You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform (2013)

Post by 082349872349872 » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 9:46 AM UTC

simias wrote: post #86

dragonwriter wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If hinkley is not American he might not so much be biased against country music as wholly ignorant about it. That's one of the few cultural aspects of American culture you haven't managed to successfully export abroad (alongside American Football and the Ambrosia "salad"). As a foreigner I'm definitely familiar with the songs hinkley talks about, while I have no idea what a country Christmas song even sounds like.

Post by qtplatypus » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 9:51 AM UTC

new_realist wrote: post #5

A time scheme in which sunrise is always at same time (skewing the clock by a few seconds or minutes every day at three a.m.) is likely a boon to human health. Smart watches and Alexa/Siri take care of time zone calculations. The fact that two dimensional time zones skew a bit more at the poles is a silly reason to dismiss the idea. The poles are weird for a bunch of other reasons and no time works there.

Post by jacobush » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 10:19 AM UTC

sdenton4 wrote: post #80

pjscott wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'?

Post by chrisseaton » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 10:43 AM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #92

tom_mellior wrote: post #85

> ( ) by that logic, 2000 was the final year of the Nineties I'm annoyed by this argument, which came up again at the start of this year in dumb Twitter discussions about whether 2020 marks the beginning of a new decade. 2000 was not the final year of the Nineties. 2000 was the final year of the second millennium, and of the 20th century, and of the tenth decade of the 20th century. The Nineties were the years 1990-1…

And yet people will say that 2000 is the beginning of the millenium, and 2020 is the beginning of a decade, because colloquially it's easier and understandable. And no amount of begging, pleading, or berating will change that (although it might get you punched in the face). That pope Gregory XIII neglected to include a year 0 in his calendar doesn't have to condemn us to suffer the mental gymnastics in our daily live…

Post by Razengan » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 11:14 AM UTC

jhanschoo wrote: post #63

Razengan wrote: post #20

Must a calendar only represent the physical positions of heavenly bodies? What happens after we propagate to other planets? Why should there be only one calendar? Why can’t we have, say, a Social Calendar alongside a Astronomical Calendar? We could have a sane, logical calendar with even and regular divisions for determining working days, holidays, financial calculations and political durations etc. And there could b…

Before considering abolishing the calendar perhaps consider abolishing DST, or the imperial system. The solar and lunar cycles, and day/night are important forces that life on earth have to work around; interplanetary civilization will not abolish the need for a calendar on Earth.