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amphobetHappy Friday to all who celebrate.
Personally, I find the idea of weekends to be a bit nonsensical. Not that I would argue for a seven-day workweek. Far from it. But what is the point of a large swath of the population having the same days off at once?
I think its a bit of a status thing. Having a predictable, standard workweek means you've got a steady, *respectable* job. After all, why do some people have to work weekends? Well, someone has to serve all the office workers as they spend their paychecks on dining, shopping, and entertainment.
But the arrangement is inconvenient for weekday workers as well, because it means they have to take time out of their workday for appointments and such. Surely there's a better way.
I've harped on it elsewhere, but its a bit ridiculous how we cling to the concept of weeks and days of the week. They're totally made up! Other ways of measuring the year are based on natural systems. The apparent motions of the sun and moon, primarily. But the seven-day week is something entirely manmade. And it barely even meshes with the natural timekeeping methods.
There are 52 weeks in a year, but try dividing that by the number of months and you see why calendars can be so confusing. If we wanted to make it equal, each month would have to be 4 and 1/3 weeks. But you can't even divide a week into thirds. And if you convert it to days, it would be thirty and 1/3.
Of course, a lot of this can be traced back to the fact that years aren't actually 365 days long. Closer to 365.25. Hence leap years. And an actual lunar month is between 29 and 30 days.
The fact of the matter is, the actual physical world cares little for the apparently deeply human need for things to fit together in a neat, orderly way.
Although days of the week are entirely artificial, we've never lost track of what day it is, as far back as we can tell. For thousands of years, we've managed to resist the temptation to, say, throw in an extra Saturday.
Humans are a strange lot.
Personally, I find the idea of weekends to be a bit nonsensical. Not that I would argue for a seven-day workweek. Far from it. But what is the point of a large swath of the population having the same days off at once?
I think its a bit of a status thing. Having a predictable, standard workweek means you've got a steady, *respectable* job. After all, why do some people have to work weekends? Well, someone has to serve all the office workers as they spend their paychecks on dining, shopping, and entertainment.
But the arrangement is inconvenient for weekday workers as well, because it means they have to take time out of their workday for appointments and such. Surely there's a better way.
I've harped on it elsewhere, but its a bit ridiculous how we cling to the concept of weeks and days of the week. They're totally made up! Other ways of measuring the year are based on natural systems. The apparent motions of the sun and moon, primarily. But the seven-day week is something entirely manmade. And it barely even meshes with the natural timekeeping methods.
There are 52 weeks in a year, but try dividing that by the number of months and you see why calendars can be so confusing. If we wanted to make it equal, each month would have to be 4 and 1/3 weeks. But you can't even divide a week into thirds. And if you convert it to days, it would be thirty and 1/3.
Of course, a lot of this can be traced back to the fact that years aren't actually 365 days long. Closer to 365.25. Hence leap years. And an actual lunar month is between 29 and 30 days.
The fact of the matter is, the actual physical world cares little for the apparently deeply human need for things to fit together in a neat, orderly way.
Although days of the week are entirely artificial, we've never lost track of what day it is, as far back as we can tell. For thousands of years, we've managed to resist the temptation to, say, throw in an extra Saturday.
Humans are a strange lot.
