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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

#371

Post by lolinder »

superjan wrote: post #182
comeonbro wrote: post #170

I didn't appreciate until recently that the calendar we live by today was personally designed by Julius Caesar. Like not by some forgotten technocrats incidentally during his time, but Julius Caesar himself as a subject matter expert, as a side-project. With consultation, certainly, but by his initiative, from long-standing engagement with the problem in one of his early jobs from long before he was a main character…

And in that calender, February is the last month, which makes it the logical month for adjusting leap years.

It looks like there's a legend that this was the case, but January has been the first month of the year through all of recorded history, and Julius Caesar's version was no different.

EDIT: Because there's a lot of confusion in several replies I thought I'd clarify: February was the second month in Julius Caesar's calendar. Romans in the Republic describe the month as being at some point the last month in the calendar, but we don't have any direct record of that. That's what I mean when I refer to it as a legend: it's a story that later Romans tell about their distant past. It is probably accurate but the sources are too far removed from the actual event to be treated as primary sources.

This is true of Roman history in general: any story that dates back to the kings should be treated as a legend that Romans told about their past. It may have elements of the truth, but shouldn't be taken as firm fact. This particular legend has a lot of evidence going for it, but that doesn't make it inaccurate to refer to it as a legend.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Februarius

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

#373

Post by mcv »

dageshi wrote: post #119
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.

Mostly because Saturday and Sunday are collectively known as the weekend and it doesn't make a lot of sense to start the week in the middle of what everyone agrees is the end of the week.

I think it's a bit naive to expect sense from anything related to dates and times at this point. It's all just accumulated history, and historically, Sunday has always been the first day of the week, no matter what people today think about it.

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

#374

Post by butwhywhyoh »

113 wrote: post #315
leto_ii wrote: post #122

Couldn't this whole thread just be condensed to: we have a thing called culture which is not completely rational or efficient? I'm sure the aliens would get that - they would probably have something similar, albeit with different irrationalities and inefficiencies.

That would be significantly less funny and interesting.

It would be exactly as funny and exactly as interesting, which is to say: not very.

This is right up there with noticing that sometimes the "b" in certain English words is completely silent! Haha isn't that totally irrational and crazy you guys??

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

#375

Post by chungy »

12baad4db82 wrote: post #165
llanowarelves wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The metric "interface" has nice "round" numbers, but the implementation idk: "In the SI, the standard metre is defined as exactly 1/299,792,458 of the distance that light travels in a second." "The kilogram was originally defined as the mass of one cubic decimetre of water at 4 °C, standardized as the mass of a man-made artefact of platinum-iridium held in a laboratory in France, which was used until a new definition…

Not sure what you are trying to say with your quoted phrases. There was an issue with the standard for the Kilogram, which was recognised then corrected by introducing a definition which is based on physically measurable phenomenon. The new approach allows independent experiments to derive the value of the Kilogram. That seems to me like a process that works, and I struggle to think of a better outcome.

> Not sure what you are trying to say with your quoted phrases.

That the metric system is just as arbitrary as the customary units. Things like the meter and (kilo)gram were based on arbitrary objects rather than anything objective. They've since been redefined using physical constants to come close enough to the old reference objects. (And the US customary units are officially defined as exact fractions from the SI units -- making the whole world happy to have exact measurements regardless of the system you use.)

At least the customary units have nice divisors. Just saying.

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

#376

Post by ben_ »

LukeShu wrote: post #364
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…

> May be the author got tired (or whatever he took started to wear off) The author uses they/them pronouns. And more likely their ADHD episode started to wear down, rather than something they took started to wear off.

No post body was provided.

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

#377

Post by permo-w »

comeonbro wrote: post #170

I didn't appreciate until recently that the calendar we live by today was personally designed by Julius Caesar. Like not by some forgotten technocrats incidentally during his time, but Julius Caesar himself as a subject matter expert, as a side-project. With consultation, certainly, but by his initiative, from long-standing engagement with the problem in one of his early jobs from long before he was a main character…

I’m unsure how commonly known this is, but also note that July and August are named after Julius Caesar and Emperor Augustus

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

#378

Post by mcv »

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…

No, the biblical day of rest is the Sabbath, the Saturday. The fact that most Christians keep the first day of the week instead of the last day is because Jesus rose from death on the first day of the week.

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

#379

Post by jameshart »

octobus2021 wrote: post #297
CogitoCogito wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s totally arbitrary (as well as totally immaterial) whether the week starts on Sunday or Monday (or any other day for that matter). The fact that the US does it differently than many other countries really isn’t a big deal. Your downvotes show the whole bike shedding nature of the issue. The debate is so contentious because the stakes are so low.

I'm honestly not sure what "bike shedding" is but numerical values for days of the week very much count when building any software containing calendars (or any dates really) to make sure it works properly in different geographic regions.

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