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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

#341

Post by int_19h »

bombcar wrote: post #249
int_19h wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it'd be called "weekends", not "weekend".

We don’t call it “nights” even though one is split over two days (before midnight and after).

Just call it "evening" if it's before midnight. That way you get four nicely subdivided periods.

00-06 - night

06-12 - morning

12-18 - afternoon

18-24 - evening

Would need to refactor the name of "midnight" tho to minimize confusion. But if we use it as a starting point to count hours in a day from, it doesn't make sense to simultaneously designate it as a middle of anything.

(BTW, such subdivision is actually common in many places of the world.)

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

#343

Post by Quekid5 »

bombcar wrote: post #249
int_19h wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it'd be called "weekends", not "weekend".

We don’t call it “nights” even though one is split over two days (before midnight and after).

I feel we've just rediscovered why appeals to grammar[0] don't actually solve much of anything. (Not saying you're appealing to grammar, just that grammar is generally not that useful for discerning... anything really.)

Anyway, to be a bit more substantive: What really baked my noodle when I was younger is the fact that the seasons and the night/day cycle are much more disconnected than it appears when you live on Earth. Of course, it makes sense when you understand the tilt/rotation thing, but still... it really weirds me out sometimes.

[0] English in this case, but any language, really.

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

#344

Post by glandium »

hunter2_ wrote: post #304
count wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both ends of the week are the weekend. One is the starting weekend, and the other the ending weekend.

Right, I (in the US) always figured "end" in the word "weekend" was akin to the two ends of a line segment, the two ends of a bar, etc. To instead think of "end" in the word "weekend" as the opposite of "start" is to use a completely different definition of the word "end". I wonder if "weekend" therefore has two definitions, given the split dependency.

It feels to me that for "end" to be used as the two ends of the week, it would be weekends (plural), not weekend (singular).

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

#345

Post by smsm42 »

octobus2021 wrote: post #63

This 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;

No, in Israel Sunday is the first day of the week too, because the weekend is Friday-Saturday (Shabbath). In Hebrew, though, the week days are named rather simply - except for Sabbath, they are just "Day 1" (Sunday), ..., "Day 6" (Friday). OTOH, that's exactly how they were numbered in the Bible, so...

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

#348

Post by latexr »

octobus2021 wrote: post #269
timbit42 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decimal system should have been the dozenal system but good luck getting people to switch from decimal to dozenal.

I don't know how many fingers you have, but decimal system makes more sense to me...

You can count to twelve on your hands just as easily. And that’s per hand. Numberphile explains: https://youtu.be/U6xJfP7-HCc?t=500

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

#349

Post by dwighttk »

throwaway06421 wrote: post #279
googlryas wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to hear the logic of why Monday should be the first day of the week.

What I find interesting is that many Americans consider themselves Christians and that will influence their decisions. So one argument can be made from that point of view (I'm not religious myself). In the Bible it says God designated the last day of the week as a day of rest. From a Christian point of view, it would make sense that Sunday is the last day of the week, as it is the official day of rest. Otherwise they…

If you’re interested… the reason Christians worship on Sunday is because Jesus was raised from the dead on the first day of the week. It wasn’t an immediate thing as at first almost all Christians were Jewish and continued the seventh day day of rest and gathering for worship.

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

#350

Post by Buttons840 »

drusepth wrote: post #43
Buttons840 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You have to fill out the table yourself to appreciate the patterns.
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