No More Leap Years? Profs Suggest Calendar Overhaul

Two Johns Hopkins professors say they've got a new calendar system that would simplify all our lives. Calendar dates would always fall on the same day of the week—so if your birthday is on a Tuesday this year, it would be that way forever—and leap years would disappear, explains LiveScience. "The calendar I'm advocating isn't nearly as accurate" as the Gregorian calendar now in use, says one of the professors, an astrophysicist. "But it's far more convenient."

The calendar's pattern would be two 30-day months, followed by one 31-day month. Every five years or so, we'd have a "leap week" following December to keep things on track. The other Johns Hopkins researcher is an economist, and he argues that the new consistency would be business-friendly, allowing companies to schedule more efficiently and avoid irregular interest payments because of irregular months. One hitch for the superstitious: We'd have four Friday the 13ths every year. (More calendars stories.)