U.S. presidential elections are held in leap years, it was probably short for "leap of faith year.")

Under the Henry-Hanke calendar, September would grow to 31 days, as would June. March and December would remain 31 days long. All the other months would be 30 days in duration.

Now. You may have noticed that this accounts for only 364 days. (All right, you didn't notice. I did the arithmetic so you don't have to.) That does not fix the leap year problem. It makes it worse by a whole day. Ah, but they've taken this into account.

Every five or six years, an extra week would be added at the end of the year. This would be a real boon to employees whose offices are closed from Christmas to New Year. But there would be no leap years anymore.

Ah, it doesn't stop there. Hanke and Henry propose eliminating time zones, too. By their lights, the new day would begin around the world at the same time. This does mean that midnight here would be what is now 7 p.m. It does not, of course, mean that we'd all be on the same schedule – it's just that instead of going to work at 9 a.m., we'd go to work at 2 p.m. (or, actually, 14:00 – I presume that this would be a 24-hour clock.)

This probably seems crazy, but it's not. It would simplify many, many things.

Imagine no longer having to figure out when school starts. Or upon what day of the week your birthday falls. Imagine being able to use that same calendar until you are tired of it, rather than until the year ends. It also has financial effects in determining such things as quarterly calculation of interest.

It really does make sense.

Adoption of the new calendar would not happen without some bumps. People born on the 31st of months that would now have only 30 days might be a little miffed when their birthdays disappeared, for instance. If there were a switch to daylight saving time, it would mean changing the schedule, not the clock, and some people would find that confusing. But these things could be worked through, and certainly they're less complicated than our current system.

My birthday would forever be on Tuesday. The Fourth of July would always be on Wednesday. Thanksgiving would always be – oops, bad example.

The developers of the new calendar say it began on Jan. 1 of this year, 2012. What this means, exactly, is not clear beyond difficulty in scheduling appointments with Henry and Hanke. They have called for universal adoption of the new calendar on Jan. 1, 2017. Do you see any problems with the idea of rolling out a new calendar and daily hour schedule gradually over five years? I very much hope that they are talking about a five-year discussion leading up to adoption, rather than it getting employed piecemeal over that time, else the period from 2012 to 2017 will be known to history as "The Age of Confusion," and we will be laughed at.

I favor adoption of the new calendar (which is probably as good a kiss of death for it as ever you'll find). And I do this not without some personal sacrifice.

For instance, in 2007 April 1 was on Sunday. I began not long after that to work on an elaborate hoax column for Monday, April 1, 2008. Ah, but 2008 was a leap year – April 1 fell on Tuesday! So I've had to save that column for use on April 1, 2013. If the new calendar were adopted promptly, April 1 will forever be on Sunday. I'll never get to use that column.

My loss, your gain.

Editor's note: Dennis E. Powell was an award-winning reporter in New York and elsewhere before moving to Ohio and becoming a full-time crackpot. His column appears on Mondays. You can reach him at dep@drippingwithirony.com.