I never thought about how truly random each New Year's Day is until Neil deGrasse Tyson reminded me of it in a tweet today.
Great science communicators have a tough job to do. Sometimes they get to reveal things that are fascinating and important, but sometimes they have to kill our dreams - like when they explain why time travel is impossible (as far as we know), or that you can't really explode your stomach with pop rocks and Coke.
It is weird, from a historical perspective, that New Year's Day is so arbitrary. Why didn't it fall on a solstice? Or, why not on the first of May? Chinese New Year is tied to the lunar calendar, which makes a lot more sense. Apparently the Gregorian calendar's placement of New Year's Day was Christopher Clavius' decision in 1582, which means it's yet another event that was set centuries ago by some dude in the Roman church. It has nothing to do with science, regular life, or natural laws.
I kind of hope that pivotal moments in the future will be guided by facts and reason, rather than political decisions. Facts and reason have to be successfully shared to get everyone on side of course, so I hope that science communication is at least as effective in the coming years as scientific research.
My vote? Mr. Tyson and his colleagues should come up with something new that is more interesting, globalized and reasonable than our current New Year's Day. It should be tied to cosmic events, and communicated so that everyone understands why it's a better option. And, if we can all agree to eliminate the urgency for bullshit resolutions (while maintaining statutory holidays), even better.
