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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

#771
post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

How would the colloquial understanding of the first day of the week get divorced from what's printed on calendars, though? I feel like one should inform the other, no? Out of curiosity, if you have a calendar app on your computer, does it start with Sunday or Monday?

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

#772
post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

How would the colloquial understanding of the first day of the week get divorced from what's printed on calendars, though? I feel like one should inform the other, no? Out of curiosity, if you have a calendar app on your computer, does it start with Sunday or Monday?

Majority of calendars in Japan are starts from Sunday but IMO now people think week starts from Monday. It's relevant to whether people work (or went to school) on Saturday or not (so two consecutive holidays). Some research shows that old ages (who worked on Saturday) tend to think it starts from Sunday.

Calendars tend to follow traditions, and the difference isn't much matter. Also computer apps are tend to follow the US culture since US dominates the industry.

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

#773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the standard US weekend is Saturday–Sunday, even amongst the Sunday=1 holdouts. I say holdouts, because it helps to understand that this isn’t agreed on even within the US. Not to suggest that the holdouts are a minority, I honestly don’t know but I doubt it. I think, apart from the initial puzzlement of recognizing the inconsistency, most of us don’t give much thought at all to which day is 1. “Weekend” generall…

> I say holdouts, because it helps to understand that this isn’t agreed on even within the US. I disagree. I can’t remember having ever seen calendars display any day other than Sunday as the first of the week, except in the case of computer software made by non-Americans who didn’t think to localize it.

The ones I see always starts with Monday, but we all have to configure every single peace of software that comes from USA to show it as such.

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

#774
post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not all scholars agree that Jesus was raised from dead, Are there any scholars that do agree to this?

Well yes, many, but they're Christian scholars.

I wonder what the percentage would be of Biblical scholars who believe that Jesus was an actual person if we excluded those who believe, say, Moses parted the Red Sea or even those who believe Jews were enslaved in Egypt at the time.

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

#775
It is a shame that the length of a meter isn't based on the Earth's equatorial circumference. Though miles aren't really, it's handy to know there are about 24k of them around, 1k corresponding to an hour of the day. If we take the illogical 24 hour day as a fait accompli then distance is better reduced in round decimals of that than... whatever meter length is based upon (something to do with the weight of a cubic block of water?)

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

#776
post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't just throw dice or march in, see what's what and grab the locals by the nadgers. JC was quite a chap and of course why its called the Julian Calendar. Many other calendars are available. Kalends is the source of the name for calendar and the Roman day of month counting is pretty involved - http://www.polysyllabic.com/?q=calhistory/earlier/roman/kale... Kalends, nones and ides. JS died on the ides of March .…

JS died how?

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

#777
post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, many, but they're Christian scholars.

I wonder what the percentage would be of Biblical scholars who believe that Jesus was an actual person if we excluded those who believe, say, Moses parted the Red Sea or even those who believe Jews were enslaved in Egypt at the time.

[deleted]

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

#778
Just wait till they hear about other metrics.

"You have this one area, where only 4% of the people live, and they are the only ones using 70 messed up units, including this 'ounce' that's sometimes a volume sometimes an unrelated mass, and this group makes most of the main software, and showing these units?"

"Yeah"

"So everyone understands these units?"

"Nobody except these 4% understand these units at all"

"So when these people say 'gallon' it means nothing at all?"

"Well, do they say liquid gallon, dry gallon, or food gallon? You know what, no matter which there are actually some people outside the 4% who know the word, but to them it's a fourth amount, so no nobody understands it. And yeah to about the remaining 95% it means nothing"

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

#779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Winnipeg originally and considered Sunday the first day of the week. Maybe it's regional or cultural?

What does it even mean to consider Sunday the first day of the week? What does it change?

In IT, this mess leaks to places it really shouldn't. I've never permanently lived nor worked in native english place, but the amount of time I've seen somewhere in some web app or work outlook weeks starting on Sundays... its maddening, you easily make mistakes in good faith that can have pretty bad consequences, without realizing them.

I think its airbnb that still shows me calendar starting form Sunday. Not cool when you are looking at all those other sites for flight bookings or car rentals, all of them starting from Monday since they respect your locale, and then you book accommodation by muscle memory (since you re-did the searches numerous times as planning decisions about vacation took place), starting at given field for day of the week, only realizing that its moved by 1 day earlier (or later, not sure now). Good if you find out quickly, bad if on the 'arrival' day and your family have nowhere to sleep and its already dark.

I know that this won't ever be resolved mainly due to big egos of those involved, in same way that there will always be those ridiculous feet and inches and miles and absurd conversions between those, on top of fahrenheit madness. Tells something about maturity of mankind...

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

#780
post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, many, but they're Christian scholars.

I wonder what the percentage would be of Biblical scholars who believe that Jesus was an actual person if we excluded those who believe, say, Moses parted the Red Sea or even those who believe Jews were enslaved in Egypt at the time.

Most scholars, even the non-Christian ones, believe that Jesus was an actual person. Whether he really performanced miracles is of course a very different matter.
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