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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

#461

Post by walrus01 »

behnamoh wrote: post #451
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…

As a Persian, I always found the Gregorian calendar weird. In Iran and some other countries, Jalali calendar is used which is much more straightforward: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalali_calendar The Iranian calendar (also known as Persian calendar or the Jalaali Calendar) is a solar calendar currently used in Iran and Afghanistan. It is observation-based, rather than rule-based, beginning each year on the vernal…

For what it's worth many early European cultures also considered the start of the year to be at the start of spring, generally the same idea as Nowruz, which is where we got Easter from as a conglomeration of "pagan" rituals and Christian religion. Unfortunately we ended up with this weird Dec. 31st at the end of a year in the middle of winter which doesn't make any logical sense.

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

#463

Post by lolinder »

kgwgk wrote: post #454
lolinder wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the oldest Roman calendar, which the Romans believed to have been instituted by their legendary founder Romulus, March was the first month, and the calendar year had only ten months in all. Ianuarius and Februarius were supposed to have been added by Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, originally at the end of the year. It is unclear when the Romans reset the course of the year so that January and February…

Maybe Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November and December were the seventh, eight, ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth months of the year through all of the “recorded Roman history”. But it seems well accepted that they were once the fifth, sixth, seventh, eight, ninth and tenth months of the year.

In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have referred to it as a legend. That seems to have negative connotations for most people that I didn't mean to convey.

I really don't doubt the authenticity of the story, I mainly was trying to indicate that we don't know when the change occurred but it certainly happened a long time before Caesar: by his day, the change was an oral tradition whose full story was lost in the very distant past.

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

#464

Post by gerdesj »

mattl wrote: post #421
gerdesj wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't just throw dice or march in, see what's what and grab the locals by the nadgers. JC was quite a chap and of course why its called the Julian Calendar. Many other calendars are available. Kalends is the source of the name for calendar and the Roman day of month counting is pretty involved - http://www.polysyllabic.com/?q=calhistory/earlier/roman/kale... Kalends, nones and ides. JS died on the ides of March .…

JS died how?

Et tu Brute? He was murdered in the Senate.

The cut and thrust of political discussion was rather more forthright back then.

To be fair, we've chopped off the heads of King Charles hereabouts. I'm sure III has nothing to worry about.

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

#465

Post by kgwgk »

Pigalowda wrote: post #409
AmericanChopper wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Caesar designed the calendar, how did he get a month in there named after something that hadn’t happened yet? When Caesar died Augustus’ name was Octavian, and Rome hadn’t had an emperor yet…

Are you messing around? Octavius became Julius Caesar after he was adopted. And also later he was given the honorable designation by the senate and called Augustus. That’s not his name its one of his honors. Octavian is essentially a past tense of his name and he never truly went by that. It’s a name used by historians.

> Octavius became Julius Caesar after he was adopted.

Gaius Julius Caesar

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

#466

Post by rsynnott »

IRP wrote: post #427

I would expect a alien calendar to be as complicated as ours. The calendar we use is the result of a long and rich history. Their would likely be as complicated, especially if there are part of a tree sun's system.

We largely dumped the long and rich and annoying history for most things _other_ than time, though, with metrication. It's arguably surprising that time survived that.

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

#468

Post by jaza »

ysavir wrote: post #213
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…

> A quick check of Wikipedia suggests Arabic, Portuguese and Vietnamese, all use number-based systems to name the days of the week, and they are indexed from Sunday = 1. I can confirm that in Hebrew, the name for Sunday translates into "First Day", Monday into "Second Day", etc. Except for Saturday, which is Shabat.

Shabbat (apart from meaning "rest") is also generally accepted as deriving from the Hebrew word for "seven", which is "sheva". And Shabbat is sometimes referred to in Hebrew as "yom shvi-i" ("seventh day").

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

#469

Post by rsynnott »

rvba wrote: post #460

The author also does not mention that there is no year 0. So when Jesus was born, he was 0 years old, but it was already year 1. When Jesus was 20 it was allready year 21. Ignoring discussions if Jesus existed or not... lack of year zero is illogical. Maybe they did it to not have year minus zero? Which also should be there tbh.

To further complicate the issue, Jesus was born between 6 and 4BC, in any case. And in either winter or summer, depending on whether you happen to be Christian or Muslim.

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

#470

Post by marcodiego »

Wait until we explain the year 2038 problem:

  "Se we use an epoch because of a famous operating system"
  "oh, that thing that runs computers right"
  "yeah"
  "and what base do you use the represent a date on you computers? 10, 12, 60?"
  "2".
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