Hanke is indeed a radical, but one on a rational mission. The son of a watchmaker, he craves precise measurements. He wants to shred our current Gregorian calendar, adopted in the 16th century, and replace its messy floating dates and leap years with clocklike regularity. Under the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar, developed with Johns Hopkins physics and astronomy professor Richard Conn-Henry, every January 1 falls on a Monday. Each day of each month maintains its position year after year. Your birthday would always fall on the same day of the week. Never again would you need to buy a new Curious Kittens wall calendar. Imagine the eternal surety: “You would know, every Wednesday, forever, that the Baltimore Orioles will be playing the Toronto Blue Jays, and that’s it,” Hanke says.

The Hanke-Henry system would ground floating holidays like Memorial and Labor days. In addition, the grid pins Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve on Sundays, nixing time (and money) wasted wrestling with year-end schedules. “A positive pop in GDP growth,” Hanke muses.