Does the Calendar Need a Complete Overhaul?

With a new model, your birthday will fall on the same day every year. We hope you like Tuesdays.

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Is a bit of simplicity and streamlining really worth the effort to overhaul our entire calendar system? While new calendars get proposed from time to time, an idea tossed out by two Johns Hopkins University thinkers figure they have the best solution yet: A calendar that ties a date to a day of the week from year to year.

To make the change, astrophysicist Richard Conn Henry and applied economist Steve Hanke tinkered a bit with the days in each month to create four equal 91-day quarters, all while keeping the seven-day week, a concept that has made past calendar propositions downright unacceptable.

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The benefits are both social and economical, the two say. Because nothing changes year to year, calculations for interest rates gets simple (we are taking their word for it on this one) and the pesky day count conventions aren’t needed any longer, for example. Plus, by keeping the seven-day week, the social aspect of the calendar wouldn’t get blown away.

Of course, making a change offers a bit of uncomfortable conversations, such as when your birthday now is if you were born on a day that no longer exists (try explaining that one to your 6-year-old). And all that history stuff? That might need a bit of explaining in the classroom since a few months will shift from 31 days to 30 (but kudos to February for hanging with the big boys now).

While the classroom teachers explain the new history lessons, maybe they can come up with a new rhyme to remember which months have 30 or 31 days. There’s certainly room for change there.

MORE: When Christmas Doesn’t Fall on Dec. 25