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Stefantasy, v. 5, issue 2, June 1949

Page 6

as a flash comes the reply: Who the hell cares? Except on the meridians of longitude standard time doesn't coincide with sun time. When standard trme was instituted there was a lot of griping from all quarters of the globe, but we get along very nicely with it now even when "daylight saving" [!] throws it out another hour or two.
Someone may possibly complain that with such a calendar his summer vacation might come in the middle of the winter. This would, of course be inconvenient--since even on Mars such sports as swimming and boating would probably lose some of their zest in winter--but such an event is extremely unlikely. The Martian year is almost twice as long as the terrestrial year so that it would be a long time indeed between actual summers.
Mars will naturally be an Utopia and since my proposed year has a thousand days I might as well suggest a one-week vacation every two months or 200 days. At least one of these certainly would come in summer weather and there would be the possibility of lumping two or more of them together. Now let's not have any more objections to my calendar on the basis of summer vacations.
But we're getting away from those eliminations, aren't we? Months are next on the list and with such a simple calendar I see no need at all for them; the same applies to weeks. One sinply works so many days and rests so many days and at the end of 200 days has a ten-day vacation. What could be simpler?
This brings us down to days. Since they are caused by the revolution of the sun around Mars it would be pretty difficult to eliminate them unless we happen to live upon the sun itself, and this is very unlikely because of the excessive temperaure there.
This leaves only hours, minutes and seconds and by wiping them out in one fell swoop we can end forever our subservience to watches and clocks. Automatic bells or whistles could be rigged (as they are even now) to indicate the start and finish of working periods and nature has its own way of telling us when to eat and sleep. Since there may conceivably be some justification for the retention of hours a few strategically located clocks measuring hours and days would satisfy any possible requirement of that nature.
There is not, however, the slighest excuse for the existence of minutes and/or seconds. The minute is an insidious enemy of mankind and its inventor ought to be boiled in oil. Without it we'd be free of alarm clocks, radio commercials, and other unspeakable ills of our present "civilization". (Do you really enjoy having an alarm clock shatter your dreams at 20 minutes to seven and then, after shutting the damn thing off and sleeping until ten minutes after seven, throwing on your clothes, swallowing half your breakfast whole, and rushing madly out to get to work "on time"? Of course you

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as a flash comes the reply: Who the hell cares? Except on the meridians of longitude standard time doesn't coincide with sun time. When standard trme was instituted there was a lot of griping from all quarters of the globe, but we get along very nicely with it now even when "daylight saving" [!] throws it out another hour or two. Someone may possibly complain that with such a calendar his summer vacation might come in the middle of the winter. This would, of course be inconvenient--since even on Mars such sports as swimming and boating would probably lose some of their zest in winter--but such an event is extremely unlikely. The Martian year is almost twice as long as the terrestrial year so that it would be a long time indeed between actual summers. Mars will naturally be an Utopia and since my proposed year has a thousand days I might as well suggest a one-week vacation every two months or 200 days. At least one of these certainly would come in summer weather and there would be the possibility of lumping two or more of them together. Now let's not have any more objections to my calendar on the basis of summer vacations. But we're getting away from those eliminations, aren't we? Months are next on the list and with such a simple calendar I see no need at all for them; the same applies to weeks. One sinply works so many days and rests so many days and at the end of 200 days has a ten-day vacation. What could be simpler? This brings us down to days. Since they are caused by the revolution of the sun around Mars it would be pretty difficult to eliminate them unless we happen to live upon the sun itself, and this is very unlikely because of the excessive temperaure there. This leaves only hours, minutes and seconds and by wiping them out in one fell swoop we can end forever our subservience to watches and clocks. Automatic bells or whistles could be rigged (as they are even now) to indicate the start and finish of working periods and nature has its own way of telling us when to eat and sleep. Since there may conceivably be some justification for the retention of hours a few strategically located clocks measuring hours and days would satisfy any possible requirement of that nature. There is not, however, the slighest excuse for the existence of minutes and/or seconds. The minute is an insidious enemy of mankind and its inventor ought to be boiled in oil. Without it we'd be free of alarm clocks, radio commercials, and other unspeakable ills of our present "civilization". (Do you really enjoy having an alarm clock shatter your dreams at 20 minutes to seven and then, after shutting the damn thing off and sleeping until ten minutes after seven, throwing on your clothes, swallowing half your breakfast whole, and rushing madly out to get to work "on time"? Of course you 6 STEFANTASY