Re: Why not 13 months? (Was La Systeme Metrique)
Stephen Souter (souters@mackie.edfac.usyd.edu.au)
8 Aug 1995 09:42:24 GMT
In article <3vv281$54d@bigbird.csd.sc.edu>, aa101291@dasher.csd.sc.edu
(Benton StJ Bonney) wrote:
> I read some a suggestion some years ago that we adopt a calendar with 13
> months of four weeks each. 4x7x13=364. Add a new years day with the
> appropriate leap day/year correction and you have a system where the the
> nth day of the mth month is the same day of the week every year (if the
> 365th day is at the end of the year).
Except that for such an idea to work, you need to impose a kludge: the
365th day (not to the mention the 366th during leap years) would not be
able to belong to *any* week otherwise it would throw the entire
synchronisation askew!
As if those poor souls born on February 29 don't have enough grief
already! Only one birthday every four years. Now we'd be taking their
"rightful" place in the week away from them, instead tacking them onto the
year as some kind of left-over afterthoughts. :)
(BTW, at least one such calendar has already been devised, albeit for
literary purposes: by Tolkien for _The Lord of the Rings_. If memory
serves, his solution for the excess days was to not only deprive them of a
place in any week, but to put them outside the months as well.)
--
Stephen Souter
souters@mackie.edfac.usyd.edu.au
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