Update 2024-03-27: Greatly expanded the "Samples" page and renamed it to "Glossary".
Update 2024-04-04: Added 5 million mid-2011 posts from the k47 post dump. Browse (mostly) them here.
Update 2024-04-07: Added ~400 October 2003 posts from 4chan.net. Browse them here.

Welcome to Oldfriend Archive, the official 4chan archive of the NSA. Hosting ~170M text-only 2003-2014 4chan posts (mostly 2006-2008).
[9 / 0 / ?]

[1378042819] Why's our calendar so complicated?

No.25522 View ViewReplyOriginalReport
Seriously? How could someone make one of the most used things in anyone's life so much convoluted? Calendars! Gregorian calendar specifically, is one thing that pisses me off everytime I see at it! Come on, organizing time and scheduling events are such important things; you can't mess up with that and make it exceptionally disorganized! It's after all dividing 365 days (sometimes 366) in a logical way! So you are telling me we have 12 months (it's proper till this point) and each month may have 30 days or 31! And a month has 28 or 29! I mean, what the fuck? How did you come up with those numbers? 30 - okay. But for extra days you just made it 31? Seriously? And that without any rule as to who should have 30 and who gets 31! And well, how the hell did this February end up with only 28? Such a bad way of dividing days! And have you ever wondered about their names? "January", "February"!! Damn, does anyone in the English world know what it means?! I know, I know. They have some old Latin and Roman shit in their etymology. But my point is, the calendars haven't evolved! I wonder what happened to Americans in this regard. They've everything of their own - their own measurement system, their own games then why didn't they come up with their own version of Gregorian Calendar - 'The Modern American Almanac' where they removed these complicated and ridiculous names and replaced them with some sane, easy-to-remember names. "March". What the Romans had a long march during that time? And 'May'. Guys it's so 'certain' that every damn year this 'May' comes and it's not that it may come! Going further, Octo means eight and Sept means seven. Right? Wrong - because October is the 10th month and september is 9th. How's that for a fuck! Anyway,chuck it. Let's move on. Now a month has typically 4 weeks of 7 days each! Stupidity again! "7" days a week! damn it, 7 doesn't divide any popular round number which makes it harder to exactly divide the month into weeks. 31 days a month - 7 days a week - weirdest numbers I've ever seen working in a combination. Don't you think it could have been better organized? How often have you asked questions like 'hey, what day is August 15th this year?', 'how many weekends in this month', 'what day is that function, yeah the May 1st one?' etc etc? Why? Because the days (and hence weeks) don't start properly at the beginning of a month (and hence the year).

Let's see if there's an easier way of organizing days.

I'm gonna first divide 365 as 360 + 5. (I know... I know... I haven't ignored the leap year. I'll consider it soon).

I'll divide this 360 part into 12 months of 30 days each. Plain as fuck, no hassles. every month gets 30 days, equality at its best. I really want to change the names of these months but let's keep them for now. and then this extra 5 days is "Holiday time" of total shutdown after these 12 months! So, you get 5 days (and  6 days once in four years) after every year to just chill out and enjoy! This doesn't belong to any month, it's just 'Shutdown time', much like Christmas time. We can actually make the beginning of this 'Holiday time' coincide with Christmas by starting this "Hassle-free Calendar" on January 3rd. So, January 3rd becomes the first day of our calendar year and of the first month of 30 day. Going further, I would really like to fix this 'week' stuff. We now have a flat '30 day' months. Why not divide these into 5 weeks of 6 days each? This way, every first day of every month starts with the same day. Every year, August 3rd (in our calendar) is on the same day. Your birthday falls on the same day every single year (is that boring?? ;-) well, probably, but it's okay). There's no question of getting confused between days and dates. January 18th in our new calendar will always be the last day of the third week of the first month, no confusion. And if it's decided that last day of every week is a holiday, then every multiple of 6 is the off-day. Well, I'm not saying everything should be converted now to this new version of the calendar. I'm just wondering how easy it'd have been if this was how we had it initially. I don't see a single advantage in the current version of the Gregorian calendar we are using!