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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

#791

Post by kadonoishi »

antognini wrote: post #268

A fun bit of trivia is that it wasn't until the middle of the 18th century that it became standard in Europe to start the new year on January 1. Up until that point many regions used March 25 as the date of the New Year. So, for example the day March 24, 1715 would have been followed by March 25, 1716. March 25 was the Feast of the Annunciation whereas January 1 was the Feast of the Circumcision, so the two dating me…

Oh, is that why Tolkien had Frodo throw the Ring in the Fire on March 25? And then King Elessar made that day the first day of the New Year. And the tradition held on until the 18th century. Huh.

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

#792

Post by adastra22 »

rendall wrote: post #695
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.

Can you suggest a source that is more consistently correct?

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

#793

Post by brianpan »

econ101time wrote: post #457

This is how a 12 year old internet atheist sees the world. Advanced alien species is just a stand-in for the know-it-all author. Grow up. These things all have good historical reasons. And you don't turn society upside down just to get some nice parsimony in the calendar. We have a system that works and is remarkably accurate. Changing it would upset millions of social customs, accounting systems, computer systems, e…

It's a joke. But I think you're underestimating how malleable it is.

In the US, DST was changed in 2007. Many states have yearly discussions about it. The leap second was introduced in 1972 and many have been inserted since.

In Taiwan, years are often counted from the establishment of the ROC. https://www.todaytourism.com/travel-guides/Taiwanese-calenda...

It IS kind of broke and people are trying to "fix" it pretty often.

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

#794

Post by mcv »

SamBam wrote: post #565
mcv wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the biblical day of rest is the Sabbath, the Saturday. The fact that most Christians keep the first day of the week instead of the last day is because Jesus rose from death on the first day of the week.

Yet the word "Sabbath" refers to different things to different Christians. Consider the old nursery rhyme, Monday's Child , which ends with Friday's child is loving and giving / Saturday's child works hard for a living. / And the child born on the Sabbath day Is bonny and blithe, good and gay.

I'm not familiar with that nursery rhyme, but it sounds like it's based on the same misunderstanding that lead to ISO 8601.

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

#795

Post by bloak »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #679
IncRnd wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What makes you say that? According to who? Compare what Ovid wrote about the name of May: > You may ask whence I suppose the name of the month of May to be derived. The reason is not quite clearly known to me [because there are too many theories]. [J. G. Frazer's translation for the Loeb series] That the name honors a Maia is one of three theories he goes on to present, the others being that May is named after the pe…

Oxford English Dictionary says: classical Latin Māius (adjective and, short for Māius mēnsis , noun), probably For April, on the other hand: classical Latin Aprīlis, use as noun (short for mēnsis Aprīlis month of April) of masculine of Aprīlis of April, of uncertain origin; perhaps (Oxford English Dictionary is a great resource. In the UK you can often get free online access through free membership of a public library.)

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

#796

Post by yetihehe »

lyu07282 wrote: post #758
_k9eq wrote: post #154

I find the implication that aliens are rational and have no subrational concepts due to tradition and habit interesting, as it sort of implies that these kinds of outgrowths are not necessary and can just be done away with. The narrator starts from a position of not wanting to legitimize or historicize beyond reductive statements like "some ancient civilization did XYZ". I'll admit that I skimmed through the last par…

At the end of the story they isolate us from them and prevent us from reaching the stars, I don't think the implication is that this is just due to the weird calendar system. I think its more than that, our inability to rid ourselves from our tradition and religious heritage has more profound implications. We don't look at things rationally and make decisions to improve ourselves. The aliens may have gone through sim…

> The aliens may have gone through similar steps in their evolution of their civilization so they probably know what it means if a post-interstellar species still uses a gods birthday to count time.

Or they might feel that using merely having gods is an obvious sign that we are unsuitable to be included in galactic community.

https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...

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

#797

Post by adastra22 »

greggman3 wrote: post #761

I'd be curious to know what countries don't start the year January 1st and where the origin of their chosen day comes from. I know China's new year is different by a ~3 weeks? Also, I only know a little USA and Japanese culture but it's interesting various calendar related things like where I grew up, SoCal, elementary, middle, and high school school started 2nd week in September. College also started around the same…

The Chinese New Year is based on the lunar calendar. How much it differs from the solar calendar changes a lot from year to year. Other East Asian countries don't always share the same lunar new year.

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

#798

Post by N19PEDL2 »

rieTohgh6 wrote: post #751
shakezula wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sunday = 1 Animals. Absolutely barbaric. Everybody knows we should index lists starting at 0. /s

I remember seeing API that accepted both 0 and 7 as Sunday.

crontab uses this approach, for example.

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

#799

Post by 2rsf »

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…

> Hebrew words for the week came from Akkadian

The days in Hebrew are simply numbered, First day, Second day etc. except for Shabbat

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

#800

Post by mcv »

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.

Spring and autumn start on the equinox, summer and winter on the solstices. Though it's true they tend to be called "mid summer" and "mid winter" day. It's certainly weird.

We also tend to associate summer with days getting longer and winter with days (the period between sunrise and sunset) getting shorter, but the opposite is true: in summer, which is the period from about 21 June to 23 September, days are getting shorter, whereas in winter, between 21 December and 21 March, days are getting longer. Astronomical winter starts on the shortest day, and astronomical summer on the longest day.

I guess we're just eternally confused about calendars. And who can blame us?

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