Find out what you were doing wrong previously. And the time after that.

A while back there was a post where someone referenced the Digital Time that was proposed by the French Revolution. Well, arguments about our calendar are really useless.

Or are they.

Your calendar: The changeover of the day occurs at midnight.  The changeover of the year occurs on 1 January.

Status: WRONG

This one is similar to the seasons example.  Looking at the daylight as a sine wave (negative light? work with me here), starting the day at the peak of the negative is the same as starting winter on the day of the Winter Solstice.  Again, looking at history, day used to begin at daybreak.1 

Make 6AM the start of the new day.  While we’re at it, start the hour count at that time.  Noon is 0600, nominal sunset it 1200 and midnight (“middle of the night”) is 1800.  Suddenly makes much more sense.

 

Oh, yeah. Notice the 24-hour clock notation in there? Who decided that we need to reset the clock again in the middle of the day? Why are there two 8 o’clocks every day? If you’re going to have 24 hours in a day, count them all, dammit!2

By the same token, the year starts at perihelion? Our time, human time, is based upon the days of the season rather than some arbitrary orbital milestone. Again, looking at the previous post’s graph (reproduced at right), the logical start of the new year is the Spring Equinox, the positive-going zero-crossing. Interesting that this date was used as the start of a new Presidential term in the early days of the Republic. The Romans (among others) used that date to start their year.

So again, there is a historical precedent.3

I can’t help but to be an engineer whose job is to “fix things.” Here’s a fix for something that you never knew was broken.

Now get off my lawn.

1. I think the Romans used this. No citiation.
2. Of all of my crackpot ideas, this would be the easiest to implement and the most certain to get the most screams; i.e.“Military Time!!” (the elimination of the BC/AD would be a very close second)
3. Well, I’ve gotten this far without a citation so you’re on your own.