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Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

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Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#11
post #6

Since when do we assume everyone uses the same calendar?

Even the 12-hour system (vs 24-) is used by a relatively small minority of Earth's population.

The 12h and 24h system is essentially the same thing, no? In my country we use a 24h system in writing, but mainly a 12h system in speech.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#12
The single most complex component I have ever written in about 35 years of SW development was a scheduler to calculate the next instance in a set of overlaid periodic cycles, allowing for time zones, DST changes, leap year/centuries, etc, etc ... in Visual Basic no less!

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#13
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the 12-hour system (vs 24-) is used by a relatively small minority of Earth's population.

The 12h and 24h system is essentially the same thing, no? In my country we use a 24h system in writing, but mainly a 12h system in speech.

No post body was provided.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#14
That's a very funny dialog.

But ... the sexagesimal system made sense and I guess that, in ancient times, time periods that don't have patterns would always be divided arbitrarily (years can be marked with seasons, days with night, but how to divide the time between, say, mid-day and sunset?).

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#19
post #9

This would be better written in a short story format but I digress. This is precisely the type of thing that would probably happen in almost any society. There are many standards that pop up that are vestiges of one thing or another. The fact we get base 60 from Sumeria but use Base 12 or Base 24 for hours is not a big deal, weird things happen. I doubt any advanced alien would be just so flabbergasted over this. We…

Aliens are likely to view 12 or 60 as prettier numbers than 10 or 100. Try writing the multiplication tables in base 12 and you'll see how much nicer they are.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#20
post #17

Don't even go to those idiots over there who uses these weird units for measuring temperature, distance, weight and ugh volume... When we actually have this well designed system where everything fits beautifully together...

Yes, it's very strange that the English measure their weight in stone and pounds and their beer in pints.
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