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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

#691

Post by snotrockets »

jaza wrote: post #468
ysavir wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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").

Citation needed.

Klein Dictionary gives the etymology of שַׁבָּת as derived from שׁבת (to rest). I also found references suggesting the origin is with the Akkadian šapattum, the 15th of the month, but none related to שׁבע (which originates in Proto-Canaanite).

היּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי (note the definite form!) is how Saturday is referred to in Genesis 2:2-3, without actually having the name שַׁבָּת. There's a some discussion about why שַׁבָּת isn't mentioned there as a name for the day, but regardless, your comment is the first time I read of the etymology of שַׁבָּת deriving from שׁבע.

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

#692

Post by bawolff »

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.

Because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_lag

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

#693

Post by 2dvisio »

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…

Yes. My partner is Iranian and their birthday is out of sync (earlier) every leap year. We “discovered” that the one first year it happen to us when suddenly received birthday wishes by all their Iranian network the day “before” the Gregorian calendar birthday.

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

#694

Post by bawolff »

samatman wrote: post #645
thaumasiotes wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This seems a bit mean, especially given its a pretty natural question as to why the equinox is considered start of fall instead of midautumn (in certain regions)

Edit: i take it back.

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

#695

Post by rendall »

beltsazar wrote: post #677

> "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?" I find it quite offensive. Not all scholars agree that Jesus was raised from dead, but the existence of Jesus is accepted even by non-Christian scholars. > Virtually all scholars of antiquity agree t…

Let us stop using Wikipedia to support our arguments.

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

#696

Post by apexalpha »

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…

>- Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;

Does anyone know why? This has always seemed a bit weird to me. I mean the US is a fairly religious country and it's pretty much known to anyone that Sunday is the 7th day in Christianity?

And on the first day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the first day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the first day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

edit: just looked it up. Apparently Sunday = Restday is a catholic thing and Jews / Muslims use Sunday as their first day!

How and why America switched as Christian nation I'm still not sure.

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

#697

Post by bawolff »

retrac wrote: post #110
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…

> 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…

> The week is still popularly understood to start on Sunday in English Canada

As an english canadian (alberta), i have never in my life heard of people considering sunday the first day of the week.

Edit: appearently people are talking what is printed on calendar. I consider that to be a separate thing. If you asked me to list the days of the week in order i would start on monday, which is a totally separate question from the layout of a printed calendar.

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

#698

Post by aljgz »

walrus01 wrote: post #91

This gets even more complicated when you introduce dealing with foreign countries that actually don't follow the western calendar system. Such as the standard Persian calendar months and years. Also, did you know that the arabic Islamic calendar dates and the persian calendar dates don't agree? Because the traditional calendar dating back to the maximum geograhpical extent of the Persian empire is solar based, while…

mmmm wait until you know that Persians' extra day off is not Saturday, it's Thursday.

Also that in Muslim countries that take Sat and Sun off, they all leave at Friday noon to attend the Friday prayer.

Now what if you have a Persian embassy in a foreign country (they are at the verge of extinction though), it will be closed on Friday, Sat, and Sun!, plus all the holidays of Iran and the host country. They almost never work (This sentence was not only about their days off)

If you have a company that has a branch in Iran, no luck for remote meetings on Thursdays all the way to Sundays!

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

#699

Post by bawolff »

stormbrew wrote: post #402
gorbypark wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a English Canadian who works for a company that was bought by an American company and was force switched to Sunday as the first day of the week….what? Maybe we “officially” or legally have Sundays as the first day but my entire life has been Mondays first. Every calendar I’ve had has been that way as well. It still messes with my mind, even four years later, that at work Sunday is the first day of the week.

What part of English Canada? In Alberta or Ontario (the parts I've lived in, though I was pretty young when I lived in Ontario) I've literally never seen a calendar with Monday as the first day of the week that I can recall.

I think there is a distinction between what people consider the first day of the week and what is printed on a calendar.

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

#700

Post by patatino »

beltsazar wrote: post #677

> "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?" I find it quite offensive. Not all scholars agree that Jesus was raised from dead, but the existence of Jesus is accepted even by non-Christian scholars. > Virtually all scholars of antiquity agree t…

It's a joke, get over it
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