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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

#431

Post by drekipus »

simonh wrote: post #262
narag wrote: post #133

Earlier 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…

The point of comical absurdities like this is precisely that they appear comical or absurd if you don’t know the reasons for them being the way they are. That doesn’t mean there are no reasons, it’s just that those reasons aren’t necessary or even relevant to appreciating the apparent absurdity.

Many people going to read this thread and think "yes, everything is completely backwards and nonsensical, I hate all forms of historical traditions and reasoning"

I'm also making a comical absurdity just fyi. Do people like this exist? I don't know

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

#432

Post by gurumeditations »

Thorentis wrote: post #360

> He's written about in a famous book but historical records are spotty Don't want to start a religious debate, but it really annoys me when for some reason, multiple documents that were later compiled into a book are not historical documents, just because they were treated as religious texts by the church councils 300 years later. The Bible isn't a book that Christians all sat down and wrote. It's a collection of ma…

Biblical books are biased to assert Jesus existed as they describe him. There are no neutral historical records to prove he specifically existed. Besides, your “historical documents” contain competing narratives of events with each other, supernatural magic, and exist as part of a handpicked religious narrative that left other books out at that.

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

#433

Post by mcv »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #70
kevinmchugh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In NZ, all legal weights and measures are metric, yet for some stubbornly cultural reason we still tend to discuss height in feet and inches (ladies on dating apps who are discriminating on height will specify that you need to be 6 foot, not 183cm) the weight of a newborn baby in pounds (but only for newborn babies!), and order our beer in pints, which generally means "a large glass of beer somewhere between 400 and…

I feel like I need to specify that the Dutch sometimes coloquially also use pounds and ounces, but Dutch pounds are exactly 500 grams and Dutch ounces 100 grams.

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

#434

Post by [deleted] »

chrisseaton wrote: post #420
skipants wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Winnipeg originally and considered Sunday the first day of the week. Maybe it's regional or cultural?

What does it even mean to consider Sunday the first day of the week? What does it change?

[deleted]

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

#435

Post by Ensorceled »

chrisseaton wrote: post #420
skipants wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Winnipeg originally and considered Sunday the first day of the week. Maybe it's regional or cultural?

What does it even mean to consider Sunday the first day of the week? What does it change?

Every. Single. Calendar.

If you’re in Ontario, you’ll rarely see a paper calendar that isn’t SMTWTFS

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

#436

Post by lolinder »

jfk13 wrote: post #412
lolinder wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That article says "it is unclear when the Romans reset the course of the year so that January and February came first", but doesn't actually deny that the year formerly ended with February. See for example p.187 of https://ryanfb.github.io/loebolus-data/L333.pdf for a 1st century BC reference to it: > The Terminalia 'Festival of Terminus,' because this day is set as the last day of the year; for the twelfth month was…

To be clear, I'm not denying that it was the first month at some point. It wasn't when Caesar designed his calendar, and we don't have a record of it changing. I refer to it as a legend not to indicate that it isn't true but to indicate that the only sources we have are referring to it as changing sometime in the distant past.

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

#437

Post by Izkata »

chrisweekly wrote: post #389
retrac wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"Sat and Sun constitute the weekEND, right?" "Of course." "And Sunday is the 7th day, the day of rest?" "Yeah, that's what they preach at my church." "What about your workplace?" "Everybody knows the standard workweek is Mon-Fri. What's your point?" "Ok, so we're agreed the weekends include Sunday, your Bible says Sunday is the 7th day, and the workweek starts on Monday." "Yep." "So printed calendars and day-planners…

We also have "bookends" which go on both sides of the books they support. That's kinda how I see "weekends".

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

#439

Post by nulbyte »

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…

> 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.

Depends on the Christian. If you mean the Puritans, from whom present-day prescriptions (such as no or limited alcohol sales on Sunday) derive, you may be on to something. If you mean the Sabbatarians, no doubt they have an explanation, but I don't know it. If you mean a Seventh-Day Adventist, you'd be wrong, because they still hold to Saturday as the seventh-day and the sabbath. If you mean a Catholic or one from another denomination, the Catholic catechism teaches that Sunday is the fulfillment of the spiritual truth of the Jewish sabbath, and most other denominations understand similarly.

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

#440

Post by Symbiote »

smsm42 wrote: post #310
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…

Colloquially, lot of places use 12h - it's always "we're going to the restaurant at 8", never "at 20" or "at 20:00", at least in the countries I've lived or visited. But officially it's still 24h - which may be more confusing or less confusing, depending on your point of view. And times (with timezones, and leap seconds, and DST, and so on) add another level of fun to it.

There are certainly countries where a translation of "16 o'clock" or similar is the default way to say that time.

France is one I'm familiar with.

In Britain, people reading out an important time presented in 24h format (like when discussing booking a flight) will usually read it out as fifteen thirty etc.

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