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

[Borachio]

Really? Does the Earth shift on its axis? Wouldn't we notice this?

 

[bhsup]

It doesn't shift, but the axis does have a rotation of 25,000 years IIRC.

 

[Borachio]

You're good!



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession_(astronomy)

(26,000)

 

[bhsup]

*grumble* So bloody close

 

[Disgustipated]

I vote the 0 date should be 4000 BC? Why? Because that's when civilization games start.

As for AD/BC, I will continue so as long as Civilization games still use them. . Civilization games (especially Civ4 ) is my god.

 

[Save_Ferris]

We should change time to the metric system. 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 7 hours in a week? Really America?

 

[Borachio]

Ho ho ho.

Decimal time!

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Really? Does the Earth shift on its axis? Wouldn't we notice this?

It doesn't shift, but the axis does have a rotation of 25,000 years IIRC.

I said it shifted directions on it's axis. What I meant is that during the summer in the northern hemisphere, north of the equator is tilted toward the sun. The opposite happens during winter.

This is because of the 23 degree tilt in the Earth's axis relative to the orbital plane, and has nothing to do with the 25,770 (you shouldn't lop off 230 years ) year processional cycle which determines witch star is the polar star. The Earth's axis currently points towar Polaris in the north, in 3000 AD it will point at Gamma Cephei. In 3000 BC it pointed at Thuban.

 

[Borachio]

I said it shifted directions on it's axis. What I meant is that during the summer in the northern hemisphere, north of the equator is tilted toward the sun. The opposite happens during winter.

This is because of the 23 degree tilt in the Earth's axis relative to the orbital plane, and has nothing to do with the 25,000 year processional cycle which determines witch star is the polar star. The Earth's axis currently points towar Polaris in the north, in 3000 AD it will point at Gamma Cephei. In 3000 BC it pointed at Thuban.

Yes, I realize. I'm sorry, I was just being pedantic.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yes, I realize. I'm sorry, I was just being pedantic.

No worries. I was actually more concerned with correcting VRWCAgent's misattribution.

 

[bhsup]

In my defense, I didn't even see yours until I read back just now to see what you were talking about. Happens sometimes when posts are at the bottom of a page. I saw Borachio's question of "Really? Does the Earth shift on its axis? Wouldn't we notice this?" on the top of page 8 and just whipped out a quick response. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

In my defense, I didn't even see yours until I read back just now to see what you were talking about. Happens sometimes when posts are at the bottom of a page. I saw Borachio's question of "Really? Does the Earth shift on its axis? Wouldn't we notice this?" on the top of page 8 and just whipped out a quick response. Sorry for the confusion.

No worries! I used bad phrasing in my post about the axis 'shift' to begin with. There's a reason why we engineers have techinal language.

 

[Leifmk]

One of Vernor Vinge's novels set in the far future has a throwaway line about how most of the far future's interstellar human civilizations have a common reckoning of time which is popularly believed to be based on the first moon landing, but people who know better are aware that it's actually a few months offset. This is, of course, Unix time, still merrily ticking away the seconds since the beginning of 1970 at the bottom of everyone's computer systems ten thousand years into the future. Vinge is a veteran computer science guy and knows how legacyware survives.

 

[Joecoolyo]

I like the idea of using the Colombian Exchange as the new starting point for a calender. That way we can change the dates to "Before Colombus", to signify his importance in the event, and "After Death" to help us remember the massive amount of death that occurred because of it.

No more stupid B.C. and A.D. anymore!

 

[Borachio]

Oh, you wit, you!

 

[SamSniped]

Seriously. It makes you sound like a fool.

I've been doing transcription hits on Mechanical Turk for pocket change over the last few days. A fairly good set of HITs showed up and they were clearly a college professor's lectures. Not a bad job, and a lot of it is interesting enough to make the tedium more bearable. But the fool keeps saying B.C.E. and C.E.! It makes me want to go drink bleach until I die every time I hear it. It's so revoltingly childish and stupid.

Nobody who regularly reads this forum will mistake me for a Christian, but I absolutely can't stand this B.C.E./C.E. crap. If people really want a secular calendar then they should make one. Move the 0 date to something of secular significance like the moon landing or the invention of the printing press, but don't ******** me by using the Christian date with a new label hastily scrawled on it with a permanent marker.

I use them interchangeably. I really don't see why people make such a big deal about it.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again.

We should use ABY and BBY for our dating.

According to what I've found on Wookiepedia looking up stuff for a game I am making, they didn't use ABY/BBY, they used a different system

 

[Dachs]

According to what I've found on Wookiepedia looking up stuff for a game I am making, they didn't use ABY/BBY, they used a different system

Actually, no, they did commonly use BBY/ABY. It started when in-universe reference materials used nothing but that system, then was canonized and explained in the New Essential Chronology as a New Republic historical reference material standardization.

There were other systems in use, of course. One of the earlier ones from the texts is the Imperial Era, dating from the Declaration of a New Order in 19 BBY; it's referred to in Dark Force Rising during Luke's research into the history of Joru(u)s C'baoth. The Great Resynchronization was another such date, from 35 BBY; that was originally hypothesized as the end of the Clone Wars but was later retconned during the production of the prequel trilogy as simply a restandardization of times and measures during the later Republic. Other dates, like the founding of the Republic (25,053 BBY) and the Ruusan Reformation (1,000 BBY) were less popular.

 

[Winner]

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!

That's not very convenient.

Here's what I am saying - we have a neat calendar everybody is used to and doesn't want to change it. Why then, I ask, does a new calendar start in the middle of winter? What sense does it make? I don't care about the solstice, winter still lasts for two more months in most of Europe/North America/northern Asia. Why are we splitting a season between two years? Then we have to say stupid things like "the winter of 1997/98 was really cold".

When you ask a normal person about which seasons we have in a year, they'll say "spring, summer, autumn, winter", in this order. I propose we make a new year start on the 1st of March to make a neat delineation that's already accepted by majority of people. The fact that the weirdest month (February, 2 days shorter than others) would be moved to the last position only makes the proposal more attractive.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

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

The Sun is always turning. It spins on its own axis, too. One "day" for the Sun is a little over one Earth month.

 

[Quintillus]

B.C.E. and C.E. are pretty stupid simply because they just based it on the same as B.C. and A.D. so really what's the point? That B.C. and A.D. reference Christ? Well, so do BCE and CE since that's what they're based on.

QFT. Supposedly "BCE" and "CE" are supposed to be nonsecular, but everyone knows they're equivalent to "Before Christ" and "In the Year of Our Lord". It's just a different two or three letter abbreviation for the same meaning.

As for Anno Domini supposed to be preceding the year... in Latin, this may be the case. But in English, no one actually does that unless they're trying to set a certain atmosphere, usually of a time when Latin was more common than it is now (such as in the titles of games like Anno 1701).

I'd even go so far as to voice the potentially heretical belief that Wikipedia is wrong. Wikipedia claims that, "Traditionally, English has copied Latin usage by placing the abbreviation before the year number for AD.[12] Since BC is not derived from Latin it is placed after the year number (for example: AD 2012, but 68 BC). However, placing the AD after the year number (as in "2012 AD") is also becoming common usage." Maybe there is somewhere that people write "AD 2012", but if so, I've never heard of where that is. So I'd say that "2012 AD" is not at all "becoming common", but in fact pretty much the exclusive way it's used these days.