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You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform (2013)

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Re: You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform (2013)

#71

Post by mhh__ »

hinkley wrote: post #70
mhh__ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with do they know it's Christmas?

Go listen to it right now, but first imagine that you are tired of colonialism and exceptionalism from the West. It is a condescending song, even without perhaps the worst line in charity history: Well, tonight thank god it’s them, instead of you. I had forgotten that line was in the song until I heard it again years later. What. The. Fuck. Worse, this line is belted out by Bono, with an unusually tight closeup in hi…

As I have said elsewhere, it was written in 5 minutes on the back of napkin. The point was making money for charity, which it did. For that reason I doubt Geldof or Bono care.

And that line is condescending to the listener, surely. It's clearly not actually saying thank God it's not you.

If they had more time Midge Ure probably would've written something a bit less crap but they didn't.

Re: You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform (2013)

#72

Post by dragonwriter »

dhosek wrote: post #50
munk-a wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US copyright terms: Pre-Mickey Mouse: Expired Post-Mickey Mouse: Copyrighted for eternity.

Disney finally gave up that fight. Barring a last minute lobbying effort, Steamboat Willie will be in the public domain on 1 January 2023. Of course the trademarks on Mickey Mouse will be valid in perpetuity.

> Barring a last minute lobbying effort,

There's always a last-minute lobbying effort.

Re: You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform (2013)

#74

Post by progval »

efitz wrote: post #47

I advocate a solution similar to proposals floated years ago on alt.pave.the.earth on UseNet. 1. Disintegrate the moon, anyone who has ever advocated for lunar calendars, and anyone who fails to convincingly support this Plan(tm), converting their mass to energy that we can use for productive purposes such as orbital adjustments. 2. Adjust the rotational period of the earth to an aesthetically pleasing multiple of th…

> ( ) planetary-scale engineering is impractical

Re: You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform (2013)

#75

Post by dragonwriter »

hinkley wrote: post #15
irrational wrote: post #6

If the USA can’t convert to metric, despite passing laws to that affect, my belief that the world will adopt a new calendar system is less than non-existent.

I hate to scapegoat, but there are a bunch of odd things the US does because boomers like things the way they've always been. Why were a bunch of new Christmas songs written 60 years ago and barely a song a decade has been added to the repertoire since? George Michael is dead, and Mariah Carey seemed touch and go for a while, and those are pretty much the last two people to create a successful Christmas song (and the…

> Why were a bunch of new Christmas songs written 60 years ago and barely a song a decade has been added to the repertoire since?

You are factually incorrect, and i suspect biased against country music, which is disproportionately (but not exclusively) where new original-and-popular Christmas music has come from.

Re: You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform (2013)

#76

Post by alex_young »

kibwen wrote: post #2

> your name for the thirteenth month is questionable In my plan for twelve 30-day months, I intended to call the leftover 5/6 days "Etcember", for et cetera. :P (This submission appears to be a riff on the classic "Programming Language Checklist": https://www.famicol.in/language_checklist.html )

This sounds like the French Revolutionary Calendar: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar

Re: You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform (2013)

#77

Post by msla »

isidor3 wrote: post #3

> having one or two days per year which are part of no month is stupid > having one or two days per year with no day of the week is asinine These don't sound like real reasons to me. If it costs having a 13th month with just a few days in it or a NO_DAY_OF_WEEK constant in my DAYS_OF_WEEK enum, I'd take it if it meant all of the weirdness was limited to a few days always located at the end of the year. Sounds like a…

> These don't sound like real reasons to me.

They are if you have to write date-handling code or, worse, use the date-handling code of others.

Date-handling code is hard enough without NULLs.

Re: You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform (2013)

#78

Post by msla »

dhosek wrote: post #49
taveras wrote: post #35

If you are interested in calendar reform and enjoy world history, the French Revolutionary calendar is fascinating to read about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar

I used to use a bastardized version of this on our team calendar on the whiteboard at work (just the month/year, ignoring the fact that French Republican months don't correspond neatly to Gregorian months). I was able to get away with it because the month/year were not really functional parts of the calendar. I doubt I could have gotten the team to fully adopt the French Republican calendar, although it would have be…

Your next Death March might have lead to a Thermidorian Reaction.

Re: You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform (2013)

#79

Post by ajuc »

hinkley wrote: post #70
mhh__ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with do they know it's Christmas?

Go listen to it right now, but first imagine that you are tired of colonialism and exceptionalism from the West. It is a condescending song, even without perhaps the worst line in charity history: Well, tonight thank god it’s them, instead of you. I had forgotten that line was in the song until I heard it again years later. What. The. Fuck. Worse, this line is belted out by Bono, with an unusually tight closeup in hi…

The problem with charities like that is that they fill coffers of some corrupt middleman instead of the intended recipients, and even when this doesn't happen - they disrupt functional businesses in Africa by random price-dumping so you cannot plan years ahead because westerners can just flood your market for a year with free stuff out of the blue.

All the countries that went from developing to developed - did this not because of charity, but because of globalisation and business. The only charity that seemed to help was reduction of debt and cheap money for investment.

The song isn't a problem compared to that.

And BTW most of the condescending meaning is infered by western listeners. I'd like to hear the opinion of people from Africa, because often this kind of outrage on behalf of someone is a self-fulfilling prophesy:

"I think Africa is backward, poor and unhappy and there's nothing you can do - therefore when you sing about that it's rude, because you are pointing out the thing that can't be helped, like pointing a finger at a person on a wheelchair".

But if the song was about some poor part of USA you wouldn't have that problem, because you would assume it's temporary thing that will get fixed. And even if not - all these people can just move to other state, right?

Well maybe the problem is with your assumptions? People don't usually think of themselves as a lost cause.

Re: You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform (2013)

#80

Post by sdenton4 »

pjscott wrote: post #55
LeoPanthera wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which in turn is a riff on the "spam solutions" checklist: https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt

I remember seeing that posted often, back when email spam was a big problem, and it always bothered me. Whenever people were discussing possible fixes, someone would post that checklist -- and you could always find some way to apply the checklist, even if it was just by invoking the generic "Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches" objection. Every sophisticated person knew that the email spam problem…

Was there a checkbox for: 'capture a significant part of the market for All Email and use it to build a graph that you can use for bayesian classification'?
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