Leap year flight of fancy: how to remake the calendar with no leap day
Two professors, an astrophysicist and an economist, propose junking the leap day dependent Gregorian Calendar for a 364-day (52-week) year and a leap week every once in a while.
Should this year's "leap day" be the last one? Yes, say some scholars who have analyzed the complexity of the Gregorian Calendar on which humanity now relies.
That calendar includes the familiar 12 months of varying lengths, with February punctuated by an extra "leap day" every four years (except, to be precise, in years that end in 00, which are governed by slightly more complicated rules).
Debate about calendars are, if not as old as time, hardly new. George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak Co., once complained that the Gregorian calendar created a host of challenges.
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"Holidays occur on various days of the week, changing each year," Mr. Eastman wrote in 1926. That wasn't just a nuisance, he said. It also meant added costs for businesses trying to arrange their schedules.
Enter two professors at Johns Hopkins University, one an astrophysicist and one an economist, with what they think is a better way for us to manage our time.
Richard Conn Henry and Steve Hanke argue that 2012 should be the start of a new calendar, in which Christmas always falls on a Sunday and lots of other things also get simpler, from planning a birthday party to calculating interest on a mortgage.
