They forgot summer- and wintertime, and leap seconds.
Oh and afaik only some english speaking countries use AM/PM, the rest of the world uses the 24h based system doesn't it?
Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
241–250 of 1001 posts
Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#242In fact all of these points have valid reasons which simply reflect some form of cruft. For instance, until Caesar February was the last month of the year, so there was an intercalation of a month of varying length every two years(which made more sense). Also, the months September, October, November, December actually were the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months of the year. And all the months were 30 days (actually alternatively 29 and 31 days), but the mensis intercalaris which was either 22 or 23 days.
Julius Caesar changed this because during the Civil wars of the late Republic, many times there was no Great Pontiff to do the calculations, so the additional month were left out a few times and the calendar was really getting out of sync. He changed the beginning of the year from the Spring solstice to January 1st, because that was the day of the consular election (and the consuls were elected for one year, so that made more sense as the years were named from the consuls that were elected).
As for the birth of Jesus, we now know that it must be off by a few years. But originally, it was just the best guess they could come with; once it was found that Jesus actually wasn't born when initially thought, well, tough luck, it simply stayed as it was because it was too difficult to change after centuries of counting this way already.
Regarding the use of base 60 for time, it made sense because it allows matching the course of the Sun and the Moon across the year (about 360 days), across the month (lunar month is 29.5 days) and the day. That's also why we cut circles in 360°: to allow for easy astronomical calculation (by approximating the year to 360 days, the lunation to 30 days), and splitting the day and night into 12 hours.
Notice that until the invention of mechanical clocks, there was 12 hours a day and 12 hours a night, therefore hours were of varying length depending upon seasons, but OTOH using a sundial was dead simple -- which made sense when you had sundials, but no clocks...
Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#243This is absolutely hilarious, and despite being long form, fits Twitter format very well, with each chunk funnier than the last :) A few notes: - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week; - US (and maybe one or two English-speaking countries) are the only ones using 12h time, the rest of the world uses 24hrs, however 12h _sometimes_ is…
The Swatch time is a variation on the fractional day. Astronomers use it, with .00 being noon and .50 being midnight. You can extend it to any precision you like, 1/100,000th of a day makes for a good 'decimal second.'
I like knowing what percentage of the day is over, a friend of mine says it'd drive her crazy knowing exactly how much time gets wasted.
Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#244This is absolutely hilarious, and despite being long form, fits Twitter format very well, with each chunk funnier than the last :) A few notes: - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week; - US (and maybe one or two English-speaking countries) are the only ones using 12h time, the rest of the world uses 24hrs, however 12h _sometimes_ is…
Sunday is the first day of the week in Israel, not just on paper but very much in practice. I know this because Israelis I worked with will be unavailable on Friday but they will start emailing you Sunday morning.
Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly I didn't find it funny, maybe because it ignores the reasons of the inconsistencies, that by the way are perfectly understandable looking at space. Months are related to Moon's orbit, weeks to its phases. Months have other gods's names: Janus, Phoebe, Mars, Aphrodite, Maya, Juno... Julius and Augustus were emperors and from that point are just numerals, starting at March. It was associated with Mars because…
Quoted post unavailable.
Why is it unacceptable to you for someone to explain why they do not find something funny?
We are really not all the same. HN is a big old forum and there is no such thing as a normal response.
That person was describing their personal reaction to ... something. I don't think that proscribing dogma is helpful in response.
Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#246This is absolutely hilarious, and despite being long form, fits Twitter format very well, with each chunk funnier than the last :) A few notes: - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week; - US (and maybe one or two English-speaking countries) are the only ones using 12h time, the rest of the world uses 24hrs, however 12h _sometimes_ is…
> Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;
First day of the working week is Sunday in Nepal. I assume they consider Sunday the start of the week, but I'm not Nepalese. This is just a random fact I remember from visiting.
Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#247> "At the start of the year?" > "nah. The end of the second month" > "WHY WOULD IT BE THE SECOND MONTH?" Because leap day is at the end of the year, but at some time we moved the start of the year two months back (same reason why September through December now are the ninth through twelfth month of the year, not the seventh through tenth) (Historically, I think it was slightly different. February, the last month of t…
It was the Romans who inserted a leap month inside February between the 23rd and 24th. Since the two consuls ruled on alternating months, adding an extra month after February would give one consul one more ruling month, making it somewhat unfair. Since leap years were handled irregularly back then, they were leap months, not leap days. The Julian calendar introduced the leap day instead, and maintained it in February…
>Before that, they had had names equal to fifth and sixth month, respectively, like September comes from seventh.
Now, do i google, duckduckgo, or bing, what those months were called?
Fifth collumism? Sexism?
Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#248This is absolutely hilarious, and despite being long form, fits Twitter format very well, with each chunk funnier than the last :) A few notes: - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week; - US (and maybe one or two English-speaking countries) are the only ones using 12h time, the rest of the world uses 24hrs, however 12h _sometimes_ is…
> Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week /Officially/ almost everyone has standardized on ISO 8601 where Monday = 1 and Sunday = 7. But unofficially, not really. The week is still popularly understood to start on Sunday in English Canada, and probably some other parts of the English-speaking world. A quick check of Wikipedia suggests…
> .. considers Sunday to be the first day of the week
How can the first day of the week happen in the middle of the weekend!?!
Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#249Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was the Romans who inserted a leap month inside February between the 23rd and 24th. Since the two consuls ruled on alternating months, adding an extra month after February would give one consul one more ruling month, making it somewhat unfair. Since leap years were handled irregularly back then, they were leap months, not leap days. The Julian calendar introduced the leap day instead, and maintained it in February…
>Before that, they had had names equal to fifth and sixth month, respectively, like September comes from seventh. Now, do i google, duckduckgo, or bing, what those months were called? Fifth collumism? Sexism?
Quintilis and Sextilis are their names.