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OSLO- Shortly after the world celebrated the 2012 New Year, scientists put a damper on the celebration by announcing that an age-old rounding error is responsible for accumulated inaccuracies in the world’s predominant calendar system. Scientists will adjust for the error by skipping the calendar ahead several weeks to February 16th on Thursday in order to restore the calendar to its proper calibration.
The calendar problem dates back to the late 16th century, when Pope Gregory XIII, a well-documented egomaniac and forerunner to modern reality television, adopted the Gregorian calendar to correct supposed flaws in the preceding Julian calendar, which came to prominence under Julius Caesar. At the time, it was said that the Julian calendar’s presumption that a revolution around the sun took exactly 365.25 days was off by 11 minutes, but the proclamation was panned on Twitter and by bloggers even at the time. Unsurprisingly, 16th Century technology and the Catholic Church’s abysmal scientific record combined to adjust the calendar in the wrong direction and by less than half of the appropriate length of time. The mistake is said to be the product of a rushed timeframe imposed by the Pope in order to insure his name would be attached to the world’s preeminent calendar. As a result, time has shifted gradually over the course of almost 500 years to the point where we are now more than 30 days off of the proper place in Earth’s revolution around the sun.
[BELOW: Pope Gregory XIII often wondered if he was the only one who gave a fuck about the calendar rules.]
The problem was first noticed by climatologists who noticed that the last few years’ weather patterns have been extremely out of line with history, even by Al Gore’s standards. Alfonse Santos of the Spanish think tank Climaté Muy Caliente first posed the idea that the calendar was incorrect when he noticed that entire seasons seemed to be shifting in different parts of the world. In fact, the newly identified flaw is said to be responsible for most of what was thought to be climate change throughout the world. What were previously thought to be unseasonably warm winters in parts of the world were literally unseasonably: they were actually average springs. As a result, the scientists say that nobody has to worry about carbon emissions, gas mileage, recycling, or landfills ever again. The world is now free to go back to making fun of environmentalists for being pussies who sob uncontrollably whenever a dolphin stupidly rams its nose into a plastic soda can ring.
Scientists acknowledged that moving the calendar ahead to February 16th would create some difficult complications since roughly 10% of the year would immediately vanish into thin air, but they proposed what they felt were workable solutions to those issues. First, they asserted that Mitt Romney would be declared the winner of the Republican Primaries that would disappear into the time shift. Most Americans eagerly accepted this bland result over the interminable and pointless melodrama of even more Republican debates and inconclusive primaries.
In sports, the scientists proposed that the Pittsburgh Steelers would be named Super Bowl Champions even though the entire NFL playoffs would be obliterated. Although the Steelers were only the number five seed in the AFC playoffs, the scientists declared them winners because they already have several nondescript championships that most fans don’t remember, and adding one more to the tally would seemingly create few problems. Skipping the playoffs would have the added benefit of saving Americans from sitting through an average of 214 hours of beer and truck commercials per person, and would save those same beer and truck companies enough in marketing expenses to stop outsourcing jobs. In related news, the plan is to tell all of the NASCAR fans that Kurt Busch won the Daytona 500 and they all got too drunk to remember what happened.
While skipping the next six weeks has some drawbacks, the scientists are confident that they will be able to convince the world that it is ultimately a good idea. First, they have pointed out that almost everyone in the world is in massive debt, and the jump forward would be six weeks in which mortgages, credit card bills, and student loans would not be accruing any interest. For those who remain unconvinced, the scientists have made an analogy to the start of daylight savings time. “Springing forward,” as it is often called, allows people to stay up an extra hour later at night, so the scientists have told people to think of jumping six weeks into the future as a really large spring forward.
Scientists acknowledged that moving the calendar ahead to February 16th would create some difficult complications since roughly 10% of the year would immediately vanish into thin air, but they proposed what they felt were workable solutions to those issues. First, they asserted that Mitt Romney would be declared the winner of the Republican Primaries that would disappear into the time shift. Most Americans eagerly accepted this bland result over the interminable and pointless melodrama of even more Republican debates and inconclusive primaries.
In sports, the scientists proposed that the Pittsburgh Steelers would be named Super Bowl Champions even though the entire NFL playoffs would be obliterated. Although the Steelers were only the number five seed in the AFC playoffs, the scientists declared them winners because they already have several nondescript championships that most fans don’t remember, and adding one more to the tally would seemingly create few problems. Skipping the playoffs would have the added benefit of saving Americans from sitting through an average of 214 hours of beer and truck commercials per person, and would save those same beer and truck companies enough in marketing expenses to stop outsourcing jobs. In related news, the plan is to tell all of the NASCAR fans that Kurt Busch won the Daytona 500 and they all got too drunk to remember what happened.
While skipping the next six weeks has some drawbacks, the scientists are confident that they will be able to convince the world that it is ultimately a good idea. First, they have pointed out that almost everyone in the world is in massive debt, and the jump forward would be six weeks in which mortgages, credit card bills, and student loans would not be accruing any interest. For those who remain unconvinced, the scientists have made an analogy to the start of daylight savings time. “Springing forward,” as it is often called, allows people to stay up an extra hour later at night, so the scientists have told people to think of jumping six weeks into the future as a really large spring forward.
