EST
EST
[Caption above the frame:] xkcd presents Earth Standard Time (EST) A universal calendar for a universal planet EST is... Simple • Clearly defined • Unambiguous Free of historical baggage • Compatible with old units Precisely synced with the solar cycle • Free of leap years Intermittently amenable to date math
[Inside the frame a list of the details concerning EST is shown:] Units Second: 1 S.I. second Minute: 60 seconds Hour: 60 minutes Day: 1444 minutes (24 hours 4 minutes) Month: 30 days Year: 12 months
Rules For 4 hours after every full moon, run clocks backward. The non-prime-numbered minutes of the first full non-reversed hour after a solstice or equinox happen twice.
[In two columns the "Epoch" is put into a contrasting juxtaposition to "Time Zones":] Epoch 00:00:00 EST, January 1st, 1970 = 00:00:00 GMT, January 1st, 1970 (Julian Calendar) Time Zones The two EST time zones are EST and EST (United Kingdom) . These are the same except that the UK second is 0.9144 standard seconds.
[A few further statements:] Daylight saving: Countries may enter DST, but no time may pass there. Narnian Time: Synchronized✔ Year Zero: EST does have a year 0 . (However, there is no 1958.)

This comic pokes fun of attempts to "fix" the calendar by making it simpler or more rational, which inevitably result in a system just as complicated. This is an example of the paradox in complexity theory that if you attempt to simplify a system of problems by creating a new system of evaluation for the problems you often have instead made the problem more complex than it was originally.
Randall advertises his idea for a "Universal Calendar for a Universal Planet". He combines calendar definitions with time zone definitions. The abbreviation EST in this comic stands for Earth Standard Time (hence the title), but it is in itself a joke on the American Eastern Standard Time . In the rest of the explanation, EST refers to the comic's Earth Standard Time.
Because there are approximately 365.2422 days in a solar year , various calendars use different means to keep the calendar year in sync with the solar year and the seasons. The Julian Calendar, for example, has leap days every four years, giving it an average year length of 365.25 days. The most widely used system is the Gregorian calendar , which also has leap days every four years, but skips leap days in years divisible by 100 unless the year is also divisible by 400, the latter additions come from Earth's axial precession . This gives it an average year length of 365.2425 days, which is very close to the length of a solar year (see detailed explanation in this video: Earth's motion around the Sun, not as simple as I thought ). Other calendars have been proposed, some of which do not count leap days and special "festival days" as a day of the week, in order to make every date fall on the same day of the week every year.
Many of the claimed benefits for the calendar are highly dubious:
The features of the calendar get increasingly bizarre as the description proceeds:
[Caption above the frame:] xkcd presents Earth Standard Time (EST) A universal calendar for a universal planet EST is... Simple • Clearly defined • Unambiguous Free of historical baggage • Compatible with old units Precisely synced with the solar cycle • Free of leap years Intermittently amenable to date math
[Inside the frame a list of the details concerning EST is shown:] Units Second: 1 S.I. second Minute: 60 seconds Hour: 60 minutes Day: 1444 minutes (24 hours 4 minutes) Month: 30 days Year: 12 months
Rules For 4 hours after every full moon, run clocks backward. The non-prime-numbered minutes of the first full non-reversed hour after a solstice or equinox happen twice.
[In two columns the "Epoch" is put into a contrasting juxtaposition to "Time Zones":] Epoch 00:00:00 EST, January 1st, 1970 = 00:00:00 GMT, January 1st, 1970 (Julian Calendar) Time Zones The two EST time zones are EST and EST (United Kingdom) . These are the same except that the UK second is 0.9144 standard seconds.
[A few further statements:] Daylight saving: Countries may enter DST, but no time may pass there. Narnian Time: Synchronized✔ Year Zero: EST does have a year 0 . (However, there is no 1958.)
