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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

#721
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…

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.

They absolutely do in Portugal - I’ve been tripped up by “see you next Sunday” when they meant “see you this Sunday”.

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

#722
if you are into calendars, read zecharia sitchin's books on anunnaki. the calendar, and zodiac, is 6 000 years old! essentially jews are still following the sumerian calendar to this day. that's also why the creationists say the world is only 6 000 years old. the aztecs were famous for the 2012 end of the world but that was only their calendar and they even had three different cycles that worked together like cogs in a machine.

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

#723

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…

In Hebrew the days of the week are named numerically: first day, second day etc. Sunday is the first day of the week in israel. Saturday, the last day of the Hebrew week is the only one not named numerically, it’s called sabbath.

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

#724
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). "…

Except it would be absolutely impractical to actually use in practice by any species/societies that have to sleep on a regular basis and in general need cycles. If all your "natural cycles" happen to fit well into base-10, well, that's great. Otherwise, you need to base your cycles on something else, which is exactly what calendars do.

And, just by the way, the Gregorian calendar is bad and messy, but the ideas it's built upon are absolutely great and are not results of shower-thinking and twitter-shitposting, but arise from pure practicality. They suit Earth, and humans are earthlings, their cycles are defined by the Earth. A year is a crucial cycle, because it defines weather so much. A day is a crucial cycle, because it defines when it's dark outside. A lunar month is a natural and pretty good cycle, because Moon cycles do actually affect life on Earth, but it isn't crucial, which is exactly the reason, why Gregorian calendar happens to get away with pretty much ignoring this one, unlike a day and a year. Still, it explains why most calendars through history prefer months being close to 27.3 days, and why weeks are 7 days (a quarter of 28). Both cycles also are both long enough and short enough to be useful for practical reasons, like organizing work schedules even without relying on celestial bodies. Furthermore, it even appears they are not enough, which is why the year is divided into "quarters" for business purposes like accounting. And these happen to be fairly close to 30 days, which happens to be a very neat divider of 360, which is close enough to a year on the one side, and a very neat number that naturally divides all small numbers up to 6 on the other side, which makes it easy to work with (unlike base-10, BTW, since that cannot be divided by 3).

All of which explains, why French Republican calendar is actually a great idea and unfortunately failed (for a fairly stupid reason, IMO), and base-10 day is not so great (although it has merit, since modern digits are base-10) and naturally failed.

Now, these totally imaginary and having nothing to do with reality aliens of yours may not have earth-like and human-like cycles, but they surely have cycles of their own. So it is unlikely that magnitude-1000 time measurement with no cycles in-between can work for them either.

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

#725

> "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…

>Not all scholars agree that Jesus was raised from dead,

Are there any scholars that do agree to this?

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

#726
Why does this thread assume that aliens will be hyperlogical and not understand what culture is? This is the most ass backwards assumption almost all scifi makes about aliens, at least in my humble opinion. A society which has cracked inter galactic travel will probably have its own vast culture and quirks, i see no reason why not.

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

#727

> "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…

The argument isn't generally that "Jesus" isn't a person, but rather probably built off one person, but also a collection of stories about people who might be other persons or made up. There were lots of messiahs at the time, and considering that the first gospel was probably written a good 20-to-60 years after the protagonist's death, it seems reasonable to many to presume that some the stories might be stories about other messiahs at the time that got passed on.

It obviously doesn't matter if actual divinity isn't at stake. Did Socrates exist? Maybe... probably? But he's depicted as two very different characters in the two sources we have (Plato and Xenophon). Which one is the 'real' Socrates. What about Homer? What about Achilles? Having long dated historical documents, especially one's that are more about the story than the person gets complicated.

Do I think that a person named some translation of "Jesus" existed, and generally lived the life described in Mark? Sure, maybe... It gets a bit dramatic at times, but it's plausible. Was that the exact same guy as the "Jesus" in Josephus? Hard to say... Maybe? Do I think all the things written in the gospels, and Josephus and the guy referenced by Tacitus all the same Jesus, and were all the things that happened real and/or happened to that specific one person? I find that to be wildly improbable.

Again, it sort of doesn't matter to non-religious folks. I don't think the person in the story needs to be "a person" just like I don't think Plato's depiction of Socrates needs to be 100% accurate, or even mostly accurate (it seems very obvious that liberties were taken). I don't think it really matters whether William Shakespeare or secretly someone else wrote all those plays. It really doesn't matter to people who have a healthy amount of skepticism... It's perfectly fine to admit that we don't know. The stories are still there and they're good stories.

It only really matters if one has built their identity on some long lost non-verifiable, historical parchments being the truth about the universe... I know many people have chosen to do that. I was brought up religious.

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

#728
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Arabic/Islamic calendar starts at Sunday because the weekend is Friday and Saturday. In Islam, the weekly congregation (mass equivalent) takes place on Friday around noon.

Switched to a browser to comment exactly this. Growing up in Saudi Arabia, we started our work week on Saturday, with Wednesday being the last day of the work (school for me) week. It took me a long time to transition over to think about Saturday/Sunday as the days off. I still get random pangs of excitement on Wednesday thinking it’s the end of the week if my brain hasn’t warmed up. I believe this is still the case…

You made me think of Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia: All are Islamic majority in Southeast Asia. I Googled and look what I found: "Identify the first day of the week based on the locale"

Ref: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000338932&type=...

The entries for Indonesia don't make sense to me.

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

#729
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…

> 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…

> which is a totally separate question from the layout of a printed calendar

I have no strong preference on Monday/Sunday, and I don't think either is inherently more logical than the other. However, it would be illogical, whether Sunday or Monday first, to have the 7th and last day of the week, laid out as the first column on the calendar.

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

#730
post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article says "it is unclear when the Romans reset the course of the year so that January and February came first", but doesn't actually deny that the year formerly ended with February. See for example p.187 of https://ryanfb.github.io/loebolus-data/L333.pdf for a 1st century BC reference to it: > The Terminalia 'Festival of Terminus,' because this day is set as the last day of the year; for the twelfth month was…

To be clear, I'm not denying that it was the first month at some point. It wasn't when Caesar designed his calendar, and we don't have a record of it changing. I refer to it as a legend not to indicate that it isn't true but to indicate that the only sources we have are referring to it as changing sometime in the distant past.

It is very likely that at its origin the Roman year started on the spring equinox.

That is why March was the first month and February was the last Month.

However, the astronomical rule was not followed later, and due to the inconsistent length of the year the position of the spring equinox had drifted from the 1st of March to around the 25th of March by the time of Julius Caesar.

The present position of the spring equinox around the 20th of March does not correspond to its position at the introduction of the Julian calendar, but to its position around the time of the First Council of Nicaea (AD 325).

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