Comments on: Leap Day alternatives

By: kit

kit — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:58:06 +0000

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!

By: Joan

Joan — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:31:30 +0000

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.

By: Miramon

Miramon — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 02:07:44 +0000

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.

By: Seth

Seth — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:46:08 +0000

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.)

By: Skott Klebe

Skott Klebe — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:46:59 +0000

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.

By: Maggie Brinkley

Maggie Brinkley — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:42:41 +0000

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…

By: Yeff (Jeff Soesbe)

Yeff (Jeff Soesbe) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:05:00 +0000

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

By: Kimberly

Kimberly — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:40:15 +0000

It needs to be that way for the pneumonic to work. 30 days hath September, …

By: Doctroid

Doctroid — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 19:54:29 +0000

I once came up with a proposal to make February three days SHORTER every four years:

http://www.richholmes.net/doctroid/best/dst.html

By: Shawn

Shawn — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:29:50 +0000

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.