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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

#631

Post by mattigames »

jes5199 wrote: post #619
db48x wrote: post #596

The Qeng Ho in Deepness in the Sky had the right idea. They traveled from planet to planet in STL ships, and counted time purely in seconds. They had to account for relativity, but nothing else. A short task might take a kilosecond (about 16 minutes), a watch schedule might plan for activities covering a megasecond (close enough to a month for you and me), while a gigasecond is a good chunk of your life (32 years). "…

ah yes, "seconds", the "second minúte part of an hour", i.e. 1/60th of 1/60th of 1/24th of the average time it takes the Earth to rotate towards Sol. very sensible default.

Personally I vote for a new unity as a measure of time, the 10+e7 part of the speed of light, so the equivalent to 2.99792458 seconds, it's a sensible default in my opinion, perhaps also another new unity that is the third of that one, it would be very close to a second (in case the space travelers have practical applications to have such measure of time)

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

#632

Post by Maursault »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #32
ecshafer wrote: post #9

This would be better written in a short story format but I digress. This is precisely the type of thing that would probably happen in almost any society. There are many standards that pop up that are vestiges of one thing or another. The fact we get base 60 from Sumeria but use Base 12 or Base 24 for hours is not a big deal, weird things happen. I doubt any advanced alien would be just so flabbergasted over this. We…

Yeah, from what I understand, it's generally accepted that some rabble rouser called Yeshua existed, and later had followers who considered him to be holy.

> Yeah, from what I understand, it's generally accepted that some rabble rouser called Yeshua existed, and later had followers who considered him to be holy.

Except for where you start a sentence with "yeah," apparently answering in the affirmative a hypothetical question that no one has asked, and adding a superfluous and grammatically incorrect comma, you are vaguely correct.

Jesus is the English transliteration of a Germanic adaptation of the Latin transliteration of the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name Yeshua.

What is agreed upon by near universal scholarly consensus is instead that Jesus was baptized and crucified. But I personally believe it is a sure bet he also was a rouser of rabble, had a ministry, and was considered holy, as beyond the 10 or so natural holes he ultimately was given at least 4 additional holes.

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

#633

Post by el-salvador »

gerdesj wrote: post #306
fimdomeio wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portuguese name weekdays by numbers ex Monday, Segunda-feira (Second Market), but I don't think anyone assumes Sunday as the first day. And I leave the "market" for someone who still didn't have enough of this rabbit hole.

That sounds quite sensible. From memory, our (en_GB) weekdays are named like this: Monday -> Moon day Tuesday -> Tiw's day (Norse) Wednesday -> Woden's day (Norse - Odin - chief god, one eye, two ravens) Thursday -> Thor's day (Norse - god with a massive hammer) Friday -> Freya's day (Norse, rode a chariot drawn by cats) Saturday -> Saturn's day (Roman, also: Saturnalia is the winter festival that eventually became C…

> That sounds quite sensible. From memory, our (en_GB) weekdays are named like this:

Spanish and English follow a similar day naming convention.

But the god's name needs to be translated from Norse Mitology to Roman Mitology first [1]

Lunes/Monday -> Moon/Luna

Martes/Tuesday -> Tiw/Mars

Miercoles/Wednesday -> Woden/Mercury

Jueves/Thursday -> Thunraz/Jupiter

Viernes/Friday -> Frig/Venus

Sábado/Saturday -> Saturn/Saturno

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretatio_graeca

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

#635

Post by IncRnd »

coldtea wrote: post #541
lolinder wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> That seems to have negative connotations for most people that I didn't mean to convey. Not just "for most". It has negative connotations (of the kind reffered to here) for all people. "Legend" connotes "didn't take place".

A legend is a traditional story sometimes regarded as historical but isn't authenticated. You are saying that a legend is a story that is believed to be false. That is exactly opposite from the meaning of the word and is NOT something believed by "all people."

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

#636

Post by thaumasiotes »

tomtomistaken wrote: post #555
thaumasiotes wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also precisely set to follow seasons. For example, the first day of Fall is actually the first day of "Mehr" (the 7th month). For some reason, the Gregorian calendar has it on Sep. 22. This doesn't really work; the first day of Fall differs from place to place according to the specifics of the local climate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox

Why would that be considered the first day of Fall? Even taking a purely astronomical perspective, the autumnal equinox would be the center of Fall, not the beginning.

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

#637

Post by anjbe »

russdill wrote: post #23

Not looking forward to telling them that we named our home planet planet dirt

There’s a good exchange in the classic video game Star Control 2 (now open source, available in most package managers as “uqm”), when the player encounters a species of plant‐like alien:

>> I am Captain Zelnick from Earth. We come in peace.

> I am Captain Ala‐la’la. We come in peace.

>> Our starship is called Vindicator.

> Our starship is called the Tender Shoot.

>> We are the New Alliance of Free Stars from Earth.

> We are the Supox Utricularia from Earth.

>> You’re from Earth??? Hey! Are you just copying whatever I say?

> Oh yes, we apologize for the confusion, our homeworld is also called ‘Earth’, or more properly ‘Vlik’, which means ‘Perfectly Good and Nutritious Dirt’. ‘Earth’ is pretty close, is it not?

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

#638

Post by throwawaygulf »

foone wrote: post #326
camdenlock wrote: post #74

Sounds like a person who thinks they know better than everyone else, that the tradeoffs accumulated in a system are just arbitrary and worthless. “Tear it all down, I can build something MUCH better!” I look forward to the day when this person’s wishes to not be shared on HN are granted in full.

yeah, same. they really need to be blocked from HN, permanently.

No post body was provided.

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

#639

Post by Morgawr »

fomine3 wrote: post #624
Morgawr wrote: post #539

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; Just adding to the rest of the responses but Japan also has a very... contrived relationship with what counts as "the beginning of the week" and most people would say Sunday is that day.

N=1: No, Monday is that day and I believe I'm majority, despite many Japanese calendars are beginning with Sunday

I can only talk about the people I personally know and I've asked this question myself (because it's funny and interesting from a cultural perspective) and most people I asked said "Sunday", although as I said it's not set in stone.
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