15 March 12022

♂   15 March 12022 is the day I went to the DMV to renew my ID card and so forgot to write anything until noon had come and gone. On other calendars it’s JD 2459654, 2 March 2022, 15 March 2022, 12 Veadar 5782, 11 Sha’ban 1443, or 24 Esfand 1400. Not all calendars are equal, of course—some of them are fairly strictly solar, with at best vestigial months that no longer correspond to anything the moon is actually doing. (Both the Gregorian and Julian are examples of that, differing only in how accurately the solar year is reflected.) Some are primarily lunar calendars, with the months kept in accordance with the phases of the moon. (The Islamic and Jewish calendars are of this sort, though differing in that the Islamic “year” has no relation to the motion of the earth around the sun, where the Jewish “year” is adjusted by the occasional addition of an extra month to keep it in phase with the actual solar year.) The Julian Day system is of still another kind, indifferent both to the lunar month and the solar year, being a simple enumeration of the days since 24 November 5287 starting at noon, Universal Time.