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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

#471

Post by Digory »

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…

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.

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

#473

Post by mullingitover »

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;

There's one other country in particular that firmly designates Saturday as the seventh day of the week: Israel. (Canada, Japan and Brazil also use Sunday as the first day of the week.)

I'm not religious, but I was raised Seventh-day Adventist, which worships on the seventh day, which for the past couple millennia has been Saturday. There is no end to conspiracy theories in the church about the seventh day of the week being designated as Sunday and how this (and particularly the compulsion to worship on Sunday instead of Saturday) is a sign of the end times.

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

#474

Post by rsynnott »

bombcar wrote: post #3

Our calendar and timekeeping is what you get when you keep a system continuously operational and backwards capable over tens of thousands of years.

It's _not_ very backwards compatible, though; in particular, different countries transitioned from Julian to Gregorian at different times, so things get _extremely_ messy if you go back more than about a century.

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

#476

Post by irrational »

thfuran wrote: post #404
irrational wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it is both ends. Like book ends.

But then surely a consecutive Saturday and Sunday would be weekends rather than a single weekend?

The concept of a weekend is a recent development that I don’t think really corresponds to what the first day of the week is (which was conceived of as Sunday for thousands of years before the weekend was invented).

When the weekend was invented, Sunday as the sabbath was still a real thing for many people. I have to wonder if originally only Saturday was conceived as the weekend, followed by the week start and sabbath of Sunday. Then, as Sunday became secularized, the weekend was extended to include Sunday.

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

#477

Post by mcv »

chrisweekly wrote: post #389
retrac wrote: 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…

"Sat and Sun constitute the weekEND, right?" "Of course." "And Sunday is the 7th day, the day of rest?" "Yeah, that's what they preach at my church." "What about your workplace?" "Everybody knows the standard workweek is Mon-Fri. What's your point?" "Ok, so we're agreed the weekends include Sunday, your Bible says Sunday is the 7th day, and the workweek starts on Monday." "Yep." "So printed calendars and day-planners…

The Bible does not say that Sunday is the 7th day. It says that Saturday, the Sabbath, is the 7th day. And that Jesus rose on the day after the Sabbath, which means it was on the first day of the week. And that's the day most Chistians have adopted as their day of worship. (Except Seventh Day Adventists who keep it, as their name suggests, on the 7th day: Saturday.)

If your church preaches differently, they should read their Bible more carefully.

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

#478

Post by hurflmurfl »

forinti wrote: post #329
fimdomeio wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Russian is similar to Portuguese, albeit off by one. Monday = Segunda (second) = понедельник (start of the week) Tuesday = Terça (third) = вторник (second) Wednesday = Quarta (fourth) = среда (middle) Thursday = Quinta (fifth) = Четверг (fourth) Friday = Sexta (sixth) = пятница (fifth) So I guess Russians have no doubt as to when the week starts.

On a side note, it's not 100% clear (to me, at least) that the word for Monday (ponedelnik) means "per week" or anything about the week per se.

In Russian the word for week is "nedelya", so "ponedelnik" does seem to naturally tie into that. But the word for Sunday in Russian is "voskresenie" (literally means resurrection). Notice this! Every religious word used in non-religious context is suspicious!

If we examine Bulgarian, the week is called "sedmica" (sedm == seven). And Sunday is called "nedelya" (I perceive it as "ne delya" === "no work").

Thus, in Bulgarian the word ponedelnik becomes like "the day after Sunday", rather than "the day starting every week".

Now going back to the Sunday resurrection theme, it's obviously of religious origins, so I dare assume that it may have replaced something that was already there (like nedelya). And then I imagine the people still wanted to keep the word around, so they started using it to mean "week" instead of "Sunday".

If so, then it would make sense that ponedelnik just means "post Sunday".

[The above is just a pet theory I haven't spent any time on, so I'm not guaranteeing its legitimacy]

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

#480

Post by generalizations »

zaik wrote: post #413
Thorentis wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, often people leap to "aliens" being some higher intelligence than us who will judge our poor sub-optimal decisions. Though to me it seems more likely that any life we encounter is more likely to be less intelligent, if intelligent at all.

Aliens with the ability to visit earth will be much more intelligent than humans.

Except that being farther along the tech tree doesn't imply greater intelligence any more than possessing a car implies greater intelligence than an ancient Roman.
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