On this fine February 29th, I find myself wondering what about February 29th is so much better than all the alternatives? We could have a December 32nd. Kids could have an extra day of summer vacation, once every four years (although knowing schools today they’d just make them go back a day earlier). We could have 24 extra hours of sleep, on 24 selected Sundays, making those Mondays a little easier on the working stiff. We could have a special day number 0 — now that would be fun.
February is already special because it is so short, we should distribute something cool to the other months so they don’t feel left out.
12 responses so far ↓
1 Skwid // Feb 29, 2008 at 11:52 am
Oh, man, I am so down with the extra hour every couple of Sundays idea…
2 Corrvin // Feb 29, 2008 at 11:54 am
Sure, except my extra hour of sleep would be at noon, please. I’m tired of everyone else showing up rested on Monday morning while I’ve pulled an extra unpaid hour the night before.
That said, what about just adding a few minutes (say, 3 and a bit) to every single day? Sure, by summertime we’d be getting up in the evening and going to work all night, but it’d be much cooler then anyways!
3 Shawn // Feb 29, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Let’s spread it even more fairly. It works out to 6 hours a year, or 360 minutes - make every day except for five of them a year one minute longer!
At exactly midnight (except on the last day of the “short” months) the clocks pause for one minute. Simple!
This might get the clocks out of sync with the earth’s rotation, but that’s a small price to pay for cleaning up the calendar. They’d be back in sync once every four years, after all.
4 Doctroid // Feb 29, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I once came up with a proposal to make February three days SHORTER every four years:
http://www.richholmes.net/doctroid/best/dst.html
5 Kimberly // Feb 29, 2008 at 2:40 pm
It needs to be that way for the pneumonic to work. 30 days hath September, …
6 Yeff (Jeff Soesbe) // Feb 29, 2008 at 3:05 pm
I like the “Zero Day” concept. Once every four years, you have a day removed from time. It’s not a day of the week, there’s no work, no school. It just is - a day.
I seem to think some cultures did just that. Can’t remember who, though…
- yeff
7 Maggie Brinkley // Feb 29, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Feb 29th is traditionally the day when a woman can propose to a man. Guess what my daughter did today? Yes, my baby is now engaged…
A total day off for mothers every four years should be instituted. There should be a law that mothers must lie on the sofa all day, reading good books :) One’s family should be employed in peeling grapes and topping-up one’s glass. Not that I’m biased, of course…
8 Skott Klebe // Feb 29, 2008 at 4:46 pm
The way it’s handled today is close to the worst case: the math for day-of-week calculations is absurd and the extra day comes in February (who wanted that?). The extra day should obviously come at the end of the year, and ideally you’d give it its own optional month, or not put it onto the calendar at all.
9 Seth // Feb 29, 2008 at 5:46 pm
For religious reasons, losing a day from the week won’t work (the Sabbath is every seventh day, and religious calendars won’t pay attention to changes).
Calendar arithmetic is not that hard; there’s a trick for calculating Day Numbers that’s really efficient (start the year in March, there’s a magic multiplier that gets you the number of days per n months, good all year; and February 29th doesn’t break anything, either.)
10 Miramon // Feb 29, 2008 at 8:07 pm
I like 12 x 30 day months, with a 5-6 day intercalenary holiday that gets the leap year for an extra day of revelry every 4 years.
Ha ha, stupid MS dictionary doesn’t know intercalenary.
11 Joan // Feb 29, 2008 at 9:31 pm
We could just mess with everyone’s computers by adding an extra hour to the 1st 24 days in feb? It would also be fun for people with multiple VCR’s.
12 kit // Feb 29, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Miramon@9: A big “timeless” (or at least calendarless) party at the end of every year, with an even bigger one every four years? Count me in!
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