Saudi Arabia adopts the Gregorian calendar | Hacker News Reader

Saudi Arabia adopts the Gregorian calendar

economist.com

255 pointstosh180 comments

Like always, normally reputable news organizations throw all semblance of journalistic principle out of the window when it comes to the Saudis.

The title should read: "Saudi Arabia adopts the Gregorian calendar in paying government employees." According to arabnews.com, this brings the public sector in line with how the private sector is already being paid.

So no, they won't be "running the state" based on the Gregorian calendar. Ramadan will still be observed in the month of Ramadan.

And how is the decision not to award employees 11 extra days' pay because of an administrative change a case of "globalisation favouring rulers at the expense of the ruled?" Just a year ago, when the king awarded all the employees bonuses, wasn't the Economist accusing him of trying to buy his subjects' loyalty? He can't win, it seems.

As for the Wahhabi clerics complaining of a "slippery slope," who are they? And what is the technical term in Arabic they used that translates to "slippery slope?" To claim that any official cleric in the Kingdom would speak out openly against the ruling family is, frankly, ridiculous.

All of this article is utter stupidity, as if the author read half of a headline in an Arab paper and extrapolated it to mean the conversion of the entire country to Christianity.

You raise some good points about how the article portrays the issue. Here[1] is another reputable source with some more information that confirms some of what you say.

You also got me thinking about what "slippery slope" would be in Arabic. It could be directly translated but the idiom would lose its meaning. Regardless, I think the point the article's author is trying to convey is that religious conservatives are wary of the slow creep of Western concepts into their society.

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-ar...

> You also got me thinking about what "slippery slope" would be in Arabic.

That's a good question. I wonder what common idioms have almost exact duplicated in other cultures and languages. Theoretically, "slippery slope" could have a counterpart of the exact same terms, or something similar like "shifting dune". It seems unlikely it would be unchanged, but it also seems like a good candidate for an idiom that may have a fairly direct equivalent.

independent is a reputable source? It has since long fallen to a near tabloid-level of quality.

> You also got me thinking about what "slippery slope" would be in Arabic. It could be directly translated but the idiom would lose its meaning. Regardless, I think the point the article's author is trying to convey is that religious conservatives are wary of the slow creep of Western concepts into their society.

I went to Slippery Slope article on English Wikipedia and then clicked on Arabic. This is a way I often use with languages I regularly use (such as English, Dutch, German, and Spanish) in order to figure what something means in one of those languages. I wanted to describe this process because I believe it can help others in a similar situation. An alternative is Wiktionary, but I find it working less good.

So, the Arabic Wikipedia entry for Slippery Slope is [1]. Using Google Translate, I ended up with it meaning also "Nose of the Camel". This is apparently an Arabian tale.

Quoting: The Camel's Nose In The Tent.

One cold night, as an Arab sat in his tent, a camel gently thrust his nose under the flap and looked in. "Master," he said, "let me put my nose in your tent. It's cold and stormy out here." "By all means," said the Arab, "and welcome" as he turned over and went to sleep.

A little later the Arab awoke to find that the camel had not only put his nose in the tent but his head and neck also. The camel, who had been turning his head from side to side, said, "I will take but little more room if I place my forelegs within the tent. It is difficult standing out here." "Yes, you may put your forelegs within," said the Arab, moving a little to make room, for the tent was small.

Finally, the camel said, "May I not stand wholly inside? I keep the tent open by standing as I do." "Yes, yes," said the Arab. "Come wholly inside. Perhaps it will be better for both of us." So the camel crowded in. The Arab with difficulty in the crowded quarters again went to sleep. When he woke up the next time, he was outside in the cold and the camel had the tent to himself.

Disclaimer: I know practically nothing about the Arabic language.

[1] https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D9%86%D8%AD%D8%AF%D8%B1...

[2] http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1800611/posts

Good to see that the Free Republic is as rabid as I remember it being.

this is why i come to HN

Agreed. I was there in the 80s/90s and everything operated on western time standards. Calenders arent magic runes. People take constitutional language to seriously. Anyone who thinks this makes any real difference probably also thinks the RCMP literally work for the queen of England or that India isnt actually called India.

Oh no! You see, they work for the queen of CANADA.

Technically, the Crown, which is personified by but not limited to the Queen.

That is actualky a valid concept. Many commwealth nations have slightly different rules for sucession. It would be very possible for Canada and England to recognize different queens. The queen recently sent an amassador to Austrailia specifically to ensure that charles be recognized there after her death.

Haha, interesting!

Cheers mate! As someone who always lived in the "Western World", it's very refreshing to see some reasonable thought about facts and context concerning a "non NATO" country, even if it's rather in the comments instead of the article itself.

> And what is the technical term in Arabic they used that translates to "slippery slope?"

Does Arabic really have no phrase like "house of cards", "fell like dominoes" or "give them an inch and they'll take a mile"?

Great question. I know very little to nothing about Arabic but I would love a more detailed explanation than "It's an Arabic thing, you wouldn't understand".

There isn't a specific idiom that I'm aware of, I'm pretty sure the Economist were just summing up a perceived sentiment with the 'slippery-slope' comment. In Arabic, that sentiment would most likely be expressed in the form of saying that it's laying the groundwork for further cultural drift or something similar, without a particular idiomatic shorthand.

Thing is, even though there's probably phrases like that in regional dialects, they wouldn't be quoted since the majority of Arabic media (and therefore anyone preparing to be quoted by a media outlet) is mostly in Modern Standard Arabic.

> "give them an inch and they'll take a mile"

"Camel's nose in the tent"

Though I don't know if that's actual an Arabism or if I just heard it in some Western film.

In arabic "slippery slope" translates to a similar idiom: انزلاق خطير

Which means literally "a dangerous slip".

There are other close idioms but I can't recall any right now.

Newspapers in Arabic are talking about economic reasons and implications. About $4 billion saved for the Kingdom and employees losing the equivalent of half a month of salary annually.

Some sources talk about the birth of the Hijri calendar (Abu Musa, a Government official, complaining to Omar, the Caliph, that they receive instructions dated by month and they don't know if it's this year's or last year's. This prompted the Caliph to introduce the calendar retroactively at 17 Hijri, or 638 AD).

As for the slippery slope.. It's roughly طريق الهاوية. Which means "the road to the fall/cliff" (it's more scary in Arabic. It makes me think of "Rebel without a Cause" "Chicken Game" scene).

>And what is the technical term in Arabic they used that translates to "slippery slope?"

I think the closest I can do is that the logic of a slippery slope according to clerics comes from this:

شر الامور محدثاتها، و كل محدثة بدعة، و كل بدعة ضلالة، و كل ضلالة في النار.

The evilest of things are X, and each X is Y, and each Y is Z, and each Z is in Hell.

X: according to clerics, is heresy, something different and new from what the Prophet did to get closer to God (this is important, I'll explain why later).

Y: fad/heresy..

Z: misguidance

So "the evilest of things are heresies, and each heresy is a fad, and each fad is a misguidance, and each misguidance is in Hell".

Why is the definition of heresy important? Because clerics define it as innovation in the way of worship while radicals define it as innovation itself (arbitrarily decided to suit whatever logic they have. Example: using a toothbrush is heresy, but rolling in an SUV is not)...

Nobody said that Ramadan was moving-- not sure how you got that from the article. Paying government employees using the Gregorian calendar, and scheduling things such as meetings and events using the gregorian calendar, sure seems a lot like "running the state using the Gregorian calendar." If you feel that the characterization is not accurate, you should explain why.

The decision to use the Gregorian calendar seems to be mostly based on the desire to save money. A few other news reports also mention that it is connected with the austerity drive and the desire to slash the public payroll. If I were a public servant, I would probably be upset.

It's interesting to note that the Gregorian dates in the Saudi government were banned only in 2012: http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/saudi-arabia-bans...

I'm going to take this opportunity to shamelessly self-promote my own attempt at creating an entirely new calendar system, inspired by Paul Graham's Maker/Manager Schedule essay.

It's called Maker Time, and the current Maker Time is 35. Here is it's pitch:

Your clock has it backwards.

* Time is infinite, but our time on earth is not.

* Clocks should count down, not up.

* Time keeping should be based on meaningful celestial events like the year (one earth rotation around the sun) and the day (one rotation of the earth)

* Each unit of time should be based on a viable period of work for makers.

* Maker Time is reset on January 1st each year. The year is divided into 1095 blocks (1098 in leap year). Every 8 hours the count decreases by one.

Here is a browser-based Maker Time clock:

http://willholloway.net/makertime.html

Here is a github repo for a simple Maker Time API Flask server and the algo for calculating the current Maker Time if one wants to implement it. I still hope it catches on.

https://github.com/willholloway/makertime

Interesting idea. Do people not find stressful a clock counting down on them constantly? I've always been stressed out by the idea of time "running out" in various contexts (games, tests in school). So much so that it hinders my performance.

The rundown is very slow and gentle, and then it resets on January 1st. Right now there are 35 eight hour blocks of time left in 2016.

It's a numerical representation of the time left in a year. I like to think of it as 35 chances to make meaningful progress on important things in 2016.

I might experiment with this. Thanks for sharing.

Not as much if there's no real impact other than that it's going to be reset.

Watching Maker Clock count down from 1000 each year of the rest of my life would not be too stressful. I will grant that a clock that counted down from 50,000 or so to zero on my expected deathbed would not be as zen-like as the Maker Clock purports to be. Just calculating that number is zen-like, but a daily reminder would not be.

A warning: if you're stressed out by the idea of time running out, don't click this link. But I found this graphic description of the years, months, and weeks in a typical life to be surprising: http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html I don't typically think of a year or a week as lasting as long as it appears to in those images.

I will never see a waitbutwhy link and not click on it. Thanks, this is actually fascinating.

What would we gain by switching?

The soothing zen feeling of not being on anyone else's schedule :)

Maker Time is for people who build things, and building things requires decently long periods of focused time without interruptions.

But it also reminds you that time is passing and that you can not waste it.

It's the perfect clock for startup founders on the hack on product, eat, exercise and sleep lifestyle in an early stage company.

Can't I just hide my clock, then?

It's also weird if you start hacking at 2, and wake up the next day and start hacking at 1095.

Or 1098.

Yes but it is helpful for tax purposes! The clock switching from 2 to 1095 means that:

You have survived another rotation of the earth around the sun

and

It's time to close last years books and open a new set and deduct your business expenses against the new

But... going from 2016 to 2017 does the same thing.

Nobody wants to be a slave to someone else's schedule, but let's not elevate "makers" above all the other valuable and productive human roles.

This sounds like a lot of headache for very little gain. Now you have two calendars to keep track of (because let's be real, this won't gain widespread adoption) that gives you less information than the Gregorian calendar.

Clocks count upwards precisely because time is infinite. When you count down, you're counting towards a finite point. The Gregorian calendar is already based on meaningful celestial events - a complete orbit around the sun and a complete earth rotation. And just like Maker Time, it resets every year.

Yes, you get this feeling of workable time periods, but we already get this with clocks. And with Maker Time, your periods are pre-defined: 12-8, 8-16, 8-24. if you work from 9-17 (like many people), Maker Time already encroaches upon two different periods.

Lastly, you can't realistically schedule anything, because an 8 hour window is too large to coordinate. It's a good attempt. I'm not just commenting to crap all over Maker Time, but it solves a non-problem.

Everything you say is true. But it is also true that I like it and find value in it. I like to see a numerical representation of how much time is left in a year, as a year is an important tax construct.

If you look into the French Revolutions attempts to fit the 24 hour day and the 12 month year into units of 10, decimal time, they were much more unwieldy.

I think you forgot to include the link to the repo, but I'm still a little confused - so, repo time counts Years up, but Blocks down? And if so, why do years start in 1981? And if it's a calendar, why break it up by a finer increment than a day?

I edited post to include link.

The count starts at 1095, because there are 1095 eight hour blocks of time in a normal year, there are 1098 in a leap year.

The idea is to destroy the calendar, and destroy the clock! Replace them with a slow gentle reminder of the passage of time, instead of this fine-grained instrument we use now.

I find that the main thing exact time keeping does in my life is to create scheduled events that I don't want to go to! Meetings and pointless social events, I would rather be hacking or building in a zen like flow state.

Of course to really achieve that dream I would have to be single and shun my family, and then I would get lonely :)

But I still like Maker Time. It is a comfort.

It all started as an exercise in exploring Decimal Time. But Decimal time has all kinds of problems and all implementations are really clunky. And the reason is that the solar and lunar calendars don't sync nicely. I found what I think is a pretty elegant compromise, by breaking the day into 8 hour time periods.

Decimal time was attempted in the early Americas and most famously during the French Revolution. A form of Decimal time was at one point the official calendar of France.

You'd also have to shun dentist appointments.

It's an interesting idea, but I think it's impractical for 99.999% of people.

In my ideal world things like dentist visits would be completely asynchronous.

Until then, Maker Time will have to live in peaceful coexistence with the Gregorian Calendar.

Edit:

I think it's important to point out that not all cultures share the same sense of time. While my ideas here are heretical in America, or Germany, the spirit of what I am getting at would be very familiar to a Spaniard, an Italian or a Jamaican.

Here is an interesting article on it:

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-different-cultures-unders...

> In my ideal world things like dentist visits would be completely asynchronous.

I have no idea what this means.

I would guess: Every non-appointed visit is successful.

What is an asynchronous dental visit?

Think NYC Subway vs Amtrak. For Amtrak ( and dentist) you need a reservation.

For Subways we just let queues fill up and then empty them.

I believe that dental cleanings could work like this as well. People who are around the 6 month mark for cleaning could be notified when wait times are low and could just come in.

I know its quixotic.

> In my ideal world things like dentist visits would be completely asynchronous

How does this look from the perspective of a dentist?

If a dentist could balance the load reasonably well, it would look very good.

Missed appointments are a big problem for dentists and doctors. A missed appointment means paying staff and not receiving income.

I always end up waiting at the doctor or dentist anyway, even if I show up on time for an appointment. I would rather there were no appointments for routine things, and that we just found some reasonable way to balance load.

I get what you are saying.

1. Time should decrease to indicate the importance of it.

2. One should sync with attention span rather than something arbitrary like hour.

The idea is that, the number should not be so large (like min) that it becomes a spam. It should not be so low either that you lose track of time. Sync-ing is expensive.

I like this clock: (D, W, M, Y) measures 3hr chunck left in the (Day, Week, Month, Year).

> In my ideal world things like dentist visits would be completely asynchronous.

For stuff like this there is no need to keep track of time at all. Just set a reminder.

> You'd also have to shun dentist appointments.

Or maybe consider going to the dentist, the physician and the priest all on the same day, and treat it as an event?

Sounds like a pretty pleasant way to live to me.

If a pleasant day involves my doc, a dentists and a priest I'll take a bad day instead please.

Makertime is 34 for me (10 minutes later). Are there timezones?

Are there equivalent of months/minutes/seconds?

How do you organise events around it? The event starts at 34.5?

The browser clock I wrote is written in Javascript and runs off the local time in your browser.

I have not implemented those. The idea was to do the opposite of the granular nature of our current time keeping paradigm. To smooth out time, and think of it in larger blocks, the kinds of blocks where hard problems can really be tackled in.

Its precisely not for organizing events, although you could. For example, 35 corresponds to the 8-4PM period on December 20th of every non leap year.

Its time keeping for a small team that just got seed funding as in hardcore build mode, or for people living like Thoreau at Walden.

what do you think of the form: blocks left this year / blocks left this week

Awesome! Although the dream was to live completely asynchronously and divorce oneself from the oppresive orthodox time keeping system, I think a reminder of time left in a week is useful, as a work week is a real unit of measurement, the human body/mind can only go for so long without rest.

Maybe blocksyear:blocksweek or blocksweek:blocksyear

I hope people fork Maker Time and innovate on it. So happy I shared this today.

> the dream was to live completely asynchronously and divorce oneself from the oppresive orthodox time keeping system

Words have lost all meaning.

I would love a sci-fi tv show exploring this idea.

Kind of like this movie?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/

Interestingly the Romans had a hybrid system. If my recollection is correct I think they counted up to the Ides of the month then counted down to the beginning of the next month (Kalends?)

I have no idea as to why they worked their calendars that way but apparently they did (and apparently they changed the mechanism from time to time).

If you think about how we often say the time within an hour as "15 past X" and "15 til X," doing the same with days in the month doesn't seem as exotic.

There's that language where they do the 'til' thing with the half-hour.

Yeah, those guys.

Yup, in German "halb sechs" is half past five, whereas in the U.K. "half six" would be half past six. It's quite confusing if you're used to one system and suddenly need to use the other.

Confuses the hell out of my missus and kids (which are all English but speak Norwegian) when I say in sentences in half Norwegian half English. Did he mean "half to" or "half past"...

My missus just shakes her head when I use the phrases such as "fem på halv" as in "five to half" which means 25 minutes past the current hour, or "ti over halv" ("ten past half") as in "twenty to the hour"...

We use the same phrases in German, "fünf vor halb" and "zehn nach halb". It's quite useful, there's a description for every five minute offset to the hour: five/ten to/past the half hour or hour, quarter to/past the hour, and of course the infamous "half to". That's before adding in regional time formats, which mostly require reconstruction of missing words ("viertel sechs" is 5:15, "dreiviertel sechs" (three quarters six") 5:45 in my area)

Regarding your last point there is a nicely named website I'd like to share: http://www.norddeutschelernendieuhrzulesen.de/

That's just a different representation of the day of the year. Basically (365 - dayoftheyear) * 3.

This is a really interesting concept. It's like a big pomodoro calendar.

Interesting, I would divide 24 hrs into 4 parts .. 6x4 = 24. 2 parts mental exercise, 1 part physical, 1 part sleep.

1 day earth, 1 month into lunar, 1 year solar.

I love this! Here's a quick and dirty calendar visualization I put together: https://gist.github.com/jessedhillon/bb8282db6d109f076795a98...

Screenshot: http://imgur.com/a/i7Ru7

Codepen: http://codepen.io/anon/pen/aBMGaB

If you're on a Linux/MacOS/BSD machine, "ncal -p" on the command line gives you a nifty list of when various countries switched to Gregorian.

Interesting factoid: Russia's "October Revolution" actually took place in November in most of the rest of the world!

(edit: I had originally said ncal works on all "POSIX" systems but that turned out to be incorrect)

    $ ncal -p
     AL Albania        1912-11-30      IT Italy          1582-10-04
     AT Austria        1583-10-05      JP Japan          1918-12-18
     AU Australia      1752-09-02      LI Lithuania      1918-02-01
     BE Belgium        1582-12-14      LN Latin          9999-05-31
     BG Bulgaria       1916-03-18      LU Luxembourg     1582-12-14
     CA Canada         1752-09-02      LV Latvia         1918-02-01
     CH Switzerland    1655-02-28      NL Netherlands    1582-12-14
     CN China          1911-12-18      NO Norway         1700-02-18
     CZ Czech Republic 1584-01-06      PL Poland         1582-10-04
     DE Germany        1700-02-18      PT Portugal       1582-10-04
     DK Denmark        1700-02-18      RO Romania        1919-03-31
     ES Spain          1582-10-04      RU Russia         1918-01-31
     FI Finland        1753-02-17      SI Slovenia       1919-03-04
     FR France         1582-12-09      SW Sweden         1753-02-17
     GB United Kingdom 1752-09-02      TR Turkey         1926-12-18
     GR Greece         1924-03-09     *US United States  1752-09-02
     HU Hungary        1587-10-21      YU Yugoslavia     1919-03-04
     IS Iceland        1700-11-16

Sorted:

    1582-10-04 ES Spain
    1582-10-04 IT Italy
    1582-10-04 PL Poland
    1582-10-04 PT Portugal
    1582-12-09 FR France
    1582-12-14 BE Belgium
    1582-12-14 LU Luxembourg
    1582-12-14 NL Netherlands
    1583-10-05 AT Austria
    1584-01-06 CZ Czech Republic
    1587-10-21 HU Hungary
    1655-02-28 CH Switzerland
    1700-02-18 DE Germany
    1700-02-18 DK Denmark
    1700-02-18 NO Norway
    1700-11-16 IS Iceland
    1752-09-02 AU Australia
    1752-09-02 CA Canada
    1752-09-02 GB United Kingdom
    1752-09-02 US United States
    1753-02-17 FI Finland
    1753-02-17 SW Sweden
    1911-12-18 CN China
    1912-11-30 AL Albania
    1916-03-18 BG Bulgaria
    1918-01-31 RU Russia
    1918-02-01 LI Lithuania
    1918-02-01 LV Latvia
    1918-12-18 JP Japan
    1919-03-04 SI Slovenia
    1919-03-04 YU Yugoslavia
    1919-03-31 RO Romania
    1924-03-09 GR Greece
    1926-12-18 TR Turkey
    9999-05-31 LN Latin

That is weird to see Belgium in there in 1582. That's the date the territories covered by present day country switched over ? There must be some interesting edge cases there.

At that time, the current territories of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were part of the Spanish Netherlands. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Netherlands)

Just a thought, but I wonder what that program would say about a place called the United States of America in another 50-75 years

Maybe Mexico and Canada would not be listed, after both have been made part of the new USNA (United States of North America).

Just a thought.

Makes me think of Shadowrun, where you have UCAS, CAS and Aztelan (to name but a few)...

I don't know the history of all Belgian territories, but the Prince-Bishopric of Liège was part of Germany, also known at the time the "Holy Roman Empire".

This is a bit anachronistic, since Canada in 1752 was still part of France, depending on how you see it (Acadia had been in British hands since 1710). I also wonder what political entities are counted for Germany.

New France, technically, which at the time was a region spanning from Cape Breton through to New Orleans.

For Germany it's the year the Protestant states of the Holy Roman Empire adopted it. The Catholic part had adopted it ~120 years before.

Interesting that Slovenia and Yugoslavia are reported as separate countries (with suspiciously close switching dates). Technically, in 1919 neither country existed - what is now Slovenia was a constituent of Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was renamed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929.

I wonder if Slovenia did really not switch before 1919. It was part of the same "country" as what are now Austria and the Czech Republic for hundreds for years before that, who according to the list switched in the 16th century.

It seems unlikely that what is now Slovenia would use a different calendar than the rest of the Habsburg Monarchy/Austrian Empire for such a long time, particularly since there was no subdivision of the Empire that directly corresponds to modern Slovenia.

It's interesting that Lithuania and Poland have different dates too. Poland and Lithuania were a union back in 1582 and the change was made throughout the Commonwealth. It was switched back during Russian occupation in 19th century though. Both in Lithuania and Poland switched to Gregorian again after WWI.

I would put Italy first - I mean, Pope Gregory was born Ugo Boncompagni and he was presumably in Rome when the idea was proposed and enacted.

heh, at the time the Italy we think of didn't really exist.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Italy_17...

This was how it looked as late as 1796...

I figured they were all catholic so they'd have switched at the same time, but it looks like the Republic of Venice, at least, took a while to change to the new calendar, and March 1st "new year" celebrations are still celebrated in some areas:

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_veneto

... and now you know why the minimum DateTime value in SQL Server is Jan 1, 1753. It's the start of the first full year after the United States (colonies) transition to the Gregorian calendars.

(And, BTW, if you do have a need for older dates, it's very troublesome to project the Gregorian calendar back before its adoption-- use the Julian day count method instead. It's goofy but well-adopted and well-supported.)

Imagine all the poor programmers in the alternate universe where the US was similarly stubborn about its calendar system as it is now about its measurement system, with everyone having to convert between Julian & Gregorian on a daily basis.

using java.util.Date O.O

Very strange Australia is listed with 1752 as adoption date. The island was not colonized (by Europeans) until 1788 and did not become a country until 1901.

I think the number was grandfathered in from British Commonwealth.

Why the 5-31 in Latin ?

I tried to find an explanation and only found a fellow seeker of the truth [0] that also couldn't find the answer [1]. He probably tried to search for it more than me.

I found the Apple source code for ncal [2], but no answers there. Also it is funny that Latin line has the month entered in octal (05).

[0] https://hackingtom.blogspot.de/2012/04/date-of-easter-and-nc...

[1] https://xkcd.com/979/

[2] https://opensource.apple.com/source/misc_cmds/misc_cmds-32/n...

Damn, you stole my chance to link to the xkcd comic. Randall does have an xkcd for everything.

Looking at the source [0], the date field is specified as the last date of the Julian calendar used by that locale. Since LN is the Julian calendar and will never change, it's presumably set to the max date value that the calendar.h date type can represent (AD 10,000) minus the day-counting delta between the two calendars over that period.

I look forward to being dead long before the Y10k problem crops up.

[0] https://opensource.apple.com/source/misc_cmds/misc_cmds-32/n...

France might first have switched in 1582, but that ignores the bit in the middle where they decimalised time and reset the year counter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar

We don't talk about that.

(Unless you read stuff such as Karl M.'s 18th Brummaire of Louis Bonaparte, but then you're beyond help.)

    > If you're on a POSIX machine.

Don't you just mean some Linux distros & BSDs? I don't see any indication that ncal is standardized by POSIX: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/idx/utilitie...

According to the Linux manpage it's a FreeBSD command originally introduced in FreeBSD 2.2.6 in 1998: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/2.2.6R/announce.html

My apologies

Is there a command to list countries that are still not on Gregorian?

What is the sort of mayhem we can expect to see on the IT side of this transistion? It seems like there is already a ton of infrastructure in place for them to deal with the dynamic nature of their current calendar, so how do they move to the Gregorian without tripping overthemselves? (Never mind the cultural hurt that will follow, though I'm not sure why they're losing holidays - wouldn't those just follow under different Gregorian days, like Easter does?)

This is probably a display/input change more than anything. There are probably some systems using the lunar calendar internally, but most are probably storing UTC timestamps and converting on the way in and out.

I tested support for the Islamic (Hijri) calendar last year. The tabular variant can be handled at the locale level for the most part. The observed variant, on the other hand, is a bit of pain, as it depends on whether someone claims to have seen the new crescent moon (hilal).

Since a lot of people depend on Saudi observations, I imagine this will be influential. People grumble about Saudi Arabia, but they set the trends. They're kind of like California that way.

I had no idea there was that sort of requirement - I guess I had just assumed it was systemized. It sounds fascinating - are there ever conflicts that need to be resolved?

All the time. You will see Muslims in a same city celebrating same festival a day apart. I think some serious Muslims get into arguments but most people just enjoy an extra day of festivities.

I have long held that there aren't any good solutions to the date/time issue (like naming things and cache invalidation :), other than just find some way to hitch to UTC, but you've shown me a case that just... wow. I can't imagine trying to make a computer system integrate with that style of timekeeping. Is there any hope? Or is it actually the solution to give up and switch to something a bit easier like the Gregorian calendar (or whatever)?

I think most of the Muslims have already given up and follow Gregorian calendar for all purposes but religious holidays. I grew up in Saudi Arabia and I can tell you that no one ever knew current month in Hijri calendar unless it was Ramadan or Muharram (1st month).

> wow. I can't imagine trying to make a computer system integrate with that style of timekeeping.

I don't mean to harsh on you but I feel you have it completely backwards. The computers should do the heavy lifting to adapt to how people want to live, not the other way around. If people want flexible calendars that optimize for strange things let the computers do the heavy lifting for them.

I have been quite sorry when countries have attacked their languages or even alphabets in a misguided way to support computers (consider the letters ll and ch in Spain which were "reformed" just in time for the "improvement" to become irrelevant) when the responsibility lies with the computer.

This is not only a computer issue: cities and suburbs were restructured for automobiles, and even the law changed (the invention of "jaywalking" at the behest of car manufacturers) rather than forcing the machines to adapt to the needs of humans.

Technodeterminism is simply a weakness of will.

You suggest making absolutely no compromises in order to move technology forward?

Not everything we do is without question; we do some pretty dumb stuff. Why not improve our systems where it makes sense to?

Almost, yes. Certainly I advocate that the technology adapt much much much more to humans than the other way around! After all, who decides what "improvement" is?

The cry of "progress!" has resulted in plenty of destruction as well as benefit, not to mention mountains of premature optimization (think of those elevated freeways into cities that created dead zones and had to be dismantled only decades later, or for that matter the alphabet changes I mentioned).

We used to vary the length of the hour; now we have a second that is fixed and we vary the length of the human day in order to match the rotation of the earth. I happen to think that's a good optimization but I have friends who argue vociferously that those leap seconds are a bad idea. Who's right (hint: on all topics I am).

And there are no absolutes: some languages let their spelling fluctuate (e.g. English), some fix it somewhat rigidly (e.g. French) and some change it systolicly to re-align with perceived practice (e.g. German) -- who is right? I speak all three daily and frankly I consider the German practice the worst of the three. But enough people prefer it so why not?

Sure there's tons of stupid practice (e.g anti-vaxxers). But at the end of the day technology (τέχνη) is an art in service of humans, not the other way around. And to tie this back to HN: if a business doesn't think that way it will not survive.

I think you got my feelings upsidedown. Like, I am of the strict opinion that you can't solve these issues via standardization. It's not reasonable, and does miss the point of automation. I also don't like daylight savings time, but not because it makes timekeeping hard, since timekeeping is always a horrid mess even without it (hardly makes it worse).

But it's hardly technodeterminism to say that it's a bloodydamn hard problem to solve, and may not even be solvable (which is why I contend with the 'weakness of will' part). That's sort of my point: if they can't consistently solve the calendar by hand, I can't imagine getting a computer to do it. It would have to be something wildly complex, like a social networking system that bases your calendar on your own web of trust. Someday that may be reasonable someday, but we're probably only barely hitting the point where we can get Lady of Mazes-style masks of the world metadata [0].

So you have deeply complex richness in language and culture, but computers took decades to be smart enough to capture it in it's plodding bin-packing way. Either these cultures could miss out on years of work integrating in with the enormous advantages and progress computers provide, or they can wait and fall behind. I'd choose to be an optimist and hope that we can now bend to the complex needs of these cultures now instead of first resorting to poor approximations. Just as we can now do better than all-caps ASCII, we can try harder to meet the demands of these complex calendar systems. Woe be unto the programmer who has to code those horrific systems, but ... well, that's the job :)

Re automobiles, I think there's a long, complex history at play there. A town I used to live in would have the residents complain often of the train that would cut through at the most inconvenient times of the day, right across a crowded main street. They often complained of the audacity of the train company's scheduling, forgetting that the train predated the town. And, in fact, the town was there because of the train. But it's a mess, and what can you do. The train was there first, but the town's noisier. Hilariously the train company also doesn't care, I think, and frankly you always give right of way to the bigger vehicle (a lesson I learned from working in plants rather than social justice).

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Lady-Mazes-Karl-Schroeder/dp/07653507... I'm a huge fan of this book. While I think it's probably not great literature, it has some well articulated ideas about how technology and society interact. A central conceit of the story is the protagonist lives in an area managed by tech locks. These restrict technology to match the society (it is explained somewhat late in the story, and how it came to exist is pretty interesting). You're not restricted from moving between worlds, so to speak, but it puts at the forefront how much even the subtle demands of technology can shape a society (from music-based tribes to singularity-tech ringworlds).

Adapting culture to technology is one thing. But sometimes, technological issues do point out to needlessly complicated things (which is to say, things that are complicated for no other reason than they always were, but with said complication not necessarily serving some valuable purpose).

Human cultures tend to evolve such unnecessary complications all the time, and technology has historically been a driver to re-evaluate past choices and simplify where appropriate. For example, the printing press caused many states to revisit their alphabets, and get rid of the accumulated cruft that no longer represented meaningfully distinct phonemes.

What is a day, when does it start and end, etc, have various definitions around the world and in history.

https://books.google.com/books/about/Calendrical_Calculation...

Calendrical Calculations is a fascinating intro the different calendar systems, along with computational methods of converting between systems.

This is the same as the early Jewish calendar. The Jewish calendar has adjustments to make it not fully lunar, so that holidays would be during the same season every year, unlike in the simpler Muslim calendar which is fully lunar.

The bible says the new moon must be observed, but the formula for the calendar was calculated in 389CE and that requirement was not observed. I was taught they switched to the calculated calendar right then, but wikipedia says newer sources show the switch was a gradual process that lasted until the 9th century CE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillel_II

TIL that people grumble about California.

> I'm not sure why they're losing holidays - wouldn't those just follow under different Gregorian days, like Easter does?

If you're referring to the "extra 11 days", it doesn't have anything to do with losing holidays -- the solar calendar is simply 11 days longer than the lunar one. So in other words, it's a silly complaint.

Though I suppose if you earned a yearly salary on the lunar calendar and your employer gave you the same salary on the solar calendar, you'd be taking a 3% pay cut.

It actually is losing holidays; if you have the same number of holidays per year, but more total days per year, you are losing holidays.

It sounds like the holidays that rotate around the year are Islamic Holy days though. Even countries that use the Gregorian calendar have holidays based on the Lunar calendar -- Easter for instance.

> A slippery slope, the clergy warn, to forgetting the fasting month of Ramadan altogether; the authorities are rewinding the clock to the jahiliyyah, or pre-Islamic age of ignorance.

This seems to indicate that larger issue is the fact that the current calendar is inextricably tied to Islam, whereas the new calendar is secular at best, or the tool of a different religion at worst.

I would heartily agree that the Gregorian calendar is very much a Christian creation. Named after the Gregorian Monks.

I honestly would prefer something based on a shared solar event. The Crab Nebula and supernova in 1088 ACE would be a good neutral place, as would other events, like Halley's Comet.

It would be secular, and sold to the world as such. But it would put the focus on solar events, in which any number of peoples can use as an omen for their local system of religion and symbolism. Can't win everything here, but neutrality is certainly a laudable goal.

(Edit: wow, quite a bit of -1's, and no real good reason why. I was hoping for a good neutral dialogue, rather than bemoaning current date systems. And also, it may have been Pope Gregory. It still is bound to the Catholic church.)

It was actually named after Pope Gregory XIII, who commissioned it and introduced it 1582[0]. You may be thinking of Gregorian chant, which did arise from the Gregorian Monks.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar (edit: typo caused me to credit the wrong Pope.)

They're called "Gregorian Chants" because they were compiled by the much earlier Pope Gregory I (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_chant)

Thanks for the correction!

"Holidays" referring to days off ("vacation days") here, right?

As opposed to "Holidays" meaning days like Easter/Christmas/New Years/etc.

Either way, actually.

Yes but most of their holidays are still tied to the lunar calendar, so they will still be happening with the same relative frequency and the same number of days between them.

The Independent paints a different picture, where making the year 11 days longer (for the same "annual" pay) is a primary motivation: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-ar...

I find it fascinating that in the footer of the article it reads …

"""

This article appeared in the Middle East and Africa section of the print edition under the headline “The prince’s time machine”

"""

Sounds like the online version of the Economist is starting to play around with less clever titles. To optimize for social media traffic perhaps?

If a clever title does not express the gist of the article, it's a poor title. A clever but unclear title feels like clickbait, one weird trick that prevents me from clicking it.

You may have a clever subtitle when the article is already before the reader's eyes.

I usually read (or listen to) The Economist linearly, so interesting titles make sense when I don't need random access.

But these cute titles don't really work on the internet, where most people stumble upon Economist articles from a different context.

Calendars are all kinds of crazy. But can you imagine the pain we would have if the French Revolutionary decimal clock had actually taken hold?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time

In some countries, a second would be 1/86400 of a day. In others, it would be 1/100000. Awesome potential for insane bugs!

I would hope that new terms would emerge, like dhour, dinute, and decond.

Sounds like the better system, and by making compatible with the metric system (easier to calculate velocity etc.) maybe we'd all be on metric by now?

Well besides the 1/100000 of a day second the most interesting about the Decimal Time (DT) was the calendar system it used, Unix Time works like that, but it's in 1/86400 seconds instead of 1/100000 seconds like the DT or the Julian Day(JD) time system, and the Unix time is in seconds instead of days.

For example to convert from DT to JD you would only need to substract the Epoch in JDs from when the DT was adopted (something like JD-2339410, eg. Current_JD - (JD_epoch - 1792_in_JD) ), to convert from Unix time to JD and you would had to do the same but for Jan 01 1970 and then multiply by 86400 ((JD − 2440587.5) × 86400). Everything would be easier if we used 1/100000 of a day seconds.

I always liked the simplicity of 28 days/month fixed calendar [0] - 13x28 = 364, with delta time as global holidays.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar

Unfortunately, it will never get adopted...

Yes, its more about religious rituals than simple logic.

From wikipedia[1] it looks like the previous countries to switch were Turkey in 1926 and Greece in 1923

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar#Adoption

Now let's just cross fingers and hope the US will adopt the metric system

Yeah there is no good reason why the US hasn't.

Common usage shows that Americans have no issues adopting the metric system, just very selectively. Americans currently enjoy:

1 Liter and 2 Liter bottles of Coke

Muscle cars with engines that are specified in liters

5K and 10K races

drug prescriptions in which doses are specified in milligrams

750 ML bottles of booze

Monthly power bills that are specified in Killowatt hours

> Common usage shows that Americans have no issues adopting the metric system, just very selectively. Americans currently enjoy:... > Monthly power bills that are specified in Killowatt hours

Kilowatt-hours are not SI, the metrics unit is the Joule (or MJ in the case of your power bill). However the US joined the Metric convention in 1878 and has used the internationally standardized metric inch of precisely 2.54 mm since 1959 (except, I believe, for surveying)

Plenty of so-called "metric" countries continue to use customary units such as miles (UK) though those are based on the metric inch. I still hear people talk about their weight in stone. Germany uses a metricised pound (Pfund) of 500 g. Japan still commonly uses the tsubo (坪) for land. India also uses a variety of official land measurements, and also doesn't break its numbers symmetrically into blocks of 10^3 (preferring lakhs and crores). etc etc

I am not a fan of the metric system in daily use (though I use Celsius). For work I have used the official systems MKS and (US) Imperial, but have also used cgs and imperial imperial. For building a staircase, making the riser a convenient 2/3 of a foot is physiologically ideal.

If there is a god it was cruel for giving us five digits on each hand. Far better would have been one fewer or, even better, a thumb on the other side.

Well feet is used almost exclusively in commercial aviation to specify altitude.

This is true around the globe, the only exception to this being Russia and China.

A "metric pound" of 500g is an argument in favour of metrication. Pfund is just a special name for 500g. It's not very common anyway, probably following a reduction in people buying food by weight from markets.

2/3 foot is 203mm. You wouldn't notice any difference with stairs of 200mm.

So lets see I presented 6 real-life humorous observations and was downvoted?

Did someone interpret this as anti-American?

This was meant meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Please look at the items in the list - it's drugs, booze, sports cars and junk food!

Why is there so little for a sense of humor on HN? Must everything be so serious?

The main discussion is about a country changing its calendar Gregorian in the year 2017 after all, jeez.

Were power bills at some point sent in units of horsepower hours?

The US has adopted the metric system just as completely as, say, the UK has. (Watch UK television and look for how many times the script will say "miles" or "pints" or "pounds" for weight or even better, "stone"!)

The UK in daily use has as many imperial measurements left as the US does. Americans are just more honest with ourselves about it.

Stone is the big one where the UK 'beats' the USA.

Never heard that one used in America.

Though our pints are different sizes too.

> The US has adopted the metric system just as completely as, say, the UK has.

I've lived in both, that's inaccurate.

The UK is mostly metric with exceptions (MpH, pints, pounds & stone for "people weight") but in all other ways it is metric, cooking is in metric (grams, liters/milliliters), parts are in metric, temperature is in metric (centigrade), and most measurements are metric (metres, cm, mm, etc). It is a metric country with a few leftovers.

The US conversely is imperial with exceptions. Meaning most "day to day" activities are in imperial units with certain industries (like science) and activities (?) being metric. But if you go buy a cookbook in a US bookstore then good luck finding a metric one unless it is an international cookbook (it will be in "spoons" "cups" "ounces" and so on). You buy a new cookbook in the UK and it is almost certainly metric unless it is from a used book store.

So, no, the UK has adopted metric much more thoroughly than the US. To use made up percentages, the UK is 65% metric, the US is 20% metric. Again, I've lived in both for a decent chunk of my life.

I guess everybody in the UK switched to metric, except the few who write the television shows.

Whereabouts in the UK do you live? This isn't at all my experience...

Old people might still commonly use Imperial gallons, Imperial pints, pounds, Fahrenheit, inches, and so on, but the cutoff age for this is rising. I'm 39 and I don't routinely use these.

I use some context-specific Imperial units: feet (people), stone (people), Imperial pints (beer), miles per Imperial gallon (car fuel economy).

Miles are pervasive, and will probably never disappear. (Miles per Imperial gallon is obviously stupid - but it will probably become outmoded before it's changed.)

I bet there are young people that don't use feet or stone. If you don't drink beer, you won't encounter pints very often. (Family-sized milk containers come measures in litres.)

Isn't your point that there are now old people that don't use feet or stone? (-:

Other than miles, the UK doesn't use imperial measures for anything serious.

Yes, some people talk about their weight in stone or their height in feet and inches, but almost anything official will be in metric.

And yes beer is sold in pints, but in that context it's not really a comparative measure, it's just "a normal sized glass of beer". And bottled beer is usually 500ml these days.

Herewith the part of the Weights And Measures Act (1985) (as amended) that tells you the only two remaining things (as of almost 17 years ago) that can be sold in pints:

* http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1985/72/section/8

Yes? I don't mean to say it's not exact. I'm just saying that when people order pints of beer, they're not thinking about exactly how much liquid that is, that's just what you order.

Exactly. "Pint" and "half" are the local version of "large" and "small".

Bottled beer volumes can vary between 568mL (UK produced), whatever an American pint is for American exports, and 330mL (small bottles), 500mL (large bottles), and 750mL (huge bottles). The metric sizes are common for British produces, as well as the rest of the world -- presumably, standard sized glass bottles are cheaper.

It's astonishing to me that I discovered the other day that Fahrenheit is only used by United States, its territories and associated states (all served by the U.S. National Weather Service), and 3 other small Caribbean countries. All other countries in the world are using Celsius scale from metric systems.[1]

Can someone shed some lights why is that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit#Usage

Because water is arguably the most important substance to mankind.

In the celsius system (and at standard pressure and bhawawa please point out technicalities) - water freezes at 0°C and boils at 100°C. That's pretty simple to remember and makes actual sense.

In fahrenheit, body temperature was supposed to be 100°F but its not because when the guy measured his temperature, he had a fever. Congrats dude. First strike.

It freezes at around 30°F but not quite. The scale just doesn't make sense for any intuitive application.

If you think that body temperature should determine the scale of temperature measurements, think about how often you need to know your body temperature vs. how often you need to know how hot it is outside. "is it tornado season? nah, its only about 0.7 body temperatures outside". Besides, to anchor a scale, you need 2 reference points. Not just one. Fahrenheit is just a turd.

On top of that, Celsius scales just like Kelvin. 0 Kelvin is the point of absolute zero. The point of "No temperature" - to keep things simple.

0°C is 273.15K and 100°C is 373.15K - which means that Celsius is essentially Kelvin (the unit that makes scientific sense) adjusted to a level that makes sense for common man applications.

That explains why everyone is using Celsius. Nobody can tell you why the US does not. Its clearly because they are some very special snowflake. Same reason they use retarded units like inches, feet, yards, miles, ounces and pounds.

Metric systems be damned.

The business about the fever is a myth. Fahrenheit's original fixed points were a mixture of ice, water and ammonium chloride, at 0, and normal human body temperature --- at 96. He then redefined it in terms of the freezing point of water and human body temperature, at 32 and 96, so as to have 64 degrees between them.

After his death in 1776, it was redefined based on the freezing and boiling points of water at STP, at 32 and 212 (a difference of 180). So in fact it uses the same fixed points as Celsius, and has for hundreds of years.

Also, you have Celsius and Kelvin backwards: Kelvin was originally formulated to use the same sized degrees as Celsius, not the other way round. Celsius was first. (Although Celsius is now defined in terms of Kelvin.) See also Rankine, which is the Kelvin equivalent to Fahrenheit: absolute zero is 0, the freezing point of water at STP is about 492, and boiling point is about 671.

Did you know that the original Celsius scale ran from 0 at boiling point to 100 at freezing point, i.e. backwards? It was reversed after his death. Fahrenheit didn't make that mistake!

The body temperature the Fahrenheit scale was made to work at was axillary (armpit) temperature, at 96°. That's a multiple of 32°, and both are evenly divisible by 16, 8, 4, and 2, making marking of the scale easy. Both are common temperatures that a person would be likely to experience (whereas 100°C is something you'd hope not to experience, but rather to observe). That leaves zero as "frikkin' cold" by most European standards. It's a perfectly reasonable scale if you're not obsessed with base-10 values.

It's hard to not be obsessed with base-10 values, when your numeral system is base-10.

I am sympathetic to the argument that 12 (but not 16) would make a better base. But that argument only works if it's uniformly applied bottom up - base-12 everywhere, and then we define base-12 metric prefixes, use 144 degrees between defining points for temperature etc.

As it is, the incoherent mix of base-16 and base-12 that is common for American customary measures, and base-10 used to actually write them down, is a mess.

if you think that they're "easily divisible by 2", why not tell me what 832 is in terms of exponents of 2.

Thought so. Most people have enough difficulty understanding multiples of 10. No need to make it more difficult for the mentally challenged. For us scientists, factors of 10 prove really helpful.

The only date that matters is the number of seconds since January 1st, 1970.

TAI seconds or UTC seconds? (-:

So there is hope America finally switches to the metric system!

Do computer systems in the Kingdom of Saud report date/times according the lunar calendar?

Or did they?

The Islamic Calendar has had support in Java since 8 introduced the Date and Time API. I don't know if OS support was around, Wikipedia is sparse on the topic.

[#] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_calendar#Computer_supp...

At least the Saudi Arabian bank that I've worked with did not use a lunar calendar on their servers. At least as far as I know, and I'm sure it would have come up, our application doing lots of date/time manipulation and scheduling.

Calendar on Mac, and I'm pretty sure on iOS too, lets you show the Islamic, Chinese, or Hebrew calendar along with the Gregorian calendar

They did and still do- optionally. But the system probably uses Gregorian underneath it all, using the Hijri calendar just for display and maybe file timestamps (been a while since I had mine set to Hijri so I'm not certain).

It can be enabled pretty easily in Windows 10: http://windowsclan.com/switch-to-hijri-calendar-in-windows-1...

Handy factoid: Saudi Arabian visas list the date and length of validity using the Islamic (lunar) calendar. For example, a three-month visa issued on "38/02/22" (22 Safar 1438, 1 March 2016) is valid until 38/05/22 (22 Jumada al-Awwal 1438, 28 May 2016), not until 1 June 2016!

> Still, Saudi Arabia is not alone in wrestling with ancient calendars. It is 1395 in Iran, 2628 in Kurdistan, and 5776 in Israel’s Knesset. Nor is it just the Middle East that is out of sync with the times. It is 2559 in Thailand, though only year 28 (of the Heisei era) in Japan.

Can someone explain the difference between the years in Iran and Saudi Arabia? It seems that Iran uses the Solar Hijri calendar, while SA used the Tabular Islamic Calendar, but I don't really understand why the years are different. Is it because one is solar and one is lunar, increasing the year count more quickly?

(I also had no idea that Japan's years reset with every emperor.)

yes exactly.the lunar calendar is 10 days shorter! and it's rotating. the Arabs previous to Islam had a calendar that was more accurate, then Islam just removed 10 days from it and it is rotating now !

Japan also uses the Gregorian Calendar. I think the Emperor era designation is an informal thing, as in daily life it would be to complicated.

The Imperial era years are quick commonly used on official forms. If you live in Japan you will soon learn the current year and the year you were born. The Gregorian Calendar years are also common, and the New Year is on the same day.

Japan's date system is unusually complicated in that it has such a long history of being continually reset: http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/era-list.html

Iranians use three calendars in daily life:

- Gregorian calendar for practical matters

- Islamic calendar for religious matters

- Persian calendar for matters of hubris

The modern Persian calendar is a solar calendar (sharing the same year 0 as the Islamic calendar), and the first day of the year is always synchronized with the Spring equinox.

Edit: Although the Persian and Islamic calendars share the same initial year, the (lunar) Islamic calendar is 11 days shorter. Over time, this has resulted in the current year being "decades" apart between the two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_calendars#Modern_calen...

> "Still, Saudi Arabia is not alone in wrestling with ancient calendars. It is 1395 in Iran, 2628 in Kurdistan, and 5776 in Israel’s Knesset. Nor is it just the Middle East that is out of sync with the times. It is 2559 in Thailand, though only year 28 (of the Heisei era) in Japan."

Does anyone have a map of the world with current year written on every nation? It would be nice to see which countries are in which year, depending on their calendar.

Saudi Arabia is so resistant to change that a local joke claims "Vision 2030" is using the hijri calendar.

Another good one is that in Saudi Arabia, "24/7" means 24 hours a month, 7 months a year.

When the Saudi government built their giant tower clock near the Kaaba in Mecca, there was talk of running it on Mecca solar time. But that didn't happen.

At least we have only one prime meridian, despite Jules Verne.

> Nor is it just the Middle East that is out of sync with the times. It is 2559 in Thailand, though only year 28 (of the Heisei era) in Japan.

That just might take the reward for most western-centric statement of the century.

Like clockwork, anytime there is a terrorist attack linked back to the extremist Sunni style Saudi Arabia exports and teaches in its Islamic centers we get some PR about how they are modernizing.

link for getting around the paywall:

https://google.com/search?q=economist+saudi+gregorian

HN automatically provides a link to do that. It is labeled "web" and appears on the line below the title.

Wow, thanks!

Better still:

https://archive.is/qjCM7

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