That would be quite fun to setup - especially all the patches to the leap year setup heh. Could even make bug reports “Christmas is happening in March what is going on”
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.
I think most of the world does that. I don't believe the claims that almost nobody uses the 12h format. At least not without a very thorough survey of the many ways many cultures use time.
In Brazil we'll say things like "The party is at 8 da noite", where "da noite" means "at night". When context is obvious, we often ommit that, so I might say "We will have lunch at 1 one clock" meaning 13h because it is obvious that no one has lunch at 1am. We will generally use 24h time in writing because we cannot control context, and in other situations where ambiguity cannot be avoided otherwise.
To me the main advantage of 24h time is that it is easier to mentally calculate time, so for example 3 hours after 11:00 is just 11+3, which is 14:00h.
In Punjabi we have divided day into 8 parts, with each 2 parts have names like 1st pair (3am to 9am), 2nd pair 9am to 3pm) third pair 3pm to 9pm & final pair 9pm to 3am.
So, we usually say, 8 o clock in third pair means PM, or 8 o clock in 1st pair means AM.
Not sure what that has to do with calendars. Fortnight is just one of many measurements that aren't used a lot in the US (among other places) these days so I wouldn't expect the average person on the street to immediately recognize what it means. There are a ton of imperial measurements that aren't widely used like pecks, bushels, rods, etc.
(I'd also avoid terminology like bi-monthly and semi-monthly as it's a predictable point of confusion.)
A quart is the easy one. It’s just a slightly smaller version of a liter. And it’s not like the UK doesn’t use pints which are just half of a slightly larger quart.
I’m sure there’s lots of language including unrelated to measurement which differs across the Anglosphere.
Yeah seeing this today is funny given today begins Rosh Hashanah, the Hebrew new year. But I imagine _most_ countries of the world use the gregorian, especially those on english-speaking sites
Because leap day is at the end of the year, but at some time we moved the start of the year two months back (same reason why September through December now are the ninth through twelfth month of the year, not the seventh through tenth)
(Historically, I think it was slightly different. February, the last month of the year was shorter because the year isn’t long enough to give it 30 days, then we moved the start of the year, and then we invented the Gregorian calendar, and picked February for the leap day because it already was an outlier)
It was the Romans who inserted a leap month inside February between the 23rd and 24th. Since the two consuls ruled on alternating months, adding an extra month after February would give one consul one more ruling month, making it somewhat unfair. Since leap years were handled irregularly back then, they were leap months, not leap days.
The Julian calendar introduced the leap day instead, and maintained it in February as originally, and introduced it every 4 years (except years dividable by 100).
This is also around the same time that July and August were named to their current names (named after Caesar and Augustus). Before that, they had had names equal to fifth and sixth month, respectively, like September comes from seventh.
Are you suggesting that the men were known as Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar? Because that's wrong[0]. Augustus used this name and it became a title for roman Emperors, in reference to Julius Caesar. If people are talking about Caesar, they mean Julius Caesar.
I understand that people often refer to Julius Caesar as "Caesar", but to me at least, it mainly refers to the "title" (though that remains a surname, as succession was hereditary, mostly through adoption).
History is not my field, I am probably making multiple mistakes and oversimplifying, but I don't see something in that link that disproves what I said. Today, we often refer to Augustus as Augustus Caesar or Caesar Augustus (less frequently, Emperor Augustus). I also think it's interesting to point out Julius's first name in light of the previous discussion, as that's where the month name comes from.
If we're splitting hair, Octavian was adopted into the gens Julia, so he was a Julius as much as he was a Caesar, and his full name before ascending to emperor was Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus.
I recently read that the reason February has only 28 or 29 days, and not 29 or 39, as you'd expect, is because Augustus wanted his month to have just as many days as Julius' month.
No idea if that's true, but sounds appropriate for the ego of an emperor.
February, the last month of the year was shorter because the year isn’t long enough to give it 30 days
Originally February had 30 days, along with all the other months. (The 5 or 6 remaining days at various times were either extra days which didn't belong to a month or were omitted until there was a month's worth of them to catch up on.)
February got shorter because (being the last month of the year) it had days removed in order to add them to other months -- what was originally February 30th (the end of the year) became February 23rd (the end of the year, after which the leap day is inserted).
No, the calendar had 12 months + 1 intercalary month before the Julian reforms. The calendar you're thinking of was the one supposedly introduced by Romulus and replaced by his successor--there's no evidence of its actual use.
The Ethiopian calendar still do this, 12 months of 30 days each and a last 5 to 6 "month".
The reddit thread is funny but it also forget than there is not only one calendar in the actual world... Long time ago, i have meet an indian who was never able to explain to me witch days he was forbidden to eat meat (he was not a strict vegetarian), or even food at all. It was probably a mix of one of the indian calendars, horoscope and religion.
> Because leap day is at the end of the year, but at some time we moved the start of the year two months back (same reason why September through December now are the ninth through twelfth month of the year, not the seventh through tenth)
There is actually no hard evidence that the Romans ever started their calendar in March instead of January. The earliest contemporaneous use of the calendar relies on January 1 as the start of the year, short February, and with intercalation happening after (or maybe within) February.
The primary evidence we use to indicate that the start of the year shifted is... the apparently wrong month names. Some writers did describe a calendar that starts at March and ends in December, with winter basically having no proper calendar--but these are writers describing how their calendar worked several centuries ago, attributing it to mythological figures, and the explanation strikes me as very heavily a "just so" explanation.
If you want my hypothesis, the Roman civil year never started in March. But March would have had some amount of primacy, as it indicates the start of the planting year. Shenanigans in the calendar would have occurred in February to ensure that the equinox is properly timed to happen in March. But the civil year would have started closer to the beginning of winter for other reasons (perhaps taxation? but finding this level of granularity of information on Roman taxation is difficult).
In this hypothesis, the month names were not incorrect because they were never intended to count from the beginning of the year. Note that the first 6 months of the civil year have names, while the last 6 are merely numbered. It makes no sense to me that you'd make up special names for the first 4 and the last 2 months of the year, while skipping everything in the middle.
I'm always amused by the fantasy that aliens are more likely to be rational and have far less convoluted systems than we do.
It's some manner of borderline religious, faith-based notion about the assumed nature of aliens. People seem to get quite upset if you intrude on their fantasy about what aliens must surely be like (not like us, far better than us; humans are the primitive dredge of the universe basically). Despite the fact that there's no evidence to support either side of the premise, so it ends up revealing what the person thinks about themselves (self-hate) and humanity generally more than anything else.
And if you really want to see their heads explode, suggest the notion that the odds - as far as we know - are just as good that humans are the most advanced beings in the universe as not; and the odds are just as good that we're the very first spacefaring beings in the universe rather than the zillionth.
There is one defining difference between us, and aliens that visit earth.
They managed interstellar travel, we did not. That inherently puts them at an advantage to us. Definitely a technological advantage. Hence it makes sense to assume (with medium confidence) that such aliens will be better at science than us. Assuming that they will therefore be more rational than us is not much of a leap.
I don't want to actually even imagine what sort of hell an proper interstellar empire timekeeping is. Just ignore different planets having different orbital and rotational characteristic.
Just the basic relativistic effects even with some type of instant transfers would make most communication and so on massively painful mess.
At least, we have a well-defined second. Assuming that humans make interstellar travel and/or colonization happen before being visited first, it's not entirely unreasonable that space-borne vessels will maintain the time and calendar system developed on Earth. It's convention, after all (we fudge it _just a bit_ here on Earth, too).
Perhaps extrasolar colonies will have to develop a system that makes sense for whatever planet or moon they settle on, at which point they'd be converting between Earth time and local time for correspondence.
Problem isn't that second isn't well defined. Just that the rate of seconds passing in well defined way depend on location of observer. We already average bunch of clocks around the globe. But doing the same thing light years from each other...
> They managed interstellar travel, we did not. That inherently puts them at an advantage to us.
It means some species that is/ was out there has an advantage. The species that actually visits us could be less intelligent than us but just intelligent enough to operate the equipment they dug up.
Agreed. This makes me wonder if a purely rational species is something that can even survive evolution. A lot of irrational behaviors we exhibit are likely the result of traits that have helped us survive in the wild.
If those traits helped us survive in the wild, they WERE rational. The point being, a fictional species that was able to widely remove once-rational but no longer rational things is the important bit. It's evidence that they have the capability, and either through a "better" society, or an extreme but likely stable authoritarian system that prioritized scientific endeavors like visiting far star systems and meeting the creatures there with no intention to harm, are able to make changes to themselves to make things better.
That is not a feature we share. We only occasionally make things better for all of humanity.
This would be better written in a short story format but I digress.
This is precisely the type of thing that would probably happen in almost any society. There are many standards that pop up that are vestiges of one thing or another. The fact we get base 60 from Sumeria but use Base 12 or Base 24 for hours is not a big deal, weird things happen. I doubt any advanced alien would be just so flabbergasted over this. We have multiple cultures all over the world that count differently, so the assumption of base 10, just doesn't really make sense. All standards like time, counting, etc in any culture I think would be this mishmash of legacies from some people's that were dominant at some point that other people's culture imprinted upon that. If anything an alien race would probably be more suspicious if our calendar and time system was some perfect base 10 all through or something of that nature as if the cult of reason had dominated the world after the French Revolution.
Also the historical record of someone named Jesus existing isn't debated by any historical scholar I have ever heard of, just the messianic / prophetic / son of god nature seems to be the rub.
Aliens are likely to view 12 or 60 as prettier numbers than 10 or 100. Try writing the multiplication tables in base 12 and you'll see how much nicer they are.
In base 10, the times tables for 2 and 5 are easy because they divide 10. If I want 2*7, I know 7/5 is 1 remainder 2 so it's 10+2*2=14. As for 5x7, I know 7/2 is 3 remainder 1 so it's 30+1*5=35.
In base 12, there are similarly easy rules for 2, 3, 4, and 6. Doesn't seem like that great of a trade off but it could be beneficial. That also just comes down to 12 being a "superior highly composite number".
If I personally was allowed to rewrite our number system, I think I'd choose a base that is either a superior highly composite number or a power of 2. So something in the set [2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 32, 60, 64...]. I doubt 10 would even cross my mind as an option if I didn't have 10 fingers.
Another layer to this is that numbers one-off the factors have nice patterns too. For base 10 those are (2, to include the factors), 3, 4, (5), 6, and 9 sort-of, since it's one below 10. Just think how awkward 7 and 8 times tables were compared to the rest. With base 12 I found that all numbers, even 7 and 11, end up having usable patterns and are easier to count by. Of course, I'm still not used to having 12 digits, but on paper I could tell they would be pleasant to count by if I had learned base 12.
And an even deeper insight is that it doesn't really matter that much and isn't worth shaking up the whole world to change. We're not going to be better or worse at math because of our number base.
Yeah, from what I understand, it's generally accepted that some rabble rouser called Yeshua existed, and later had followers who considered him to be holy.
> Yeah, from what I understand, it's generally accepted that some rabble rouser called Yeshua existed, and later had followers who considered him to be holy.
Except for where you start a sentence with "yeah," apparently answering in the affirmative a hypothetical question that no one has asked, and adding a superfluous and grammatically incorrect comma, you are vaguely correct.
Jesus is the English transliteration of a Germanic adaptation of the Latin transliteration of the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name Yeshua.
What is agreed upon by near universal scholarly consensus is instead that Jesus was baptized and crucified. But I personally believe it is a sure bet he also was a rouser of rabble, had a ministry, and was considered holy, as beyond the 10 or so natural holes he ultimately was given at least 4 additional holes.
> Except for where you start a sentence with "yeah," apparently answering in the affirmative a hypothetical question that no one has asked, and adding a superfluous and grammatically incorrect comma, you are vaguely correct.
Wow, you must be a hit at parties. The way I phrased that sentence is how some some dialects of English, like the one I speak, express agreement. Consider it shorthand for "I agree,". And perhaps consider the limits of your experiences and that wisdom is (partially) knowing what you don't know, and not attempting to speak with authority in such areas.
In wording my response to you, I've deliberately avoided other expressions from my dialect that may confuse you, but are very applicable. Like "twat" or "tosser", or "tu meke".
> Jesus is the English transliteration of a Germanic adaptation of the Latin transliteration of the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name Yeshua.
Yeah, nah. Thanks for contributing nothing that a basic Google of "Jesus Yeshua" wouldn't have.
In my dialect, "yeah, nah" often means "I'm experiencing fremdschämen".
> What is agreed upon by near universal scholarly consensus is instead that Jesus was baptized and crucified.
You're going to need an awful lot of citations there.
Firstly, define the scholars you're referring to.
Also, what sources are they working from?
Josephus, the closest there is to a contemporaneous source, doesn't mention baptism. Neither do Seutonius, Pliny the Younger, Mara bar-Serapion or Tacitus.
Maybe the scholars you refer to are extrapolating from the title "Anointed", or from the fact that, gosh, if you're saying this Jesus is sinless, and baptism is for the remission of sins, then why would you include a story in your holy writings that Jesus was baptised? It makes no sense, so you must've included it to be historically correct! Also known as proof by mortification. [0]
Or maybe, you're just referencing crap you garnered from a 5 minute speed read of Wikipedia that really needs more citations? Who knows? Tu meke au.
> > What is agreed upon by near universal scholarly consensus is instead that Jesus was baptized and crucified.
> You're going to need an awful lot of citations there.
> Firstly, define the scholars you're referring to.
Not being OP, I’ll list at least John Dominic Crossan and James Dunn, who has said that the baptism and crucifixion of Jesus “command almost universal assent.”
Of course, I got those names from five minutes speed reading Wikipedia. But that’s two more scholars’ opinions of the scholarly consensus than you’ve provided.
> Also, what sources are they working from?
Surely this is the very definition of moving the goalposts. OP stated the scholarly consensus is that Jesus’s baptism and crucifixion are true (this, incidentally, was my existing impression of the scholarly consensus). Now you’re no longer just arguing that OP was wrong about that, but have moved on to claiming that any scholars and historians who believe in Jesus’s baptism are wrong because they have no reliable sources.
I have to admit, I’m not inclined to throw out my understanding of the scholarly consensus or which sources are reliable to argue the historicity of Jesus based on an unsourced Hacker News comment.
I chose sources that are either non-Christian, or their subsequent Christian modifications are well identified (i.e., Josephus' Antiquities), because if you're wanting to make a case for the historical Jesus, then it's best to avoid as much bias as is possible.
And I'm very interested indeed in Crossan and Dunn's sources, sadly Wikipedia doesn't yield any light on this.
The historical sources I mentioned can be found in more detail on newadvent.org, whatever else you think of the Catholics, they compile a humdinger of a wiki, and are probably the experts on Christology and the historical Jesus.
> The way I phrased that sentence is how some some dialects of English, like the one I speak, express agreement. Consider it shorthand for "I agree,".
There is no English dialect that does not include the adverb, "yeah," etymologically formed from drawling the affirmation, "yes," colloquially and informally. More often, however, "yeah" is employed as a common filler in the same way as, "um," or "uh," used as a pause to think when not finished speaking, as such, when written, it is meaningless and superfluous. In modern usage, however, it may most often be correctly replaced with the phrase, "as a Millennial, I informally affirm."
> And perhaps consider the limits of your experiences and that wisdom is (partially) knowing what you don't know, and not attempting to speak with authority in such areas.
Ad hominem attack.
> In wording my response to you, I've deliberately avoided other expressions from my dialect that may confuse you, but are very applicable. Like "twat" or "tosser", or "tu meke".
Ad hominem attack.
> Yeah, nah. Thanks for contributing nothing that a basic Google of "Jesus Yeshua" wouldn't have.
Contradiction of informal colloquialisms and an ad hominem attack.
> In my dialect, "yeah, nah" often means "I'm experiencing fremdschämen".
False. An affirmative placed with a negative is a contradiction, but the assertion here is a clumsy ad hominem attack.
> You're going to need an awful lot of citations there.
While I agree with anjbe that this is moving the goalposts, it is also an ad hominem attack.
> Firstly, define the scholars you're referring to.
While I have not referred to any particular scholars, making your employment of such a straw man, I would define scholars in the ordinary sense as academics.
> Also, what sources are they working from?
This is further development of the previous straw man.
> Josephus, the closest there is to a contemporaneous source, doesn't mention baptism. Neither do Seutonius, Pliny the Younger, Mara bar-Serapion or Tacitus.
Though this is a continuation of the previous straw man argument, in fact, the closest contemporaneous sources, in chronological order, are the letters of Paul, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, Acts of the Apostles, and the Gospel of John.
> Maybe the scholars you refer to are extrapolating from the title "Anointed", or from the fact that, gosh, if you're saying this Jesus is sinless, and baptism is for the remission of sins, then why would you include a story in your holy writings that Jesus was baptised? It makes no sense, so you must've included it to be historically correct! Also known as proof by mortification. Or maybe, you're just referencing crap you garnered from a 5 minute speed read of Wikipedia that really needs more citations? Who knows? Tu meke au.
It its entirety, this is a straw man argument which happens to include ad hominems.
> ...as such, when written, it is meaningless and superfluous. In modern usage, however, it may most often be correctly replaced with the phrase, "as a Millennial, I informally
The distinction between spoken and written seems a) arbitrary and b) entirely irrelevant to a comment section on a website. I'm writing conversationally, comments aren't technical documentation or tenders, they're comments. Observations in passing.
Being honest, when you opened with... ...whatever your thinking there was, I immediately shut down on engagement.
Genuine feedback - you know your shit, so just lead with that, not the part where you decide to lead with "You started a sentence with 'yeah', and that's wrong". It helps establish a rapport.
Anyway, you got your chronology slightly wrong but only slightly, so very much well done, and I mean that genuinely, and it only erred in where you placed Acts, which contains the earliest Christian writings. (That we know of (so far))
> Being honest, when you opened with... ...whatever your thinking there was, I immediately shut down on engagement.
My thinking was the tenor of your comment was overly informal and self-gratifying considering the subject, a major theme of whose teachings was humility. It doesn't quite follow that being antagonistic is not engagement.
> Anyway, you got your chronology slightly wrong but only slightly, so very much well done, and I mean that genuinely, and it only erred in where you placed Acts, which contains the earliest Christian writings. (That we know of (so far))
"The earliest possible date for Luke-Acts is around 62 AD,[citation needed] the time of Paul's imprisonment in Rome, but most scholars date the work to 80–90 AD on the grounds that it uses Mark as a source, looks back on the destruction of Jerusalem, and does not show any awareness of the letters of Paul (which began circulating late in the first century); if it does show awareness of the Pauline epistles, and also of the work of the Jewish historian Josephus, as some believe, then a date in the early 2nd century is possible."[1]
"The Gospel of Mark... is usually dated through the eschatological discourse in Mark 13: most scholars interpret this as pointing to the First Jewish–Roman War (66–74 AD) that would lead to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, with the composition of Mark taking place either immediately after the destruction (the majority position) or during the years immediately prior."[2]
"A majority of scholars agree that Galatians was written between the late 40s and early 50s, although some date the original composition to c. 50–60."[3]
"The Epistle to Philemon was composed around AD 57-62 by Paul while in prison at Caesarea Maritima (early date) or more likely from Rome (later date) in conjunction with the composition of Colossians."[4]
"Regardless of the literary unity of the letter, scholars agree that the material that was compiled into the Epistle to the Philippians was originally composed in Greek, sometime during the 50s or early 60s AD."[5]
The earliest surviving subject materials are the authentic Pauline Epistles, and the oldest surviving Gospel is the one attributed to John Mark. It has been theorized and argued that a lost Gospel, a gospel of sayings, known as the Q source,[6] was composed earlier or around the same time as Mark, with the Gospel of Thomas a candidate for the Q source, but most place the date of Thomas' composition after the 2nd Century, and there is no consensus on whether the Q source existed. The earliest recorded words attributed to Jesus are found in Matthew 5-7, portions of the Sermon on the Mount[7] ("Blessed are the cheesemakers...")[8]
I reiterate my recommendation of that book by Pheme Perkins. Acts contains the oldest Christian traditions. Oral traditions, natch.
Your comments on my tone are bewildering in their absolute irrelevance - discussing the historical Jesus doesn't require reverence or adherence to the themes of Christianity, like how
discussing the historical Muhammad doesn't require me to adhere to the shahada, nor consider dogs unclean.
But hey, maybe you're neurodiverse, or maybe you're just an asshole, but you do you.
If your objection to my tone was because of closely held personal beliefs, then I'm afraid you'll just have to build a bridge and get over it.
> Acts contains the oldest Christian traditions. Oral traditions, natch.
The Oral Tradition hypothesis holds that where Matthew and Luke agree against Mark, rather than using a Q Source, the source is oral traditions. Prior to Mark and the letters of Paul, surely there had to be oral traditions passed on for decades. Luke may refer to these in the first two verses of his gospel.
But since the synoptic gospels all attest together to a number of events, known as the Triple Tradition, including Jesus' baptism and crucifixion, and many details in between, and Acts begins with the replacement of Judas with Matthias, detailing further events only after this event, I don't see how the earliest oral traditions could be found in Acts.
Clearly the baptism, temptation, gathering of disciples, etc., all occurred prior to Mathias elected to replace Judas, and if drawn at least partially from oral tradition, how could the later traditions predate the earlier? Without earlier oral traditions including key elements from Jesus' life, how could oral traditions concerning much later events in Acts begin to develop?
Oral traditions detailing the spread of the gospel predating the oral traditions of the gospels themselves is difficult to imagine and implies early Christians developed what necessarily then becomes a backstory, or prequel, namely Jesus' ministry, only after developing the oral traditions concerning the oral transfer of those earlier events. That would be a neat trick, as the narratives about the oral transfer of those chronologically earlier narratives somehow would predate the content of the oral transfer detailed in Acts.
the historical record of someone named Jesus existing isn't debated by any historical scholar
It is debated by people like Richard Carrier https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEB&search_query=richard... who says that (IIRC) while it's not unlikely that one or several people with similar messages preached in Judea 2000 years ago, the Jesus of the Bible looks like a literary invention when you go back to all the earliest records in Christian and non-Christian (e.g. Roman) sources.
*Edit* now that I got downvoted for mentioning Richard Carrier I'd very much like to hear about substantialized criticism about his work. Any pointers?
Richard Carrier is an extremely fringe figure regarding the historical Jesus. The overwhelming majority of scholars in the field from conservative to liberal historians dismiss his ideas as fringe, and his methodologies as inconclusive, at best.
Yes, but there’s little debate amongst scholars that aren’t atheist activists. For instance, it’s extremely difficult to explain the historical facts of the early Christian movement without a historical Jesus due to those events being so recent and broadly falsifiable via living memory let alone records extant at the time and there being no evidence of the Romans using a lack of historical evidence for Jesus as an argument against Christianity.
The single most complex component I have ever written in about 35 years of SW development was a scheduler to calculate the next instance in a set of overlaid periodic cycles, allowing for time zones, DST changes, leap year/centuries, etc, etc ... in Visual Basic no less!
But ... the sexagesimal system made sense and I guess that, in ancient times, time periods that don't have patterns would always be divided arbitrarily (years can be marked with seasons, days with night, but how to divide the time between, say, mid-day and sunset?).
I saw when i was in Japan a various billboards marking a 25 hour service I thought it was some kind of mistake but apparently they call 1 am the hour 25...I think I saw it in Okinawa
It’s more than just 25, they often go to 29, to indicate 5am. They do this to make it clear that it is an overnight service starting in one calendar day and terminating in another. It’s not just a simple substitute for “1 am”.
You occasionally see times like 24:15 on European railway timetables. If the train runs only on weekdays, it might make it clearer that there isn't one at 00:15 on Monday.
I haven't noticed 25:00, but I don't often look at printed/PDF timetables nowadays.
Back when I was a night owl, I considered “today” to last until about 5am when you start hearing birds outside. Aligning semantic days with your schedule is incredibly convenient.
Now that I’m a morning person, the same concept of 5am semantic days still works perfectly. The day begins about 20min before my alarm.
Japanese VCRs could be programmed with times like 24/25/26/27:xx, which makes a lot of sense for TV programs that are part of “today’s” schedule but after midnight. Much lower risk of getting the day wrong when programming.
I've seen this when working on a side project involving public transport timetables from Google Transit. A service can run on 26:00 on Sunday, to indicate that the Sunday service is running 2 hours past midnight (i.e. on Monday 02:00).
This convention is also used by some TV ratings measurement organizations - a show ending Tue 02:00 will be recorded as Mon 26:00, since it logically belonged to the day that ended, not the one that started.
Indeed, the "tv day" stretches from 02:00:00 to 25:59:59, but you usually don't actually use wall time (or in this case, modified wall time), and instead measure instant time as "minutes after midnight" (MAM) or "seconds after midnight" (SAM), so it's just an integer.
In NZ, all legal weights and measures are metric, yet for some stubbornly cultural reason we still tend to discuss height in feet and inches (ladies on dating apps who are discriminating on height will specify that you need to be 6 foot, not 183cm) the weight of a newborn baby in pounds (but only for newborn babies!), and order our beer in pints, which generally means "a large glass of beer somewhere between 400 and 600mL". Also for some reason ordering a "12th" means a "half pint", and I'm really not sure why.
But the good craft beer places have a sign saying what their pints are in millilitres to prevent unpleasant surprises when you were expecting 568mL but got 425mL.
A pint in the USA is 16 fluid ounces. In the UK (in the ‘imperial’ system) it is 20. [Technically the fluid ounce is also different in the two systems, but not enough to matter at this scale.]
Some US bars will serve imperial pints on request and/or offer them for British or Irish beers.
The difference is about 10% which is easily noticeable.
Typically in a British pub you will be served beer in a glass that is calibrated as “pint to brim”, and any head on the beer is taken out of the nominal pint. So usually a pint as served is much closer to half a litre.
The "above six foot" rule seems like it's just a round number, but in the US at least:
* height is normally distributed for men.
* The average height of a man is 5'9".
* The standard deviation for men's height is 3".
So six foot is one standard deviation above average. I am sure one or more of the above does not hold for NZ. I just think this is neat, that the commonly stated preference happens to be for one standard deviation above the average.
A neat coincidence only. America consists of lots of ethnicities. Some bring that average up and some bring it down. There’s some preference for intra-ethnicity dating.
I feel like I need to specify that the Dutch sometimes coloquially also use pounds and ounces, but Dutch pounds are exactly 500 grams and Dutch ounces 100 grams.
The metric "interface" has nice "round" numbers, but the implementation idk:
"In the SI, the standard metre is defined as exactly 1/299,792,458 of the distance that light travels in a second."
"The kilogram was originally defined as the mass of one cubic decimetre of water at 4 °C, standardized as the mass of a man-made artefact of platinum-iridium held in a laboratory in France, which was used until a new definition was introduced in May 2019. Replicas made in 1879 at the time of the artefact's fabrication and distributed to signatories of the Metre Convention serve as de facto standards of mass in those countries. Additional replicas have been fabricated since as additional countries have joined the convention. The replicas were subject to periodic validation by comparison to the original, called the IPK. It became apparent that either the IPK or the replicas or both were deteriorating, and are no longer comparable: they had diverged by 50 μg since fabrication, so figuratively, the accuracy of the kilogram was no better than 5 parts in a hundred million or a proportion of 5x10−8:1. The accepted redefinition of SI base units replaced the IPK with an exact definition of the Planck constant, which defines the kilogram in terms of the second and metre."
We should start first be redefining the second: 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a cesium atom. It's too long anyways, we can easily perceive time down to at least 1/60th of that.
So let's call it 150 million oscillations, and refer to it simply as "time", since the word second only makes sense in context of an analog clock anyways. Then we can start rounding the other weights and measures accordingly until everything is nice and clean. It appeals to the OCD in me, despite the societal chaos that would ensure.
But then the universe will undoubtedly throw random numbers at us like π or the fine-structure constant and mess it all up.
Not sure what you are trying to say with your quoted phrases.
There was an issue with the standard for the Kilogram, which was recognised then corrected by introducing a definition which is based on physically measurable phenomenon. The new approach allows independent experiments to derive the value of the Kilogram.
That seems to me like a process that works, and I struggle to think of a better outcome.
> Not sure what you are trying to say with your quoted phrases.
That the metric system is just as arbitrary as the customary units. Things like the meter and (kilo)gram were based on arbitrary objects rather than anything objective. They've since been redefined using physical constants to come close enough to the old reference objects. (And the US customary units are officially defined as exact fractions from the SI units -- making the whole world happy to have exact measurements regardless of the system you use.)
At least the customary units have nice divisors. Just saying.
> That the metric system is just as arbitrary as the customary units
No-one claims it isn't arbitrary. Any choice of units is arbitrary. "Not being arbitrary" just isn't a desideratum when considering what makes a good system of units.
The main desirable property is coherence [0], which SI has.
But I don't think anyone would claim SI is perfect. It's not; it's got at least a couple of warts. One is that "kg" is a base unit and is prefixed. But that's about the worst of it.
CGS is also coherent, but has a similar problem with a prefixed base unit (in this case, cm).
US Customary units is not only incoherent, but does things like conflate mass and force (lb is a technically a measure of force, so is the long/short ton, and slug is the proper unit for mass) and has far too many derived units that measure the same thing (e.g. ft lb/s, hp and BTU/h, vs just W).
The metric system was based on the existing unit of time and the dimensions of the earth. The metre was originally defined as 1/40,000,000 of the circumference of the earth (through the poles and Paris). From the metre they derived units of weight and volume.
There was some debate at the time about using a pendulum with a 1s period to define the metre, but it was known to be less accurately reproducible than the geodetic version.
Their aim was to define a system that could in principle be recreated from scratch anywhere on Earth without necessarily relying on access to the physical prototypes. In practice the relative imprecision of the original measurements compared to the later demands of science and engineering meant that the prototypes became the definition.
It’s interesting to compare with the British Imperial units reform in the 1820s. Part of that act specifies how to recreate the prototypes from physical properties of the units. When the Palace of Westminster burned down in the 1830s the ancient prototypes were destroyed. But the replacements were recreated from copies, not from the specification in the act. And not much later, the official definition was based on the metric system because the metric standards were manufactured to much greater quality.
Yeah. Who thought using decimal was a good idea? We should be using dozenal. At least 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6, while 10 is only divisible by 2 and 5 so doing thirds and quarters is messy. Being able to do fifths isn't as useful as thirds and quarters and you can multiply 12 by 5 and use 60 if you want to divide by fifths, like clocks do.
We're too invested into decimal at this point - the cost of the migration would be so immense as to dwarf any benefits from suddenly being able to divide by 3 and 4 easily.
Not true. You can count knuckles on one hand up to 12, two hands up to 144, or 60 if you’re using fingers of one hand and knuckles of the other. Societies used to count knuckles, which is why duodecimal systems were a lot more popular back then. Way easier for doing fractions and divisions in your head as well.
You can count all kinds of things, but of the pieces of human anatomy, fingers are the most convenient because you can fold them while counting. Which is why they're also by far the most popular things to count worldwide, even if different societies use slightly different ways of doing so.
You can count to 12 that way, too, e.g. by folding the thumb first to indicate 1, and then unfolding it with the rest of the fingers folded when you get to 6. Or you can turn the fist upside down etc. Again, there are many techniques, but counting by folding or unfolding fingers is the simplest and the most obvious, which is why base-10 is the most common.
Designing a well-fitting system of units is not hard given all the experience we have already. Units of time are the trickiest due to natural cycles, but there are ways to minimize the irregularity.
The problem is getting that design adopted by everyone.
There’s a good exchange in the classic video game Star Control 2 (now open source, available in most package managers as “uqm”), when the player encounters a species of plant‐like alien:
>> I am Captain Zelnick from Earth. We come in peace.
> I am Captain Ala‐la’la. We come in peace.
>> Our starship is called Vindicator.
> Our starship is called the Tender Shoot.
>> We are the New Alliance of Free Stars from Earth.
> We are the Supox Utricularia from Earth.
>> You’re from Earth??? Hey! Are you just copying whatever I say?
> Oh yes, we apologize for the confusion, our homeworld is also called ‘Earth’, or more properly ‘Vlik’, which means ‘Perfectly Good and Nutritious Dirt’. ‘Earth’ is pretty close, is it not?
A good way to know whether a month has 31 days is by counting the knuckles and gaps between knuckles. "Landing" on a knuckle means that month is 31 days. So,
Pointer finger knuckle = January = 31 days
Between pointer/middle = Feb != 31 days
Middle finger knuckle = March = 31 days
And so on, just looping back to the first knuckle when you get past the pinky knuckle.
October, for Octogon, meaning the 8th month, is the 10th month.
And Dec for 10 meaning December is the 12th Month. Going by the Roman system, March is the 1st month bu we've decided to make it the 3rd month today and offset everything else.
Depends, in the northern hemisphere this would be when spring is starting, so when the whole nature comes to life full power. Might be more appropriate, as a start of a new year, instead of choosing the time when the cold starts..
This actually made me feel very much better about all the weirdness. Seeing it all in one place made it look clearly inevitable and also made it clear how little of a problem any of it is.
For what it's worth, leap day is at the "end" of a year. It's just a year that starts in March—an assumption shared with several other odd properties of this calendar.
This is why September, October, November and December are named after the numbers 7, 8, 9 and 10: they are the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th month if you start the year in March, like we used to.
I always assumed that it made sense until july and august were added, which is how i explain it to children. This thread has mentioned several times that those were quintillis and sextillis or something prior. I still like my version better, it implies that emperors are egotistical.
Evidence for this is September October November and December are named as seventh eighth ninth and tenth months which matches with a year starting in March obviously intentionally at the spring equinox but calendar inaccuracies lost that.
Quarters should begin and end with equinoxes and solstices and be equivalent with seasons, major holidays aligned with quarter transitions and solar milestones make sense.
Dates are one of the first standards through which humans discovered https://xkcd.com/927/.
Standards simple and useful enough to be used in everyday conversation die with their users. So I don't know anyone who keeps track of the Republican calendar, but I _do_ know people who are celebrating New Year's tonight. And the English still drink beer in pints.
It would only be simpler to use the Republican Calendar in a vacuum. Practically, all us programmers would spend all our time converting dates between Georgian and Republican dates, and I'd have to look at my ID to know my birthdate.
I always thought it would make sense to have 52 weeks (364 days) and then a special New Years day and then repeat 52 weeks.
This way every year is the same. It's always the same day of the week on April's 13th. No moving holidays. Easier to plan. No adjusting schedules. No problem with leap seconds/days (just as them to the special day whenever).
It just seems like a simple and superior solution. What were those guys thinking...
How about three 90 day quarters comprised of three 30 day months and one day in between each quarter for each solstice and equinox day? You can add a day or a week periodically to keep it synced.
It's a bit different though. I think the are reasons for 12 months, 7 days per week, 3 months quarters etc. My version keeps it all and avoids points in "disadvantages" section of the Wikipedia article.
7 days per week seems to be so ubiquitous now because religions that depended on that particular cycle (Judaism originally, and from thence Christianity and Islam) are so popular. But, historically, societies have successfully existed with weeks ranging anywhere from 5 to 10 days. Romans, in particular, had an 8-day week for most of their history.
(7 days per week has a more natural meaning if your calendar is lunar overall, so that weeks can be aligned with months. But lunar calendars are overall very messy due to disagreements with the solar cycle, so it's best to not go there in the first place.)
>"YOUR CALENDAR IS BASED ON A RELIGIOUS LEADER THAT NOT EVERYONE BELIEVES IN?"
Instead of taking the opportunity to make a holier-than-thou twitter rant the would-be probee would do better to reply to this by explaining that almost every religion and many cultures have one or more of their own.
Yes, and for some theirs is the main one. It's now year 2565 BE in Thailand, you won't really see "2022" that much outside of strictly tourist-oriented references. Use a Thai VPN when googling and that's the date you will see in search result listings.
I believe the next version of ISO 8601 is expected to support different calendar & time systems.
> you won't really see "2022" that much outside of strictly tourist-oriented references
Both are used. While government orgs are likely to favor the Buddhist calendar, many businesses will use Gregorian. It's definitely not an artifact of tourism.
To wit: When are the most fireworks set off? Your choices are 'global' new year, Thai new year and Chinese new year.
I would guess 100% of Thai people (at least those living in Thailand) know what year it is in both calendars.
Use DDG and you won't be forced to use the locale / language Google has deemed appropriate for your IP address.
I think the point of the article is to look at things from am engineering/scientist perspective where saying such things would get you fired/scrutinized.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 417 ms ] threadTo me the main advantage of 24h time is that it is easier to mentally calculate time, so for example 3 hours after 11:00 is just 11+3, which is 14:00h.
So, we usually say, 8 o clock in third pair means PM, or 8 o clock in 1st pair means AM.
(I'd also avoid terminology like bi-monthly and semi-monthly as it's a predictable point of confusion.)
We are confused when TSA staff in the US talk about quart bags.
A quart is the easy one. It’s just a slightly smaller version of a liter. And it’s not like the UK doesn’t use pints which are just half of a slightly larger quart.
I’m sure there’s lots of language including unrelated to measurement which differs across the Anglosphere.
> "nah. The end of the second month"
> "WHY WOULD IT BE THE SECOND MONTH?"
Because leap day is at the end of the year, but at some time we moved the start of the year two months back (same reason why September through December now are the ninth through twelfth month of the year, not the seventh through tenth)
(Historically, I think it was slightly different. February, the last month of the year was shorter because the year isn’t long enough to give it 30 days, then we moved the start of the year, and then we invented the Gregorian calendar, and picked February for the leap day because it already was an outlier)
The Julian calendar introduced the leap day instead, and maintained it in February as originally, and introduced it every 4 years (except years dividable by 100).
This is also around the same time that July and August were named to their current names (named after Caesar and Augustus). Before that, they had had names equal to fifth and sixth month, respectively, like September comes from seventh.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus#Name
History is not my field, I am probably making multiple mistakes and oversimplifying, but I don't see something in that link that disproves what I said. Today, we often refer to Augustus as Augustus Caesar or Caesar Augustus (less frequently, Emperor Augustus). I also think it's interesting to point out Julius's first name in light of the previous discussion, as that's where the month name comes from.
Now, do i google, duckduckgo, or bing, what those months were called?
Fifth collumism? Sexism?
No idea if that's true, but sounds appropriate for the ego of an emperor.
Originally February had 30 days, along with all the other months. (The 5 or 6 remaining days at various times were either extra days which didn't belong to a month or were omitted until there was a month's worth of them to catch up on.)
February got shorter because (being the last month of the year) it had days removed in order to add them to other months -- what was originally February 30th (the end of the year) became February 23rd (the end of the year, after which the leap day is inserted).
The reddit thread is funny but it also forget than there is not only one calendar in the actual world... Long time ago, i have meet an indian who was never able to explain to me witch days he was forbidden to eat meat (he was not a strict vegetarian), or even food at all. It was probably a mix of one of the indian calendars, horoscope and religion.
And they always are end of June or December in UTC time, so locally they can happen on the first of January or first or July.
There is actually no hard evidence that the Romans ever started their calendar in March instead of January. The earliest contemporaneous use of the calendar relies on January 1 as the start of the year, short February, and with intercalation happening after (or maybe within) February.
The primary evidence we use to indicate that the start of the year shifted is... the apparently wrong month names. Some writers did describe a calendar that starts at March and ends in December, with winter basically having no proper calendar--but these are writers describing how their calendar worked several centuries ago, attributing it to mythological figures, and the explanation strikes me as very heavily a "just so" explanation.
If you want my hypothesis, the Roman civil year never started in March. But March would have had some amount of primacy, as it indicates the start of the planting year. Shenanigans in the calendar would have occurred in February to ensure that the equinox is properly timed to happen in March. But the civil year would have started closer to the beginning of winter for other reasons (perhaps taxation? but finding this level of granularity of information on Roman taxation is difficult).
In this hypothesis, the month names were not incorrect because they were never intended to count from the beginning of the year. Note that the first 6 months of the civil year have names, while the last 6 are merely numbered. It makes no sense to me that you'd make up special names for the first 4 and the last 2 months of the year, while skipping everything in the middle.
It's some manner of borderline religious, faith-based notion about the assumed nature of aliens. People seem to get quite upset if you intrude on their fantasy about what aliens must surely be like (not like us, far better than us; humans are the primitive dredge of the universe basically). Despite the fact that there's no evidence to support either side of the premise, so it ends up revealing what the person thinks about themselves (self-hate) and humanity generally more than anything else.
And if you really want to see their heads explode, suggest the notion that the odds - as far as we know - are just as good that humans are the most advanced beings in the universe as not; and the odds are just as good that we're the very first spacefaring beings in the universe rather than the zillionth.
They managed interstellar travel, we did not. That inherently puts them at an advantage to us. Definitely a technological advantage. Hence it makes sense to assume (with medium confidence) that such aliens will be better at science than us. Assuming that they will therefore be more rational than us is not much of a leap.
Just the basic relativistic effects even with some type of instant transfers would make most communication and so on massively painful mess.
Perhaps extrasolar colonies will have to develop a system that makes sense for whatever planet or moon they settle on, at which point they'd be converting between Earth time and local time for correspondence.
It means some species that is/ was out there has an advantage. The species that actually visits us could be less intelligent than us but just intelligent enough to operate the equipment they dug up.
That is not a feature we share. We only occasionally make things better for all of humanity.
This is precisely the type of thing that would probably happen in almost any society. There are many standards that pop up that are vestiges of one thing or another. The fact we get base 60 from Sumeria but use Base 12 or Base 24 for hours is not a big deal, weird things happen. I doubt any advanced alien would be just so flabbergasted over this. We have multiple cultures all over the world that count differently, so the assumption of base 10, just doesn't really make sense. All standards like time, counting, etc in any culture I think would be this mishmash of legacies from some people's that were dominant at some point that other people's culture imprinted upon that. If anything an alien race would probably be more suspicious if our calendar and time system was some perfect base 10 all through or something of that nature as if the cult of reason had dominated the world after the French Revolution.
Also the historical record of someone named Jesus existing isn't debated by any historical scholar I have ever heard of, just the messianic / prophetic / son of god nature seems to be the rub.
It doesn't look more or less nice to me than the base 10 version. Can you describe what is supposed to make it look nicer, especially to aliens?
In base 12, there are similarly easy rules for 2, 3, 4, and 6. Doesn't seem like that great of a trade off but it could be beneficial. That also just comes down to 12 being a "superior highly composite number".
If I personally was allowed to rewrite our number system, I think I'd choose a base that is either a superior highly composite number or a power of 2. So something in the set [2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 32, 60, 64...]. I doubt 10 would even cross my mind as an option if I didn't have 10 fingers.
And an even deeper insight is that it doesn't really matter that much and isn't worth shaking up the whole world to change. We're not going to be better or worse at math because of our number base.
Except for where you start a sentence with "yeah," apparently answering in the affirmative a hypothetical question that no one has asked, and adding a superfluous and grammatically incorrect comma, you are vaguely correct.
Jesus is the English transliteration of a Germanic adaptation of the Latin transliteration of the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name Yeshua.
What is agreed upon by near universal scholarly consensus is instead that Jesus was baptized and crucified. But I personally believe it is a sure bet he also was a rouser of rabble, had a ministry, and was considered holy, as beyond the 10 or so natural holes he ultimately was given at least 4 additional holes.
Wow, you must be a hit at parties. The way I phrased that sentence is how some some dialects of English, like the one I speak, express agreement. Consider it shorthand for "I agree,". And perhaps consider the limits of your experiences and that wisdom is (partially) knowing what you don't know, and not attempting to speak with authority in such areas.
In wording my response to you, I've deliberately avoided other expressions from my dialect that may confuse you, but are very applicable. Like "twat" or "tosser", or "tu meke".
> Jesus is the English transliteration of a Germanic adaptation of the Latin transliteration of the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name Yeshua.
Yeah, nah. Thanks for contributing nothing that a basic Google of "Jesus Yeshua" wouldn't have.
In my dialect, "yeah, nah" often means "I'm experiencing fremdschämen".
> What is agreed upon by near universal scholarly consensus is instead that Jesus was baptized and crucified.
You're going to need an awful lot of citations there.
Firstly, define the scholars you're referring to.
Also, what sources are they working from?
Josephus, the closest there is to a contemporaneous source, doesn't mention baptism. Neither do Seutonius, Pliny the Younger, Mara bar-Serapion or Tacitus.
Maybe the scholars you refer to are extrapolating from the title "Anointed", or from the fact that, gosh, if you're saying this Jesus is sinless, and baptism is for the remission of sins, then why would you include a story in your holy writings that Jesus was baptised? It makes no sense, so you must've included it to be historically correct! Also known as proof by mortification. [0]
Or maybe, you're just referencing crap you garnered from a 5 minute speed read of Wikipedia that really needs more citations? Who knows? Tu meke au.
[0]: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/biblical-literalism
> You're going to need an awful lot of citations there.
> Firstly, define the scholars you're referring to.
Not being OP, I’ll list at least John Dominic Crossan and James Dunn, who has said that the baptism and crucifixion of Jesus “command almost universal assent.”
Of course, I got those names from five minutes speed reading Wikipedia. But that’s two more scholars’ opinions of the scholarly consensus than you’ve provided.
> Also, what sources are they working from?
Surely this is the very definition of moving the goalposts. OP stated the scholarly consensus is that Jesus’s baptism and crucifixion are true (this, incidentally, was my existing impression of the scholarly consensus). Now you’re no longer just arguing that OP was wrong about that, but have moved on to claiming that any scholars and historians who believe in Jesus’s baptism are wrong because they have no reliable sources.
I have to admit, I’m not inclined to throw out my understanding of the scholarly consensus or which sources are reliable to argue the historicity of Jesus based on an unsourced Hacker News comment.
And I'm very interested indeed in Crossan and Dunn's sources, sadly Wikipedia doesn't yield any light on this.
The historical sources I mentioned can be found in more detail on newadvent.org, whatever else you think of the Catholics, they compile a humdinger of a wiki, and are probably the experts on Christology and the historical Jesus.
Ad hominem attack.
> The way I phrased that sentence is how some some dialects of English, like the one I speak, express agreement. Consider it shorthand for "I agree,".
There is no English dialect that does not include the adverb, "yeah," etymologically formed from drawling the affirmation, "yes," colloquially and informally. More often, however, "yeah" is employed as a common filler in the same way as, "um," or "uh," used as a pause to think when not finished speaking, as such, when written, it is meaningless and superfluous. In modern usage, however, it may most often be correctly replaced with the phrase, "as a Millennial, I informally affirm."
> And perhaps consider the limits of your experiences and that wisdom is (partially) knowing what you don't know, and not attempting to speak with authority in such areas.
Ad hominem attack.
> In wording my response to you, I've deliberately avoided other expressions from my dialect that may confuse you, but are very applicable. Like "twat" or "tosser", or "tu meke".
Ad hominem attack.
> Yeah, nah. Thanks for contributing nothing that a basic Google of "Jesus Yeshua" wouldn't have.
Contradiction of informal colloquialisms and an ad hominem attack.
> In my dialect, "yeah, nah" often means "I'm experiencing fremdschämen".
False. An affirmative placed with a negative is a contradiction, but the assertion here is a clumsy ad hominem attack.
> You're going to need an awful lot of citations there.
While I agree with anjbe that this is moving the goalposts, it is also an ad hominem attack.
> Firstly, define the scholars you're referring to.
While I have not referred to any particular scholars, making your employment of such a straw man, I would define scholars in the ordinary sense as academics.
> Also, what sources are they working from?
This is further development of the previous straw man.
> Josephus, the closest there is to a contemporaneous source, doesn't mention baptism. Neither do Seutonius, Pliny the Younger, Mara bar-Serapion or Tacitus.
Though this is a continuation of the previous straw man argument, in fact, the closest contemporaneous sources, in chronological order, are the letters of Paul, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, Acts of the Apostles, and the Gospel of John.
> Maybe the scholars you refer to are extrapolating from the title "Anointed", or from the fact that, gosh, if you're saying this Jesus is sinless, and baptism is for the remission of sins, then why would you include a story in your holy writings that Jesus was baptised? It makes no sense, so you must've included it to be historically correct! Also known as proof by mortification. Or maybe, you're just referencing crap you garnered from a 5 minute speed read of Wikipedia that really needs more citations? Who knows? Tu meke au.
It its entirety, this is a straw man argument which happens to include ad hominems.
The distinction between spoken and written seems a) arbitrary and b) entirely irrelevant to a comment section on a website. I'm writing conversationally, comments aren't technical documentation or tenders, they're comments. Observations in passing.
Being honest, when you opened with... ...whatever your thinking there was, I immediately shut down on engagement.
Genuine feedback - you know your shit, so just lead with that, not the part where you decide to lead with "You started a sentence with 'yeah', and that's wrong". It helps establish a rapport.
Anyway, you got your chronology slightly wrong but only slightly, so very much well done, and I mean that genuinely, and it only erred in where you placed Acts, which contains the earliest Christian writings. (That we know of (so far))
Anyhoo, I'm a big fan of this book if you've not read it yet: https://www.amazon.com/Reading-New-Testament-Pheme-Perkins/d...
But I suspect you may have.
My thinking was the tenor of your comment was overly informal and self-gratifying considering the subject, a major theme of whose teachings was humility. It doesn't quite follow that being antagonistic is not engagement.
> Anyway, you got your chronology slightly wrong but only slightly, so very much well done, and I mean that genuinely, and it only erred in where you placed Acts, which contains the earliest Christian writings. (That we know of (so far))
"The earliest possible date for Luke-Acts is around 62 AD,[citation needed] the time of Paul's imprisonment in Rome, but most scholars date the work to 80–90 AD on the grounds that it uses Mark as a source, looks back on the destruction of Jerusalem, and does not show any awareness of the letters of Paul (which began circulating late in the first century); if it does show awareness of the Pauline epistles, and also of the work of the Jewish historian Josephus, as some believe, then a date in the early 2nd century is possible."[1]
"The Gospel of Mark... is usually dated through the eschatological discourse in Mark 13: most scholars interpret this as pointing to the First Jewish–Roman War (66–74 AD) that would lead to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, with the composition of Mark taking place either immediately after the destruction (the majority position) or during the years immediately prior."[2]
"A majority of scholars agree that Galatians was written between the late 40s and early 50s, although some date the original composition to c. 50–60."[3]
"The Epistle to Philemon was composed around AD 57-62 by Paul while in prison at Caesarea Maritima (early date) or more likely from Rome (later date) in conjunction with the composition of Colossians."[4]
"Regardless of the literary unity of the letter, scholars agree that the material that was compiled into the Epistle to the Philippians was originally composed in Greek, sometime during the 50s or early 60s AD."[5]
The earliest surviving subject materials are the authentic Pauline Epistles, and the oldest surviving Gospel is the one attributed to John Mark. It has been theorized and argued that a lost Gospel, a gospel of sayings, known as the Q source,[6] was composed earlier or around the same time as Mark, with the Gospel of Thomas a candidate for the Q source, but most place the date of Thomas' composition after the 2nd Century, and there is no consensus on whether the Q source existed. The earliest recorded words attributed to Jesus are found in Matthew 5-7, portions of the Sermon on the Mount[7] ("Blessed are the cheesemakers...")[8]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_the_Apostles#Title,_un...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark#Authorship,_dat...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_to_the_Galatians#Date
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_to_Philemon#Compositio...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_to_the_Philippians#Com...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source
[7] EdwardDiego ↗ I reiterate my recommendation of that book by Pheme Perkins. Acts contains the oldest Christian traditions. Oral traditions, natch. Maursault ↗ > Acts contains the oldest Christian traditions. Oral traditions, natch.
Your comments on my tone are bewildering in their absolute irrelevance - discussing the historical Jesus doesn't require reverence or adherence to the themes of Christianity, like how discussing the historical Muhammad doesn't require me to adhere to the shahada, nor consider dogs unclean.
But hey, maybe you're neurodiverse, or maybe you're just an asshole, but you do you.
If your objection to my tone was because of closely held personal beliefs, then I'm afraid you'll just have to build a bridge and get over it.
The Oral Tradition hypothesis holds that where Matthew and Luke agree against Mark, rather than using a Q Source, the source is oral traditions. Prior to Mark and the letters of Paul, surely there had to be oral traditions passed on for decades. Luke may refer to these in the first two verses of his gospel.
But since the synoptic gospels all attest together to a number of events, known as the Triple Tradition, including Jesus' baptism and crucifixion, and many details in between, and Acts begins with the replacement of Judas with Matthias, detailing further events only after this event, I don't see how the earliest oral traditions could be found in Acts.
Clearly the baptism, temptation, gathering of disciples, etc., all occurred prior to Mathias elected to replace Judas, and if drawn at least partially from oral tradition, how could the later traditions predate the earlier? Without earlier oral traditions including key elements from Jesus' life, how could oral traditions concerning much later events in Acts begin to develop?
Oral traditions detailing the spread of the gospel predating the oral traditions of the gospels themselves is difficult to imagine and implies early Christians developed what necessarily then becomes a backstory, or prequel, namely Jesus' ministry, only after developing the oral traditions concerning the oral transfer of those earlier events. That would be a neat trick, as the narratives about the oral transfer of those chronologically earlier narratives somehow would predate the content of the oral transfer detailed in Acts.
It is debated by people like Richard Carrier https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEB&search_query=richard... who says that (IIRC) while it's not unlikely that one or several people with similar messages preached in Judea 2000 years ago, the Jesus of the Bible looks like a literary invention when you go back to all the earliest records in Christian and non-Christian (e.g. Roman) sources.
*Edit* now that I got downvoted for mentioning Richard Carrier I'd very much like to hear about substantialized criticism about his work. Any pointers?
Yes, but there’s little debate amongst scholars that aren’t atheist activists. For instance, it’s extremely difficult to explain the historical facts of the early Christian movement without a historical Jesus due to those events being so recent and broadly falsifiable via living memory let alone records extant at the time and there being no evidence of the Romans using a lack of historical evidence for Jesus as an argument against Christianity.
But ... the sexagesimal system made sense and I guess that, in ancient times, time periods that don't have patterns would always be divided arbitrarily (years can be marked with seasons, days with night, but how to divide the time between, say, mid-day and sunset?).
I haven't noticed 25:00, but I don't often look at printed/PDF timetables nowadays.
If a coffee shop opens at 5am, they say that. They never say 29.
If a bar stays open UNTIL 5am, they say 29.
Your return flight leaves at 2 and arrives at 11. (2 AM to 11 AM that same day)
Now that I’m a morning person, the same concept of 5am semantic days still works perfectly. The day begins about 20min before my alarm.
https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/reference#stop_ti...
This convention is also used by some TV ratings measurement organizations - a show ending Tue 02:00 will be recorded as Mon 26:00, since it logically belonged to the day that ended, not the one that started.
When we actually have this well designed system where everything fits beautifully together...
But the good craft beer places have a sign saying what their pints are in millilitres to prevent unpleasant surprises when you were expecting 568mL but got 425mL.
They'll probably tell you if they know it's not a true pint, but I expect most bartenders have no idea.
Some US bars will serve imperial pints on request and/or offer them for British or Irish beers.
Typically in a British pub you will be served beer in a glass that is calibrated as “pint to brim”, and any head on the beer is taken out of the nominal pint. So usually a pint as served is much closer to half a litre.
The German system where there's a line on the glass that needs to be reached by beer under penalty of law puts a smile on my face.
* height is normally distributed for men.
* The average height of a man is 5'9".
* The standard deviation for men's height is 3".
So six foot is one standard deviation above average. I am sure one or more of the above does not hold for NZ. I just think this is neat, that the commonly stated preference happens to be for one standard deviation above the average.
"In the SI, the standard metre is defined as exactly 1/299,792,458 of the distance that light travels in a second."
"The kilogram was originally defined as the mass of one cubic decimetre of water at 4 °C, standardized as the mass of a man-made artefact of platinum-iridium held in a laboratory in France, which was used until a new definition was introduced in May 2019. Replicas made in 1879 at the time of the artefact's fabrication and distributed to signatories of the Metre Convention serve as de facto standards of mass in those countries. Additional replicas have been fabricated since as additional countries have joined the convention. The replicas were subject to periodic validation by comparison to the original, called the IPK. It became apparent that either the IPK or the replicas or both were deteriorating, and are no longer comparable: they had diverged by 50 μg since fabrication, so figuratively, the accuracy of the kilogram was no better than 5 parts in a hundred million or a proportion of 5x10−8:1. The accepted redefinition of SI base units replaced the IPK with an exact definition of the Planck constant, which defines the kilogram in terms of the second and metre."
But at least we still have horsepower! My PSU is a 3/4-horse unit. My toaster oven is a full horsepower.
I like it.
My 70kWh battery holds only 95 horsepower-hours. But I use the British Thermal Unit when talking about energy.
My BEV has 240 kilo-BTUs stored in it.
So let's call it 150 million oscillations, and refer to it simply as "time", since the word second only makes sense in context of an analog clock anyways. Then we can start rounding the other weights and measures accordingly until everything is nice and clean. It appeals to the OCD in me, despite the societal chaos that would ensure.
But then the universe will undoubtedly throw random numbers at us like π or the fine-structure constant and mess it all up.
There was an issue with the standard for the Kilogram, which was recognised then corrected by introducing a definition which is based on physically measurable phenomenon. The new approach allows independent experiments to derive the value of the Kilogram.
That seems to me like a process that works, and I struggle to think of a better outcome.
That the metric system is just as arbitrary as the customary units. Things like the meter and (kilo)gram were based on arbitrary objects rather than anything objective. They've since been redefined using physical constants to come close enough to the old reference objects. (And the US customary units are officially defined as exact fractions from the SI units -- making the whole world happy to have exact measurements regardless of the system you use.)
At least the customary units have nice divisors. Just saying.
No-one claims it isn't arbitrary. Any choice of units is arbitrary. "Not being arbitrary" just isn't a desideratum when considering what makes a good system of units.
The main desirable property is coherence [0], which SI has.
But I don't think anyone would claim SI is perfect. It's not; it's got at least a couple of warts. One is that "kg" is a base unit and is prefixed. But that's about the worst of it.
CGS is also coherent, but has a similar problem with a prefixed base unit (in this case, cm).
US Customary units is not only incoherent, but does things like conflate mass and force (lb is a technically a measure of force, so is the long/short ton, and slug is the proper unit for mass) and has far too many derived units that measure the same thing (e.g. ft lb/s, hp and BTU/h, vs just W).
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherence_(units_of_measuremen...
There was some debate at the time about using a pendulum with a 1s period to define the metre, but it was known to be less accurately reproducible than the geodetic version.
Their aim was to define a system that could in principle be recreated from scratch anywhere on Earth without necessarily relying on access to the physical prototypes. In practice the relative imprecision of the original measurements compared to the later demands of science and engineering meant that the prototypes became the definition.
It’s interesting to compare with the British Imperial units reform in the 1820s. Part of that act specifies how to recreate the prototypes from physical properties of the units. When the Palace of Westminster burned down in the 1830s the ancient prototypes were destroyed. But the replacements were recreated from copies, not from the specification in the act. And not much later, the official definition was based on the metric system because the metric standards were manufactured to much greater quality.
Except nobody remembers what a 'pottle' is.
Decimal is a system best suited for written math.
You can count to 12 that way, too, e.g. by folding the thumb first to indicate 1, and then unfolding it with the rest of the fingers folded when you get to 6. Or you can turn the fist upside down etc. Again, there are many techniques, but counting by folding or unfolding fingers is the simplest and the most obvious, which is why base-10 is the most common.
The problem is getting that design adopted by everyone.
>> I am Captain Zelnick from Earth. We come in peace.
> I am Captain Ala‐la’la. We come in peace.
>> Our starship is called Vindicator.
> Our starship is called the Tender Shoot.
>> We are the New Alliance of Free Stars from Earth.
> We are the Supox Utricularia from Earth.
>> You’re from Earth??? Hey! Are you just copying whatever I say?
> Oh yes, we apologize for the confusion, our homeworld is also called ‘Earth’, or more properly ‘Vlik’, which means ‘Perfectly Good and Nutritious Dirt’. ‘Earth’ is pretty close, is it not?
Pointer finger knuckle = January = 31 days
Between pointer/middle = Feb != 31 days
Middle finger knuckle = March = 31 days
And so on, just looping back to the first knuckle when you get past the pinky knuckle.
And Dec for 10 meaning December is the 12th Month. Going by the Roman system, March is the 1st month bu we've decided to make it the 3rd month today and offset everything else.
“and the third hand is the second hand…”
----
update: found it: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=0QVPUIRGthI
March 1st would make sense in terms of Sep/Oct/Nov/Dec having the right names for their place in the year.
Quarters should begin and end with equinoxes and solstices and be equivalent with seasons, major holidays aligned with quarter transitions and solar milestones make sense.
Standards simple and useful enough to be used in everyday conversation die with their users. So I don't know anyone who keeps track of the Republican calendar, but I _do_ know people who are celebrating New Year's tonight. And the English still drink beer in pints.
It would only be simpler to use the Republican Calendar in a vacuum. Practically, all us programmers would spend all our time converting dates between Georgian and Republican dates, and I'd have to look at my ID to know my birthdate.
This way every year is the same. It's always the same day of the week on April's 13th. No moving holidays. Easier to plan. No adjusting schedules. No problem with leap seconds/days (just as them to the special day whenever).
It just seems like a simple and superior solution. What were those guys thinking...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
7 days per week seems to be so ubiquitous now because religions that depended on that particular cycle (Judaism originally, and from thence Christianity and Islam) are so popular. But, historically, societies have successfully existed with weeks ranging anywhere from 5 to 10 days. Romans, in particular, had an 8-day week for most of their history.
(7 days per week has a more natural meaning if your calendar is lunar overall, so that weeks can be aligned with months. But lunar calendars are overall very messy due to disagreements with the solar cycle, so it's best to not go there in the first place.)
Instead of taking the opportunity to make a holier-than-thou twitter rant the would-be probee would do better to reply to this by explaining that almost every religion and many cultures have one or more of their own.
I believe the next version of ISO 8601 is expected to support different calendar & time systems.
Both are used. While government orgs are likely to favor the Buddhist calendar, many businesses will use Gregorian. It's definitely not an artifact of tourism.
To wit: When are the most fireworks set off? Your choices are 'global' new year, Thai new year and Chinese new year.
I would guess 100% of Thai people (at least those living in Thailand) know what year it is in both calendars.
Use DDG and you won't be forced to use the locale / language Google has deemed appropriate for your IP address.