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

[El_Machinae]

If we're making a new calender, I want 50, 7-day weeks and one 5-day week (around a solstice)

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I can't remember seeing the AD coming before the number ever. Darn wikipedia

 

[Traitorfish]

If we're making a new calender, I want 50, 7-day weeks and one 5-day week (around a solstice)

Doesn't that leave you ten days short?

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.

Well, yes, they are the secular equivalent. That's the entire point.

 

[Antilogic]

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.

I can't remember seeing the AD coming before the number ever. Darn wikipedia

I remember being taught "properly" the before/after rule for BC and AD, which is a large reason why I prefer BCE/CE.



Also, considering Jesus Christ is now believed to have been born in 6ish BCE, it seems kind of weird to continue insisting 5-1 BCE is BC. As a kid, I remember wondering if Jesus only lived for 1-2 years because the transition between 1 BC and 1 AD was so small. Were there missing unlabeled years inbetween?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

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.

You are as helplessly drawn toward Star Wars references as I am about the CSA and slavery debates!

 

[El_Machinae]

Antilogic. I don't think we 'consider Jesus to have been born in 6 BCE', we don't know when he was born and one of the putative landmarks has him born before 4 BCE. The other landmarks (which I guess should be equally weighted?) disagree, and give different dates. You have to ignore other accounts of his birth to have him born before 4 BCE.

Doesn't that leave you ten days short?

Entirely , I mis-remembered what I was thinking.

I meant "twelve 30-day months, and one 5-day 'holiday week'."

 

[Borachio]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordian_calendar

five day week ( Sweetmorn, Boomtime, Pungentday, Prickle-Prickle, and Setting Orange)
five 73 day seasons ( Chaos, Discord, Confusion, Bureaucracy, and The Aftermath.)

 

[Dachs]

You are as helplessly drawn toward Star Wars references as I am about the CSA and slavery debates!

That's only because I've already spent two fruitless years in CSA/slavery threads myself already.

 

[bhsup]

That's only because I've already spent two fruitless years in CSA/slavery threads myself already.

YOu'd think after two years you would have finally accepted the truth.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

That's only because I've already spent two fruitless years in CSA/slavery threads myself already.

I hear ya. I'm just as helpless as a moth to a flame and it gets me in trouble.

 

[SamSniped]

I had meant the GRS dating system, Dachs, and that BBY was not actually used BBY. Because it's hard to predict the Battle of Yavin.

 

[Antilogic]

That's only because I've already spent two fruitless years in CSA/slavery threads myself already.

Don't worry, it's my turn to burn a few years arguing for the Union before passing the torch to a new sane poster.

 

[Dachs]

I had meant the GRS dating system, Dachs, and that BBY was not actually used BBY. Because it's hard to predict the Battle of Yavin.

Yeah, but GRS was only used for a few decades, and even then, unsystematically. Anecdotally, the Imperial Era was more popular.

 

[Takhisis]

If we're making a new calender, I want 50, 7-day weeks and one 5-day week (around a solstice)

Doesn't that leave you ten days short?

Entirely , I mis-remembered what I was thinking.

I meant "twelve 30-day months, and one 5-day 'holiday week'."

I prefer the original. It means I'd get to retire quite some time earlier than I would with the current system.

 

[GoodGame]

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.

It's Common Era. Face it, some people find you assuming that Christ is their Lord, to be offensive. This is what Anno Domini specifies. It isn't necessarily "secular humanists" or "atheists" either.

I grew up with BC and adapted to BCE when it appeared about the time I was going to college. No big deal really. The year is the same. (EDIT: not sure of the origins of CE, but I distinctly recall it not being commonly used in the USA as I grew up in school. I'd say I didn't see it appear until early 1990s).

The reason for doing so is to avoid needless calculations, and keep a religion-neutral term that avoids controversy. Obviously a lot of historical writings are dated by using AD nomenclature, so keeping the same time frame is beneficial in a scholarly forum.

Would you rather have it be like converting Celsius to Fahrenheit or Celsius to Kelvin?

But anyway, what Anti-Logic said in that A.D. 0 isn't guessed to be the birth year of Jesus Christ anymore.

 

[Dachs]

But anyway, what Anti-Logic said in that A.D. 0 isn't guessed to be the birth year of Jesus Christ anymore.

No such year as AD 0.

It's one of several possible years. 4 BC is the one that's quoted most often, but there's really not a lot that would serve to nail it down, and what there is is contradictory.

 

[Borachio]

No such year as AD 0.

Well (apart from, prosaically, that's how people have defined it) how do you know? I wouldn't have thought historical records at this distance can be that accurate, can they?

There might well have slipped in a year zero (or two) between 1 BC and AD 1.

 

[Leoreth]

Well (apart from, prosaically, that's how people have defined it) how do you know? I wouldn't have thought historical records at this distance can be that accurate, can they?

There might well have slipped in a year zero (or two) between 1 BC and AD 1.

How would that work? How it's defined is the only thing that can be considered here. And the first year in this chronology is called 1 AD, the year before it 1 BC. If there was another year "slipped in" before 1 AD, we would be calling it 1 BC still.

 

[Borachio]

I think you could have a year zero. Should you want one. What's the difference one way or another?

I remember people celebrating the new millenium in 2000. Yet they shouldn't have done this, logically, till 2001, if there was no year zero.

 

[Leifmk]

I think you could have a year zero. Should you want one.

You could have a calendar with a year 0, and it would be eminently sensible to have that, but there isn't one in the Gregorian calendar with which we're stuck for the foreseeable future (nor in the previous Julian calendar).

What's the difference one way or another?

The difference, obviously, is one year.