Stop using B.C.E. and C.E. you cretins!

[_random_]

What's the significance of 1950?

 

[Mango Elephant]

This post.

I would assume that we'd just default to 1950, given that it's already used by archaeologists to represent "the present".

 

[Dachs]

I'll be using the Seleukid Era.

 

[EnglishEdward]

I rather like:

After Moon Landing (AML) or After Neil Armstrong (ANA) and similarly BML and BNA.

But I rather think our descendants will use.

After Peak Oil (APO) and Before Peak Oil (BPO).

 

[Winner]

I hope you realize that March 1 is still winter in quite a few parts of the world.

It is generally seen as the first month of spring. This is is why it makes sense as the beginning of a calendar year - spring symbolizes renewal, a new cycle in nature. Winter represents the end, so February should be the last month in a year.

I rather like:

After Moon Landing (AML) or After Neil Armstrong (ANA) and similarly BML and BNA.

But I rather think our descendants will use.

After Peak Oil (APO) and Before Peak Oil (BPO).

A change in calendar would only be possible if modern Western civilization basically collapsed in its entirety and was rebuilt from scratch by people so shaken by the collapse, that they'd make it a zero-point in their calendar.

I doubt that will happen.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

It's Juche 101 for me.

 

[EnglishEdward]

A change in calendar would only be possible if modern Western civilization basically collapsed in its entirety and was rebuilt from scratch by people so shaken by the collapse, that they'd make it a zero-point in their calendar.

There may not be a single economic collapse, but a series of economic declines
with different minima in different places preventing any agreed common date.

The debate may rather be as to whether it is peak oil or peak fossil fuel.

Future historians may find it more convenient to seek agreement on a single
peak fossil fuel or peak oil point.

And the succeeding society where growth is understood to be inherently limited
and with resource rationing permitted as applied science develops can be
planned, may well wish to differentiate itself from its prolifigate predecessors.

 

[El_Machinae]

I really thought we'd be using "before Obama" and "after Obama" by now!

 

[Leoreth]

What's so good about the moon landing? Do you really want to use "negative" dates for everything before 1969?

I'd rather use ab urbe condita or something like that to minimize "before" years.

 

[CELTICEMPIRE]

Why can't we just keep counting from Christ's birth (Yes, I know he was born around 4 BC) like we've been doing for centuries?

 

[Borachio]

We can. And very likely will. For the foreseeable future. For historic dating.

 

[El_Machinae]

Why can't we just keep counting from Christ's birth (Yes, I know he was born around 4 BC) like we've been doing for centuries?

Don't you think it's weird that we say he might have been born in 4 BC?

 

[Borachio]

Well, it is weird. But that's because people have been using calendars for such a long time. And have, supposedly, refined Christ's date of birth. But they have also recognized that changing the accepted zero year is a bit of a useless, and cumbersome, thing to do, and therefore stuck with the number they first thought of. I suggest.

 

[Mango Elephant]

I really thought we'd be using "before Obama" and "after Obama" by now!

I could get behind this.

 

[Leoreth]

Don't you think it's weird that we say he might have been born in 4 BC?

So we are, in fact, not counting from Christ's birth and overzealous secularists can be happy.

 

[warpus]

Yes, and?

*shrug* Just suggesting that it will likely continue morphing and evolving. In 400 years we might be celebrating Krostmos by smashing a pumpkin into pieces with a bat'leth

 

[Cheetah]

It is generally seen as the first month of spring. This is is why it makes sense as the beginning of a calendar year - spring symbolizes renewal, a new cycle in nature. Winter represents the end, so February should be the last month in a year.

The new year beings when the Sun turns! Around 22nd of December.

Which is why most of the things we celebrate around that time, be it Christmas, Saturnalia, Jul or New Years, originally occurred on the 22nd.

We should therefore move all the days of the calendar 9 days to the left, to align things properly!

So we are, in fact, not counting from Christ's birth and overzealous secularists can be happy.

Exactly the reason to use CE and BCE. The Church should start using 4 BCE as the correct 1 AD of course.

Also, I would suggest that we all switch over to the Holocene calendar!

Thus: Jesus was born in the year 9997 HE, and Armstrong walked on the moon in the year 11,969 HE!

 

[Borachio]

Also, I would suggest that we all switch over to the Holocene calendar!

Thus: Jesus was born in the year 9997 HE, and Armstrong walked on the moon in the year 11,969 HE!

This is neat!

 

[hobbsyoyo]

As a neutral observation that a specific historical event occurred, that's one thing. What I loathe about it is the idea that it was good. Because it wasn't good, for an awful lot of people. There are still First Nations people here who are bitter about it. One of them once told me flat out, she wished that ALL of Europe had been killed by the Black Death.

As I said, the label Columbian Exchange doesn't paint the event as 'good' or 'bad'. It just was. There were many horrible things that Europeans did to Africans and North/South Americans during this time. There were also lots of horrible things that happened to people that no one purposefully did (syphillus went to Europe, smallpox went the other way [and smallpox did and would have spread epidemically without Europeans gifting infected blankets]).

There were also good things like the spread of agricultural products to new continents and a massive economic boom from the resulting trade. And we can't forget the spread of invasive species that resulted from purposeful and accidental transplantation. It's hard to label that as 'good' or 'bad' when you don't look at the effects on human populations. Species spread, that's what they're supposed to do, it isn't inherently good or bad. But if you do look at it through the lense of the human experience, it wasn't all bad. Horses did revolutionize life for the Native Americans of the plains.

All in all, I'm not trying to glorify the conquistadors or horrible, tragic events. I just think it's an acceptable reset date (if there was ever a serious movement to reset the calendar) because of the enormous changes to the entire planet and the human experience that followed 1492.

I'm not sure where you'd get an idea like that, but I'm going to guess that you aren't a programmer

So, programming in C sharp is harder than programming in say, COBOL or the ENIAC coding system?

Before you jump on me over the vacuum tube nature of ENIAC, understand that this is my whole point. Technology, and the coding behind it, while growing more complex, is also becoming more user-friendly. Even with respect to the difficult task of programming complex systems-programmers now have tools, methods and resources that didn't exist 10+ years ago.

Going forward, we will reach a point where reprogramming a calendar in multiple systems will be trivial. This could be for a variety of reasons, but I believe it will be chiefly because human-computer interactions will have evolved to the point where you tell the computer what you want and it recodes itself or other systems accordingly. Again, this is in the future, at some point where such a reset of the calendar system would be necessary (per my example of interplanetary colonization).


One last thing I'd like to say about legacy systems being maintained for long periods of time. This is certainly true, but no legacy system lasts forever. They are all replaced, and I presume that they will be replaced (in time, even if it takes decades) with more capable, user-friendly systems.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The new year beings when the Sun turns! Around 22nd of December.

Sun turns? Lol, I think you mean that this is when the Earth shifts in the other direction on it's axis.