New European Calendar --------------------- With the forthcoming unity within Europe, it has been decided that the EEC member countries should adopt a new calendar to assist with commercial unanimity. Bearing this in mind, the European Bureau of Chronology and Calendar Arrangements (EBCCA) has proposed that the following system should be adopted throughout the community. All months will have the same number of days, to avoid tedious calculations allowing for varying month lengths when calculating taxes, wages etc. The new monthly calendar itself is shown below: France Saturday Saturday Friday Thursday Friday Wednesday Tuesday 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 The most initially striking feature of the new calendar is that the month name is not one of the conventional months. It has been decided that the months should be named after the 12 main member countries of the EEC, beginning with Germany and finishing with the United Kingdom. Germany will occupy two months at the beginning of the year, due to its undoubted importance. Since there will be therefore 13 months in every year, there are only 28 days in every month. Having 13 months of 28 days gives 364 days per year, as opposed to the 365.25 currently used. This will cause a gradual drift in the seasons, but this will simply be ignored, and will provide the additional advantage that each of the different months will, over a period of time, contain the various important dates within the year, such as the spring and autumnal equinoxes. Religious festivals and their dates will be left at the discretion of the appropriate organisations. The other point to note is that the days of the week have been changed. The reasons for doing so are as follows: Firstly, Mondays have been abolished, as these are universally unpopular and therefore reduce morale and productivity amongst workers. They have been replaced by Fridays, which are far more popular and should therefore lead to an increase in productivity of up to 25%. 15% of this is due to the relative popularity of the day itself. The remaining 10% of the increase is because reports, jobs etc always have to be finished by Friday, and having two Fridays in each week therefore gives greater flexibility in task completion and increases apparent individual freedom within a fixed time framework. Secondly, Sundays have also been abolished. Research has shown that the majority of EEC countries are nominally Christian, but that the majority of the population of these countries are completely indifferent about religion. This has lead to the difficult situation of vast quantities of religious broadcasting on television on Sundays, demoralising the general populous and instilling in them a lack of desire to return to work the following day. Indeed, this may have been a contributory factor to the downfall of Mondays, and to prevent this happening to the first Friday in the week, Sunday has been abolished and replaced with another Saturday. As with the year as a whole, religious days within the week are left at the discretion of the individual religions. The remaining days have also been rearranged. Thursday has been moved to a position immediately preceding the second Friday in the week, which has itself been moved due to the shifting of Wednesday and Tuesday mentioned below. This has been done as previously some workers tended to work more slowly on Thursdays, as Friday and the weekend followed afterwards. However, others were inclined to work more efficiently as the prospect of Friday and the weekend approached. Therefore, positioning Thursday in the first half of the week but before a Friday will increase the efficiency of the first group, while allowing the second group to retain their motivation. The fact that Friday is no longer at the end of the week should not cause serious problems with this logic, as research shows that few people look further than one day ahead during the working week. Wednesday has been repositioned near the end of the week to remove that middle-of-the-week atmosphere with which it has traditionally been associated. Similarly, Tuesday has been moved to the last day of the working week to boost its public image, as it has traditionally been a very unpopular day, coming immediately after Monday as it did. This shift in position should cause a strong upsurge in the popularity of this day. Finally, it should be noted that each month always begins on a Saturday. This should provide a final boost to morale, as it creates a feeling of optimism among the populous when months begin at the weekend. This, in combination with all the other improvements mentioned should lead to a total overall improvement in productivity of 40% among the communities' industries. (This is, of course, an English version of the calendar. It is to allow the accommodation of the various community languages that the existing day names have been maintained, as all the languages already contain the appropriate words. Similarly, country names have been used as the month titles, as these also have existing words in all European languages.) Mathematics Glossary ==================== Rainer Koch (UNI011 @ DBNRHRZ1) Any student who ever sat or slept through a mathematics course knows that certain words and phrases occur very frequently. This glossary might eliminate some confusion. When the instructor says He really means ------------------------ --------------- trivial The student might be able to do it in three hours or so. simple An "A" student can do it in a week or so. easy This topic would make a good master's thesis. clear The instructor can do it (he thinks). obvious The instructor is sure it is in his notes somewhere. certainly The instructor saw one of his instructors do it, but has completely forgotten how it was done. left as an exercise The instructor lost his notes. for the student is well known The instructor heard that someone once did it. can be shown The instructor thinks it might be true, but has no idea how to prove it. the diligent student It is an unsolved problem - can show probably harder than Fermat's Last Theorem.