Subject: Re: [lojban] re: calendrical names

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 14:29:49 EST

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.