If you are reading this you may be wondering to yourself: “Wait a minute, I thought that Blog Wyrm goes live with new content on the last Friday of the month. What is going on with a new issue coming out on March 1?” Well, the answer is quite simple – we need to have a better calendar.
February is by far the single worst month of the year in terms of scheduling. And this year, the last Friday of that month was on the 22nd. That date was ridiculously early and so we opted to put out “this month’s” issue “next month”. Of course, “next month’s” issue will be out on March 29.
Now back to the better calendar idea. Over the years (forgive the pun), there have been many suggestions on how to make the calendar better.
For example, the International Fixed Calendar proposes a 13-month year, with each month consisting of 28 days. Each week begins on a Sunday and ends on a Saturday. Every month has a Wednesday the 11th and a Friday the 13th and so on. The one remaining year belongs to itself and is a holiday for all. George Eastman used this calendar, by his account, to great success in running Kodak (an image of the Kodak factory calendar can be found here). Leap years would work as always with the additional day doubling the holiday for all. In such a calendar, Blog Wyrm would come out 13 times a year and always, without the slightest variation, on Friday the 27th, a fine number and a perfect cube to boot.
Alternatively, we could use the Shire calendar as described in J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. There were twelve months in a year, by Shire reckoning, each with 30 days. The remaining 5 days were a holiday for all – Hobbits love holidays, and feasts, and gifts. While it is true that the final Friday of the month would shift around, at least there would be no turn-around time as short as what happened this year.
Now onto the posts.
Can computer math be art? Can inanimate hunks of glass, plastic, and metal produce natural, organic shapes? Can we have fun while answering all these questions? Join this month’s Aristotle To Digital as it answers these and many other questions courtesy of the chaos game.
We all have a feeling that health care could be better. Maybe the costs could be lower or more people could be covered. We all sympathize with those who don’t have the same perks we do. But is a single-payer solution really going to solve anything. Common Cents argues that there are concrete things we can get behind to improve health care outcomes without embracing Medicare-for-all.
Sometimes a special something comes along that makes you pursue things a little bit differently. Those too-good-to-pass-up moments that demand your attention. Well, Under The Hood has discovered one such moment and revisits an old subject, the stress tensor, with a shiny, new approach that is too good not to see print.
Enjoy!