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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

#881

Post by oldgradstudent »

drdeca wrote: post #568
ajuc wrote: post #298

So, for comparison - in Poland we use - 24 hour clock - days of the week are called "after not working day", "second day", "middle day", "fourth day", "fifth day", "sabbath", "not working day" - months are mostly named from the agricultural/weather phenomena "wood cutting month", "strong cold month", "Mars month", "flowers month", "Mai month", "red pigment larvae month", "linden trees month", "sickle month", "heather…

So you have the day before "seventh day" be called "fifth day"?

"Sabbath" comes from Hebrew for rest or cessation, not from being the seventh day.

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

#882

Post by bjarneh »

dark-star wrote: post #854
bjarneh wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the rest of the world uses 24hrs, however 12h _sometimes_ is used conversationally; Here in Norway we use 24 hours when writing; but we use 12 hour system when speaking - if that makes any sense? I.e. we would say: "Vi spiser middag klokka fem (5)" [We eat dinner at five o'clock]; but we'd write it with 17 typically. We never use the terms AM/PM but can occasionally specify daytime/nighttime if it's uncertain which…

I guess that's what he meant by "sometimes conversationally"?

It could be, but since it could also be interpreted as sometimes used, I wrote a comment to say that we use the 12 hour system exclusively when we speak about time, and the 24 hour system for written purposes. Perhaps that's what he meant, but I'm not sure...

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

#883

Post by henriquecm8 »

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;

In Brazil, I think most people consider Sunday the first the of the week, in Portuguese the days of the week sound like ordinal numbers, Monday sounds like 2nd, Tuesday sounds 3rd, and so on. So it's pretty logical to consider Sunday the first day of the week.

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

#884

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#885

Post by Digory »

eps wrote: post #712
Digory wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of Christianity puts Sunday as the first day, as does the calendar of Judaism. Saturday as the Jewish Sabbath, Sunday as the ‘the Lord’s day” in Christianity. Matthew 28:1 The Resurrection [1] Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.

"Tuesday" in Russian is "vtornik", which is derived from "second". "Thursday" is "chetverg", which is a variation of "four". So, no, not all Christianity.

The start of the Russian week was Sunday until the Soviets tried to stamp out Sunday.

The current date order is still from 1940, when the state was opposed to Christianity.

https://www.rbth.com/history/335241-week-in-russia-began-sun...

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

#886

Post by gibspaulding »

krick wrote: post #724
db48x wrote: 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…

100 ksecs works out to roughly 27 hours. That's a bit long for a day, but probably not too infeasible to adapt to.

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

#887

Post by anjbe »

Digory wrote: post #885
eps wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Tuesday" in Russian is "vtornik", which is derived from "second". "Thursday" is "chetverg", which is a variation of "four". So, no, not all Christianity.

The start of the Russian week was Sunday until the Soviets tried to stamp out Sunday. The current date order is still from 1940, when the state was opposed to Christianity. https://www.rbth.com/history/335241-week-in-russia-began-sun...

Thanks for the link. It had another interesting fact:

> In 1978, the UN recommended that Monday be made the first day of the week in most countries. It was established in 1988, according to ISO 8601, an international standard for exchange and communication of date and time-related data.

I’m really curious about why the UN made that decision. Is this the primary reason so many countries now consider Monday the first day?

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

#888

Post by avereveard »

simonh wrote: post #262
narag wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I didn't find it funny, maybe because it ignores the reasons of the inconsistencies, that by the way are perfectly understandable looking at space. Months are related to Moon's orbit, weeks to its phases. Months have other gods's names: Janus, Phoebe, Mars, Aphrodite, Maya, Juno... Julius and Augustus were emperors and from that point are just numerals, starting at March. It was associated with Mars because…

The point of comical absurdities like this is precisely that they appear comical or absurd if you don’t know the reasons for them being the way they are. That doesn’t mean there are no reasons, it’s just that those reasons aren’t necessary or even relevant to appreciating the apparent absurdity.

yeah, but one could lead the time explanation with that. the alien sure picked an uninformed chap to learn about time.

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

#889

Post by ubermonkey »

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…

I don't know that we necessarily consider Sunday first in any way except in the default / traditional presentation of weeks in calendars -- which is to say, it's a visual thing but not something that seems to impact work or life in any meaningful sense. I think pretty much all calendaring programs can show Monday as the first day if you prefer.

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

#890

Post by SamBam »

mcv wrote: post #794
SamBam wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it's a bit simplistic to call it a "misunderstanding." There are large swaths of Christianity that refer to Sunday as the Sabbath.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath#Christianity

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