One February 29, all the existential questions about the calendar year always resurface.
UK comedian Dave Gorman recently argued against the structure of the calendar month as we know it. In this episode of his show Modern Life is Goodish, he asked the question we all have: why aren't months actually equal in duration, though we consider them equal?
With 2016 being a leap year, not even one of the 12 months this year is precisely four weeks long, though that's how we tend to think of a month in our heads. It's never true except in the case of February, Gorman reminds us, and then, only "three quarters of the time."
His solution: each month should be exactly 28 days, or four weeks long. That would mean 13 months and not 12, since the year has 52 weeks, and that makes much more sense, duh.
Gorman also has a linguistic issue with the calendar. For instance, October which should linguistically refer to the eight month, is actually the tenth in the Gregorian calendar. He removes the Romans from the calendar, performing a "cesarean section" as it were.
In his radically altered calendar, March 1, which is now the first day of the year, is always a Sunday and it will always be so, year on year. The first of every month in fact will always be a Sunday because that's how the math works out.
But even with our rightful 13 months in place, we'll have a day extra. Because a year is 52 weeks and a day long. Gorman's suggestion: introduce an intermission, which is exactly that – not a day of the week, just an intermission. Every fourth year this would extend to a two-day intermission.
He has birthdays and holidays all worked out. Of course, this also means new calendars will no longer be needed every year, so there goes Pirelli.
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