6 ms·

Honestly I didn't find it funny, maybe because it ignores the reasons of the inconsistencies, that by the way are perfectly understandable looking at space. Mo

• Ensorceled 4y ago
  • decremental 4y ago
    It was fine with me. Learned something.
  • gerdesj 4y ago
    Why is it unacceptable to you for someone to explain why they do not find something funny? We are really not all the same. HN is a big old forum and there is no such thing as a normal response. That person was describing their personal reaction to ... something. I don't think that proscribing dogma is helpful in response.
    • Ensorceled 4y ago
      > Why is it unacceptable to you for someone to explain why they do not find something funny? I mean, it's not "unacceptable", free speech and all. It's just silly to jump in and "well actually" a joke, especially when the explanation is kind of why the joke was funny.
      • gerdesj 4y ago
        Different people see humour in different ways or even not at all. Do I really need to spell it out?
        • Ensorceled 4y ago
          No, but maybe I do … Don’t yuck someone’s yum. Let people enjoy things. Don’t rain on the parade.
          • enedil 4y ago
            I believe that it is in spirit of this website that you are encouraged to explain poorness of a joke, if you find it poor. After all, if it inspires curiosity what's the issue?
• B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
  > Julius and Augustus were emperors and from that point are just numerals, starting at March It used to be numbers earlier, Quintilis and Sextilis were renamed for them. Apparently the Romans did not find hard naming even persons - they just went by numbers, as in Secundus, Quintus, Sextus, Septimus, Octavius, etc.
  • smsm42 4y ago
    They didn't have too many personal names in general, IIRC about 20 or so commonly used, including numeric ones (there's even Decimus - I guess they had big families). And looking at how Ceasar is always Julius Ceasar (while his personal name was Gaius) it looks like they didn't use it too much outside of family and close friends. Which kinda makes sense - if you know 10 guys with personal name Gaius, it's not very useful to say just "we're having a party at Gaius' place tonight".
  • narag 4y ago
    Augustus' first name was Octavius... now August is the eighth month, full circle.
• simonh 4y ago
  The point of comical absurdities like this is precisely that they appear comical or absurd if you don’t know the reasons for them being the way they are. That doesn’t mean there are no reasons, it’s just that those reasons aren’t necessary or even relevant to appreciating the apparent absurdity.
  • dwighttk 4y ago
    Perhaps… but the author presents as if telling the reasons but the reasons are just absurd
  • drekipus 4y ago
    Many people going to read this thread and think "yes, everything is completely backwards and nonsensical, I hate all forms of historical traditions and reasoning" I'm also making a comical absurdity just fyi. Do people like this exist? I don't know
  • narag 4y ago
    FWIW, I wasn't trying to explain why it isn't funny, but why I don't find it funny. YMMV. Nobody needs to know all those annoying details, but once you know, the joke doesn't work so well, at least it didn't for me. Also I believe that the Moon deserves some respect. It makes nights less scary, inspires whimsical humans and provided a convenient way to measure middle-length periods of time when a precise calendar hadn't been developed... many moons ago.
    • foobarian 4y ago
      I find it pretty juvenile. It's like when a rookie dev first faces some production codebase and starts wanting to rewrite everything.
  • fknorangesite 4y ago
    Don't bother dissecting the frog; this website is populated mostly by sticks in the mud.
  • avereveard 4y ago
• glandium 4y ago
  Also, if you start in March, it suddenly makes sense that leap year adjustments are done in February (and also that it's the shortest month to begin with).
• cabaalis 4y ago
  Chesterton's fence seems to apply here.
  • marcosdumay 4y ago
    Hum, no. There is no reason not to change it (except for inertia, what is a better reason than any you will see). It is logical (once you get over the fixation with 60), but none of that logic is a good reason to keep it.
    • foobarian 4y ago
      This reminds me of the discussion the other day about how the A_n paper sizes are superior because you can fold them in half to get the next size down. Just like having a more logical calendar - it would be nice but not very useful. The value is in the network effect of everyone using the same system (so kind of like the "inertia" you mentioned).
• thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > Months have other gods's names: Janus, Phoebe, Mars, Aphrodite, Maya, Juno... January, March, and June are named for Janus, Mars, and Juno. February, April, and May are not known to be named for any god, nor is there any particular reason to believe they are.
  • IncRnd 4y ago
    > February, April, and May are not known to be named for any god, nor is there any particular reason to believe they are. May is named after Maia, the goddess who oversees the growth of plants.
    • thaumasiotes 4y ago
      What makes you say that? According to who? Compare what Ovid wrote about the name of May: > You may ask whence I suppose the name of the month of May to be derived. The reason is not quite clearly known to me [because there are too many theories]. [J. G. Frazer's translation for the Loeb series] That the name honors a Maia is one of three theories he goes on to present, the others being that May is named after the personification of Majesty [maiestas] and that May is named in honor of society's elders [maiores].
      • bloak 4y ago
        Oxford English Dictionary says: classical Latin Māius (adjective and, short for Māius mēnsis , noun), probably < the name of a deity cognate with the name of the goddess Māia (see Maia n.) and with magnus great (see magni- comb. form). For April, on the other hand: classical Latin Aprīlis, use as noun (short for mēnsis Aprīlis month of April) of masculine of Aprīlis of April, of uncertain origin; perhaps < Etruscan. (Oxford English Dictionary is a great resource. In the UK you can often get free online access through free membership of a public library.)
        • thaumasiotes 4y ago
          > Oxford English Dictionary is a great resource. Absolutely true, but difficult to get access from the US without a university affiliation. However, it isn't obvious that the OED is a better source on the meaning of a classical Latin month name than a classical Roman is. It's certainly possible, but not close to a slam dunk. And the OED is appropriately hesitant to say that it knows the origin of the name. I'd be curious when the entry was updated, except that I can imagine the entry for "May" being updated for quite a few other reasons than to review the etymology. (I might as well note that Ovid also presents two theories for the name of June, one that it is named in honor of Juno and one that it is named in honor of either the goddess Youth [Iuventas] or youths [iuvenes] in general, forming a contrast with May. There appears to be no real distinction between honoring Youth or honoring youths, despite the fact that honoring Maiestas and honoring the maiores are explicitly presented as separate theories. I would say the June-from-Juno theory is on much stronger ground than the May-from-Maia theory simply because Juno is so much more important a god, but that is also open to debate.)
• ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  just because something has historical reasons does mean it makes sence today. There is no reason for the Moon to have any place in a modern calendar. You already have 2 values: year and day, and they do not divide nicely. But they serve a practical purpose in a modern society, so we have to deal with them. The moon does not, but adds a third factor.
  • jelliclesfarm 4y ago
    I disagree. Moon is the closest celestial body to earth and we have historically been able to make very accurate observations and calculations based on its orbit and waxing and waning phases.
    • tshaddox 4y ago
      I think the point is that our current calendar does have historical roots involving the moon but isn’t actually useful for predicting moon phases, tides, etc. and thus is not in fact an important mechanism for modern calendars.
      • jelliclesfarm 4y ago
        The purpose of a calender is to measure and predict the march of time. Ancient calenders used the moon and sun to determine time and seasons. Modern calenders are designed to determine when people will work and when they will rest. The purpose is entirely different in our time. Current calender’s historical roots only start from Ptolemaic and early Roman periods when the Romans created a planetary week. But it didn’t gain popularity especially in Western Europe. So they adopted the 6 day Jewish week and one day of the Lord’s day of rest. Only where there was Roman rule and expansion, the new calender and planetary week was installed. Because the Romans needed to keep track of time to monitor work of their conquered territories. Everywhere else, it was still the lunar calender/sun rise+set for time keeping and solar calender tracking the sun for seasons. I hear you. I am just saying ‘modern’ is ‘western’ and the west is using time to clock in and clock out people who work. That’s for why if you are rich and don’t have to work, every day is weekend and every hour can be the proverbial ‘happy hour’. In our time, calenders and clocks are used to track our obligations and when to file tax returns. I still follow the Indian Vedic lunisolar calender for moon cycles and seasons because it keeps me grounded and sane. I feel connected to the earth and sky. It takes some effort to compartmentalise time for different purposes, but it gives me comfort and escape from the modern world. I am not disagreeing or trying to discredit the western and modern calender. I am just sharing what works for me and the origins of it from my culture/religion. ETA: calendar has been misspelt as calender throughout. I think I did it once and for some reason, auto complete keeps using it. I don’t want to search and correct every spelling mistake. So this is a blanket correction.
• Dylan16807 4y ago
  > Months are related to Moon's orbit, weeks to its phases. But in a way that doesn't work right. > Months have other gods's names: Janus, Phoebe, Mars, Aphrodite, Maya, Juno... Julius and Augustus were emperors and from that point are just numerals, starting at March. It was associated with Mars because Romans used to go to war in the Spring. Yes? That's a mess and that's basically what the tweets said. They didn't mention the emperors but that makes it even messier. I'm not sure what you're arguing there. There's no "perfectly understandable" reason for having some gods some emperors and some wrong numbers.
  • narag 4y ago
    But in a way that doesn't work right. It works great for the purpose that it was used: counting groups of days when regular humans didn't have the luxury of more precise calendars. The part that doesn't "work right" is that the different natural cycles used to measure time are not multiples of others, so adjustements are always needed. That's why calendar is complex, it was fixed repeatedly until it doesn't drift. Weeks and months are not kept because we don't know better, but because they're useful units for social reasons. There's no "perfectly understandable" reason for having some gods some emperors and some wrong numbers. That's a different part of the comment, addressing the hint that there's a religious reason for the calendar. There are several eras used by different countries, and the common western calendar has several layers: weekdays seem to be of Sumerian origin, months at least in Latin and other European languages come from Roma and the AD year counting is "Christian" and widely used maybe because the last major useful adjustement was this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar But it seems they didn't bother to change the names of previous layers. If something works, just leave it alone. You may argue that there are more "rational" ways to organize time measurement. I would recommend to read what Asimov had to say on the subject.
    • Dylan16807 4y ago
      > It works great for the purpose that it was used: counting groups of days when regular humans didn't have the luxury of more precise calendars. If you want a quarter month then have a quarter month. Having a set of days that pretends to be a quarter month but rapidly falls out of sync is worse than having no quarter month at all. If you gave any other reason for seven days, I wouldn't say it doesn't work right. But that reason makes the length of the week supremely half-assed. > But it seems they didn't bother to change the names of previous layers. If something works, just leave it alone. You may argue that there are more "rational" ways to organize time measurement. I would recommend to read what Asimov had to say on the subject. You're conflating two very different problems when you talk about it like that. Trying to make the units line up is legitimately difficult. Bad naming is not because of legitimate difficulty.