The Perpetual Calendar -- All You Really Need, Perhaps

The first day of the year can fall on only one of the seven days of the week. This year, 2026, started on a Thursday. Last year, 2025, started on a Wednesday; 2027 will start on a Friday. 2025, Wednesday; 2026, Thursday; 2027 Friday. So why bother buying a new calendar every year? Some people don’t; they use a Perpetual Calendar ¹ instead.

If there were only 364 days in a year, we could keep using the same calendar each year. The number 364 is evenly divisible by 7; there are exactly 52 weeks in that hypothetical year. But that one extra day in our year forces us to have a calendar for each day of the week.

What about leap years? They occur once every four years and have 366 days. We have to “skip over” a calendar every four years. For example, the calendar for 2028 (a leap year) will start on a Saturday. The following year will start not on Sunday but on a Monday.

Thus we need fourteen unique calendars; seven have 365 days; seven have 366, owing to the addition of February 29. This is what some refer to as “The Perpetual Calendar.”

Unfortunately, if you want to keep track of religious holidays, you’ll have to pencil in all those holidays whose schedules follow the lunar calendar ². And this involves more than figuring out the date of the Lunar New Year (aka Chinese New Year). Dates of holidays in the Abrahamic religions ³ (sometimes referred to as Judeo-Christian religions ⁴) also are based on the lunar calendar. This includes Christianity ⁵.

So is the Perpetual Calendar the only calendar you’ll ever need? That’s for you to decide.

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¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_calendar
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_calendar
³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions
⁴ The term “Judeo-Christian” ignores Islam, so I looked for a more appropriate term. See https://www.draslamabdullah.com/post/the-judeo-christian-tradition-history-paradox-and-political-construction
⁵ Yes even Easter requires reference to the lunar calendar. It falls on the date of the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox, roughly speaking. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_of_Easter

Emacs Lisp Function to Determine the Start of Engineers Week

This year, Engineers Week started on Sunday (February 22, 2026).  It always begins on Sunday of the week of George Washington's birthday. ¹

Here's an Emacs Lisp function to calculate the date that Engineers Week will begin for a given year:

(defun eweek (year)
  "Returns the date on which Engineers Week begins for the year given in
YEAR.  Returns the date in the standard format for a (Gregorian)
calendar date in calendar.el, a list of integers (MONTH DAY YEAR)"
  (calendar-gregorian-from-absolute
   (calendar-dayname-on-or-before
    0 (calendar-absolute-from-gregorian (list 2 22 year))))) 

Invoking (eweek 2025) should return (2 16 2025), which was the start of Engineers Week last year.

¹ https://calendar-holidays.com/engineers-week/

Amaze Your Friends – Send a Letter Without a Written Address!

You can have an unaddressed envelope arrive at someone’s address or Post Office Box.

I discovered this from my annual, end-of-year deluge of cards to friends and family.  I had printed all the recipient’s addresses on plain paper, and then cut them into address labels.  (My printer doesn’t accept labels as printed media.)  Then I affixed them to the envelopes with a glue stick.

The glue stick was left over from previous years.  So the first time I used it, the end of the stick was a bit dried out; the adhesion probably was poor as a result.  Thus the first label I had attached eventually fell off, but it stayed on long enough for the local post office to see it and generate the address at the very bottom in barcode form.

Apparently, once the originating post office prints that barcode, the mail item goes where it was intended.

If one could determine just how much adhesion is necessary to make this work repeatedly, a whole new product – Gag Labels – could be launched!  If I were to guess, the stickiness might’ve have compared well to a Post-It note that had been reused a few times.  Another approach would be to develop a temperature-sensitive glue that would irreversibly release after, say, 8 hours exposure at a temperature at or below, say, 10°C (50°F).  Perhaps this is the environment in which most mail finds itself during storage and transit.

This wouldn’t work for all geographic locations at all times of year.  But for a Luddite Geek located in the Northeastern part of USA, it would work from November to April, allowing him to send Season’s Greetings, Valentine’s wishes, and tax returns, not to mention write about himself in the third person.

Solid, Liquid, Gas

Liquid meals serve a pseudo-medical purpose: to provide nourishment to people who cannot tolerate solid food.  Energy drinks and gels (aka Nutrient Goo) fill a need for endurance athletes.  But in 2013, Soylent was introduced and marketed to people who are simply too busy to prepare and chew food.

As we transition from consumption of solids to liquids, I wonder how long it will be before a "Nutrient Gas " will allow people to breath in their meals. Being already in a gaseous state, will these "meals" facilitate our body's need to fart?

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Soylent on Wikipedia
Review of Soylent

A Long View of Venezuela Action

Looked at in isolation, USA's actions in Venezuela may seem arbitrary, or a bully's response to being bullied, or a blatant grab for oil.  However, when considered as a piece in the puzzle of recent world events, it makes sense.

Consider also the bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran, which took place in June, ¹ and then the military strikes in Syria that took place in December ².

This activity in Iran, Syria and Venezuela, in the context of Russia's attempted occupation of Ukraine, reveals effective US international policy against Russia.  The three countries are (or were) allies of Russia.

While Russia remains embroiled in Ukraine, the US can engage Russian interests, reducing Russia's footprint on the world stage.  In effect, we can wage war on Russia, albeit indirectly.

And recall that Russia invaded Ukraine soon after Pres. Biden won the 2020 election and took office in 2021.  Pres. Trump claimed the invasion wouldn't have happened if he had been elected.  At first I assumed that he was talking nonsense, something a sore loser or braggart would say.  But now I think Russia was convinced that a massive operation in Ukraine might encourage Trump to take action.  With Biden in charge, Putin seized the opportunity to take over Ukraine.

In light of this, it seems likely that US support of Ukraine would be just enough to maintain the war, to keep Ukraine from being taken over, but not enable them to completely repel Russia.

What's behind US's desire to annex Greenland?  Partly it's to gain more resources.  But considering that Greenland is well-positioned between USA and Russia, it may be the ideal location to establish defense against hypersonic missiles, which need to be situated as close to the enemy's launch sites as possible.  But why do we need to annex Greenland to do that?  While it's true that the US already has a base in Greenland, my guess is that the technology is Top Secret and needs to be kept careful guarded.

All of this is conjecture based on a thought exercise; don't think I have access to special information.

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¹ https://apnews.com/article/israel-iran-war-nuclear-talks-geneva-news-06-21-2025-a7b0cdaba28b5817467ccf712d214579
² https://www.npr.org/2025/12/19/g-s1-103194/u-s-launches-strikes-syria