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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

#641

Post by Buttons840 »

GoldenRacer wrote: post #270
drusepth wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In base 10, the times tables for 2 and 5 are easy because they divide 10. If I want 2*7, I know 7/5 is 1 remainder 2 so it's 10+2*2=14. As for 5x7, I know 7/2 is 3 remainder 1 so it's 30+1*5=35. In base 12, there are similarly easy rules for 2, 3, 4, and 6. Doesn't seem like that great of a trade off but it could be beneficial. That also just comes down to 12 being a "superior highly composite number". If I personall…

Another layer to this is that numbers one-off the factors have nice patterns too. For base 10 those are (2, to include the factors), 3, 4, (5), 6, and 9 sort-of, since it's one below 10. Just think how awkward 7 and 8 times tables were compared to the rest. With base 12 I found that all numbers, even 7 and 11, end up having usable patterns and are easier to count by. Of course, I'm still not used to having 12 digits, but on paper I could tell they would be pleasant to count by if I had learned base 12.

And an even deeper insight is that it doesn't really matter that much and isn't worth shaking up the whole world to change. We're not going to be better or worse at math because of our number base.

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

#643

Post by [deleted] »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #520
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…

just because something has historical reasons does mean it makes sence today. There is no reason for the Moon to have any place in a modern calendar. You already have 2 values: year and day, and they do not divide nicely. But they serve a practical purpose in a modern society, so we have to deal with them. The moon does not, but adds a third factor.

[deleted]

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

#644

Post by octobus2021 »

bsdetector wrote: post #503
octobus2021 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my point, if the workweek in US is Monday through Friday, and US weekend is Saturday and Sunday, there's NO REASON WHATSOEVER to call Sunday "the first day of the week"...

Think of it as "weekends" as in the limits of the week not "weekend" as in the last part of the week. In SMWTTFS the Saturday and Sunday are at the ends as in limits of the week, and furthermore it makes sense for there to be two "weekend" days like there are two bookends. In MWTTFSS Sunday is the only actual end of the week with Saturday being included just because(?) and Monday being "weekbegin", which isn't really…

Why would I think of a weekend not as a weekend but as weekendS, which is 2 days, one of which is the end and another is beginning? It's called weekend, as in the end which follows the week. Which therefore starts on Monday and ends on Sunday.

I mean I get it that Sunday being the first day of the week is a leftover from religious past but this does not make it any more logical when applied to the workweek/weekend cadence. Moreover, most of European countries where workweek starts on Monday already consider it the 1st day of the week, why can't US do the same and be done with it?

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

#645

Post by samatman »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #636
tomtomistaken wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a not-at-all neutral observation, you post an enormous amount, are obnoxious in your confidence, and frequently wrong.

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

#646

Post by IncRnd »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #497
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…

> Months have other gods's names: Janus, Phoebe, Mars, Aphrodite, Maya, Juno... January, March, and June are named for Janus, Mars, and Juno. February, April, and May are not known to be named for any god, nor is there any particular reason to believe they are.

> February, April, and May are not known to be named for any god, nor is there any particular reason to believe they are.

May is named after Maia, the goddess who oversees the growth of plants.

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

#647

Post by GolfPopper »

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…

I'd always thought (though I don't have a specific source I can recall), that the seven days of the week was drawn from the seven non-fixed celestial bodies visible ot the naked eye: the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The planets were frequently associated with and named after deities, so the days of the week also have the names of deities.

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

#648

Post by anjbe »

octobus2021 wrote: post #644
bsdetector wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it as "weekends" as in the limits of the week not "weekend" as in the last part of the week. In SMWTTFS the Saturday and Sunday are at the ends as in limits of the week, and furthermore it makes sense for there to be two "weekend" days like there are two bookends. In MWTTFSS Sunday is the only actual end of the week with Saturday being included just because(?) and Monday being "weekbegin", which isn't really…

Why would I think of a weekend not as a weekend but as weekendS, which is 2 days, one of which is the end and another is beginning? It's called weekend, as in the end which follows the week. Which therefore starts on Monday and ends on Sunday. I mean I get it that Sunday being the first day of the week is a leftover from religious past but this does not make it any more logical when applied to the workweek/weekend ca…

> Moreover, most of European countries where workweek starts on Monday already consider it the 1st day of the week, why can't US do the same and be done with it?

What benefit would we get from doing so? Metric I can understand the benefits of, though I also see why Americans are resistant implementing such a disruptive change in daily life. But shifting our definition of the week by one day provides no benefit that I can see, nor does keeping it the way it is cause any harm. The primary argument I’ve seen in these threads is “because the word ‘weekend’ doesn’t make sense,” but that’s not very convincing to me since I and every other American I know find the phrasing perfectly natural—and if we want to make the English vocabulary perfectly ‘logical’ and ‘consistent,’ there are far more disturbing malapropisms in common use to tackle first.

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

#649

Post by fritolaid »

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…

In Arabic, Sunday is Ahad (first) Monday is Ithnain (second) and so on until Friday which is Jum’a (gathering) and Sabit (comes from Sabbath I think?) as Saturday.

So the US is not the only country that considers Sunday to be the first day, etymologically speaking. I think the first day in the Middle East is Saturday because people work on that day (on Friday is a day off, unless things changed since the 70s)

…

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

#650

Post by nothrowaways »

ajuc wrote: post #298

So, for comparison - in Poland we use - 24 hour clock - days of the week are called "after not working day", "second day", "middle day", "fourth day", "fifth day", "sabbath", "not working day" - months are mostly named from the agricultural/weather phenomena "wood cutting month", "strong cold month", "Mars month", "flowers month", "Mai month", "red pigment larvae month", "linden trees month", "sickle month", "heather…

Looks cute.
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