From pycyn@aol.com Tue Oct 31 11:30:06 2000 Return-Path: X-Sender: Pycyn@aol.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_2_1); 31 Oct 2000 19:30:05 -0000 Received: (qmail 11806 invoked from network); 31 Oct 2000 19:30:04 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m3.onelist.org with QMQP; 31 Oct 2000 19:30:04 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo-r09.mail.aol.com) (152.163.225.9) by mta2 with SMTP; 31 Oct 2000 19:30:04 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo-r09.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v28.32.) id a.a1.c640cdf (602) for ; Tue, 31 Oct 2000 14:29:50 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 14:29:49 EST Subject: Re: [lojban] re: calendrical names To: lojban@egroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Windows AOL sub 41 From: pycyn@aol.com X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 4776 In a message dated 00-10-31 11:25:44 EST, biorn writes: << To go this path of arbitraryness ad absurdum, why not state dates in terms of seconds counting from the Big Bang. after all the second is the SI base unit for time and thus most culturally neutral, furthermore the universe is about the most universal frame of reference one can have (BTW is this a tautology). >> It doesn't actually sound arbitrary; rather the opposite, in fact. But it is hard to get a good baseline -- scientists can't even agree on dates over billions of years (12 -16, or so). There is something to be said for Julian dates -- complete with months and years to break up the long strings a bit, if you want (and everything fits together in them too). It is not a tautology, since Newtonian space might still be real in a relativistic world (or Newtonian time might be -- but not both, I think). By the way, somewhere out in webland there is a site that will convert any date into just about any calendar system you ever heard of or not. Does anyone remember the URL? It uses Julian days, I think, so folks in the Antipodes and beyond get strange results sometimes.