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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

#41

I saw when i was in Japan a various billboards marking a 25 hour service I thought it was some kind of mistake but apparently they call 1 am the hour 25...I think I saw it in Okinawa

Hour 25 is 1 am on the next day, which is 25 hours from midnight of the reference day.

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

#42
Dates are one of the first standards through which humans discovered https://xkcd.com/927/.

Standards simple and useful enough to be used in everyday conversation die with their users. So I don't know anyone who keeps track of the Republican calendar, but I _do_ know people who are celebrating New Year's tonight. And the English still drink beer in pints.

It would only be simpler to use the Republican Calendar in a vacuum. Practically, all us programmers would spend all our time converting dates between Georgian and Republican dates, and I'd have to look at my ID to know my birthdate.

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

#43
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.

Here's the base 12 multiplication tables: https://math.tools/table/multiplication/base/12

It doesn't look more or less nice to me than the base 10 version. Can you describe what is supposed to make it look nicer, especially to aliens?

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

#44
post #5
post #3

Our calendar and timekeeping is what you get when you keep a system continuously operational and backwards capable over tens of thousands of years.

First recorded instance of spaghetti code?

Exactly what I was thinking! It'd be interesting to see this as a git log (maybe with different branches for different cultures)

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

#45
I always thought it would make sense to have 52 weeks (364 days) and then a special New Years day and then repeat 52 weeks.

This way every year is the same. It's always the same day of the week on April's 13th. No moving holidays. Easier to plan. No adjusting schedules. No problem with leap seconds/days (just as them to the special day whenever).

It just seems like a simple and superior solution. What were those guys thinking...

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

#46
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…

the historical record of someone named Jesus existing isn't debated by any historical scholar

It is debated by people like Richard Carrier https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEB&search_query=richard... who says that (IIRC) while it's not unlikely that one or several people with similar messages preached in Judea 2000 years ago, the Jesus of the Bible looks like a literary invention when you go back to all the earliest records in Christian and non-Christian (e.g. Roman) sources.

*Edit* now that I got downvoted for mentioning Richard Carrier I'd very much like to hear about substantialized criticism about his work. Any pointers?

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

#47

Since when do we assume everyone uses the same calendar?

The look on an American's face when you describe something as being "a fortnight away"

Not sure what that has to do with calendars. Fortnight is just one of many measurements that aren't used a lot in the US (among other places) these days so I wouldn't expect the average person on the street to immediately recognize what it means. There are a ton of imperial measurements that aren't widely used like pecks, bushels, rods, etc.

(I'd also avoid terminology like bi-monthly and semi-monthly as it's a predictable point of confusion.)

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

#48
>"YOUR CALENDAR IS BASED ON A RELIGIOUS LEADER THAT NOT EVERYONE BELIEVES IN?"

Instead of taking the opportunity to make a holier-than-thou twitter rant the would-be probee would do better to reply to this by explaining that almost every religion and many cultures have one or more of their own.

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

#49

October, for Octogon, meaning the 8th month, is the 10th month. And Dec for 10 meaning December is the 12th Month. Going by the Roman system, March is the 1st month bu we've decided to make it the 3rd month today and offset everything else.

septem, octo, novem, decimus is latin for the numbers 7, 8, 9, 10.

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

#50

I saw when i was in Japan a various billboards marking a 25 hour service I thought it was some kind of mistake but apparently they call 1 am the hour 25...I think I saw it in Okinawa

As far as I know, that's actually used, when something starts in the "old" day and continues into the "new" day.

Aliens are taking notes
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