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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

#651

Post by duskwuff »

cafed00d wrote: post #525

Wait a minute: someday the aliens are going to land and we gotta explain our calendar, sure. Or, _we_ don’t. Someon—- pardon me —- _Something_ has to explain it to them. That thing is gonna say: “yeah, the epoch is our earliest known ancestor’s origin. Those animals call it ‘Unix time’. We have a record of their hieroglyphic form: January 1 1970”

To riff on a bit from A Deepness in the Sky:

"We thought they were measuring from when their species first travelled to their homeworld's moon, but the point of reference is actually around fifteen megaseconds later. No idea why."

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

#652

Post by IncRnd »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #419
chrisweekly wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

"Sat and Sun constitute the weekEND, right?" It's called a bookEND only if it's to the right of the row of books. If it's to the left (for books in an RTL language), we call it a bookSTART

There are two bookends in every matching set - one for each end of the row of books.

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

#653

Post by irrational »

ivlad wrote: post #595
irrational wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of weekend is quite a recent development. https://youtu.be/zhfpBW-nUWk The concept of Sunday as the first day of the week dates back thousands of years.

Why is this important? Maybe it was, but the ISO standard now is that Sunday is the last day of the week.

I was responding to the post above mine and not to the topmost post.

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

#654

Post by rodric »

el-salvador wrote: post #633
gerdesj wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/Satur…

With the exception of Saturday. Tacitus associated the Hebrew sabbath («sábado») with Saturn, but the word for the day itself is not «saturno» as it would be if it were like English.

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

#655

Post by anjbe »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #627
Terretta wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No reason other than some 6000-7000 years of record keeping by Hebrews, tracking the 7th day.

The Hebrew calendar kept changing as they moved and adapted the calendar designed by the ruler of the lands. Hebrew words for the week came from Akkadian and sabbath itself can be traced back to the Babylonian loan word for fifteen..mistaken as seven. šabattu is the 15th day of the month, the time of the full moon Vs “sebūtu“ was the 7th day of the lunar quarter. The Akkadians had no concept of ‘week’. They simply fo…

I’ve seen this theory proposed, but is it actually widely accepted by historians? Wikipedia says that a connection “has been suggested”[0], which doesn’t seem like very strong wording.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat

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

#656

Post by retrocryptid »

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…

The US, Canada, China, Japan and most of South America. Oh. And the Phillipines consider Sunday the beginning of the week. And someone just shouted at me that Israel considers Sunday the beginning of the week, but that seems unlikely to me.

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

#657

Post by IncRnd »

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…

Friday literally means Day of Frigg (Old English), referring to Frigga, the wife of Odin. Yes, Freya is believed to be the same goddess as Frigga, but the day is named after Frigga not Freya.

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

#658

Post by rodric »

miniwark wrote: post #406
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…

Because it's about a books who explain than at last, two people can come back from death... days after it. Historians have doubts about this (and other weird events from this books) and therefore do not keep this specifics book as very credible sources. That said, no real historian actually doubt of the historical existence of the famous religious leader from the past.

It is certainly a minority position, but some historians and scholars of religion do see reason for doubt: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/21420

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

#659

Post by registeredcorn »

>"uh, it's supposed to be the birth of a religious leader, but they got the math wrong so it's off by 4 years, if he existed at all."

>"if? You based your calendar off the birth date of someone you're not sure exists?"

>"yeah. He's written about in a famous book but historical records are spotty."

I'm not sure why there is such a persistent meme about questioning Jesus' existence.

Certainly, not everyone will believe in the things that He did, nor do I expect them to believe it. However, even among some of the most diehard Atheist Historians, to claim that Christ never existed is something that is easily disproved. See: Dr. Bart D. Ehrman (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43mDuIN5-ww) Keep in mind, Dr. Ehrman is probably one of the most outspoken Atheists critical of both New and Old Testament theology.

There are Atheist celebrities like Dawkins, Hitchens, or Harris, who get a lot of press and coverage, but as far as "In the weeds" detail-oriented historical and archeological debates on up-to-date understanding of the ancient world? Dr. Ehrman is probably in the top 1-5% of Atheist debaters to look towards.

People are welcome to believe whatever they like, but it's just embarrassing to read people write this sort of thing in the same way it's embarrassing to see people repeat the "We only use 10% of our brain" thing.

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

#660

Post by retrocryptid »

And we have a secondary calendar that just counts the days since some arbitrary date approx 150 years ago. It shares its name with a calendar from 2000 years ago, but it's really named after the father of the guy who came up with it who was named after the guy who established the older calendar.

Also, it's days start in the middle of the other calendar's days

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