Am I the only one who finds the idea of a “perpetual calendar” ridiculous?
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You know who uses calendars? People who have no idea what day it is.
Making such people responsible for setting the date on their own is bonkers.
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November 30th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Funny, I just got one of those for my birthday. It’s the one at the bottom right, came from the MOMA in New York so it’s Art. It has magnets to hold the two pointers in place, which is kind of cool, but yes, I was sort of disappointed at the lack of automation.
November 30th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
I never know what day it is…
November 30th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
A calendar doesn’t tell you what day it is. (At least, many don’t and I don’t think doing so is the main function of a calendar.) It tells you the correspondence between days and dates, which some people find easy to forget. Updating the date on a “perpetual calendar” requires only that you be able to remember a day and date for a minute.
(None the less, I also think the idea is pretty silly.)
November 30th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Perpetual calendars (at least the less twee ones) were once exceedingly useful in offices: one person would set the date at the beginning of the day and then everyone else would use it. Nowadays of course they are merely decorative – if you like that sort of thing.
November 30th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
I use calendars all the time (about 80% for work and 20% at home) and love the idea of a perpetual one, but yes, it ought to be automated.
November 30th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Writers, investigators, historians and others find it useful to be able to determine the day/date for a broad range of years. You can do it online easily (timeanddate.com), but occasionally some of us choose to be in places without internet access (to be able to focus better) or lose it because of a challenged ISP. In those situations, a perpetual calendar can be a good thing to have.
For the most part, they’re not very helpful, although I suppose you could argue it reduces waste for those who absolutely must have an IRL calendar :–)
November 30th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Think of all the scantilly clad young women who would become unemployed
November 30th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
It’s a useful thing to have if you want to answer questions like, “Will the 23rd be a Friday?” or “Will tomorrow be the second Tuesday of the month?” (which I had to know in order to move my car for street cleaning, back when I owned a car). Of course, we’ve software for these things, but it doesn’t hurt to have a backup in case your cell phone battery dies, particularly if the backup looks nice on the wall.
And, of course, only one person in the vicinity of the calendar actually has to update it, and that only has to happen once a month.
November 30th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Alex & Blake — I agree about that some perpetual calendars have their place. However, if you look at the pictures above, which are representative of most of the ones sold these days (largely as decorative objects), they depend on some person to turn some cube to the right face, or slip in the correct piece of paper. Every day (or month).
November 30th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Well, that just means the consumer has to exercise a little discretion in making a calendar purchase! (-:
I mean, why shouldn’t Sturgeon’s Law apply to calendars, as much as everything else?
November 30th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Or you could be a geek like me and memorize the Doomsday algorithm.
http://rudy.ca/doomsday.html
Side-effect: I used to be really good at knowing instantly what date today was. Since I’ve started using the Doomsday algorithm, I can never remember what date today is but I can always “find” it within a couple of seconds.
November 30th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
@Julianne,
No, sorry, I disagree. You see if the Inca had invented the perpetual calendar, we’d be spared all this nonsense about 2012!
That alone justifies the existence of perpetual calendars. What happens when the year ends? You go to a big party, perhaps imbibe, face an uncomfortable kissing moment, then sleep it off and resolve not to do it again. I think even the Inca knew that! Other than that not much at all…
Oh, but I do enjoy the opportunity to buy some beautiful calendars to hang in my cube and elsewhere.
November 30th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I remember having a perpetual calendar I think you would have liked. It was basically two brass discs that were pinned together. The upper disc was printed on it’s top half with a 31 day month and on it’s bottom half with the years arranged in columns (because of space it was only good for 40 years or so). There were windows above the calendar and below the years through which you could see the lower disc. On it was printed the months and weekdays in concentric circles. By positioning the desired month under the year the days of the week would align themselves over the calendar. The whole thing wasn’t as big as a silver dollar and fit easily in the watch pocket in my jeans. The only hard part was remembering how many days this month had! (I could never remember the rhyme so I used the fist method). I believe they were made for Jack Daniels, but this was back when people were walking on the moon and we were waiting desperately for the Internet to be invented. I can’t find anything like it now.
November 30th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
They’re convenient for public venues, though.
I may occasionally know what date it is, but that doesn’t stop me from looking up to check at the postoffice, for instance, when I have to sign for something.
At the library, though, we just used a tear-off calendar.
But, yes, for the rest of us, they’re pretty useless.
There’s a rhyme? I’ve always counted on my knuckles until I learnt it by heart. (And I still mess up February.)
November 30th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Sometimes the family wants to buy me a calendar and/or clock and my response is always
“what do I need a calendar/clock for? I have a _computer_!”
The computer keeps better time; adjusts for DST automatically; alerts me to pending scheduled events; displays a calendar for any chosen month or year, etc. etc
November 30th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
These calendars are frequently used in banks, post offices, other public service offices etc. You don’t use them to tell yourself what day it is, but tell others what date to put into the forms. I don’t know what’s bonkers about that.
December 1st, 2009 at 9:46 am
i thought perpetual calendars violated the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
December 1st, 2009 at 3:11 pm
My wife tells me what day it is. That’s how I know. So I always know what day it is, because she ALWAYS knows what day it is. And what day some Thursday weeks form now will be, too. Just try getting out of dinner with the in-laws with her around. “Sorry, honey, I plum forgot?” Pffft. She nukes that one with a preemptive reminder faster than I can run out the door that morning.
Some people have these things in their heads, I just know it.
December 2nd, 2009 at 7:14 am
Well, what day is today, here in Rabat, Morocco…………Maybe Wednesday, the 2nd December, 2009. Do correct me at the earliest, before I start forgetting again !
December 2nd, 2009 at 7:20 am
I may as well check with my my wife; she sure is good at these things [ if Days & Dates could be termed such; I am sure ‘timeanddate.com’ may possibly take offense to my observations .
Never mind; after all it is my mind. Now, we are trespassing into Months/Years !!!
December 4th, 2009 at 7:03 am
I would be utterly scre…ok well it wouldn’t work for me.
December 4th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
You people live in a country that will not change to metric measurement systems, and you complain about perpetual calendars?