There is the name Lund, for instance, which is a crude term used in North India for the male organ. When a US dignitary of that name visited India, people had a hard time referring to him without bursting out laughing.
Good suggestion, actually. (In fact, people in non-English cultures actually use different names for weekdays and months, as you might have noticed. In fact, they even use different start and end points for months.)
The use of CE/BCE as a secular alternative to AD/BC is slowly spreading in many circles, and many scientific journals have standardized on the practice. Perhaps a similar thing could be done for weekdays too. The key issue is one of frequency of usage. Weekday names are used practically everyday by everyone everywhere. AD/BC, on the other hand, do not come up frequently in writing (in most everyday contexts) and rarely in speech, since most everyday conversations reference the present, the immediate past, and the immediate future.
Therefore, it would be much more difficult to get people in English-speaking cultures to use more secular names for weekdays. This is similar to (but not the SAME AS -- lest Slashdotters pile on trying to make semantic and pragmatic distinctions and so forth) how Americans have been unable to switch from the British (Imperial) to the metric system. [Yeah, I know, this will probably launch a variety of tirades on both/all sides of this issue, this being Slashdot.]
The point is not to uniformly achieve consistency of usage (either secular or non-secular) across all contexts. Consistency may be valued by techies (for good reason), but cultures often resist it (often for good reason, again). The point is to move forward where it is both makes sense and is feasible.
The names of days might be arbitrary and culturally grounded, but there is nothing arbitrary about the start and end of days -- these are physical facts. On the other hand, the starting point of the period labeled 'AD' (or the end point of the period labeled 'BC' is clearly directly grounded in the tradition of one specific religious tradition that is currently very much alive and whose recent history and domination arouses mixed feelings in a significant fraction of the world population. When Americans kicked the British off their soil, they didn't reject the British people and their traditions wholesale, but they stopped saying 'God save the queen.' [Okay, I don't want to get into a discussion of whether the soil of Americans was actually theirs rather than belonging to Native Americans; that's a whole other debate. We're talking here about deliberate changes in language employed.]
I'm assuming that the majority of Slashdotters are proscience and not pro-Creationism. In the interest of maintaining scientific temper on this forum, may I request Slashdotters to employ the more secular 'CE' -- Common Era -- rather than the forthrightly Christian 'AD' -- Anno Domini, meaning, 'In the Year of Our Lord'. I think most here, including myself, have utmost respect for Jesus and his followers even we don't necessarily consider him to be 'Our Lord'.
The usual response is, 'Who cares? Nobody knows exactly what AD means, anyway. And it's become established so why change it.' I would there are many perfectly rational individuals who might object to the above response.
The corresponding term for 'BC' is 'BCE' -- Before Common Era.
Thanks. No flames please!
I completely agree that this is a dumb idea -- as dumb as training Osama bin Laden to kick out the Soviets. As dumb as arming Saddam to attack Iran. As dumb as propping up the Saudi theocrats in return for unlimited oil supplies. You don't raise a snake and expect it not to bite back. Unfortunately, the 'smart' Ph.D.'s who've probably never had the sun shine on their skins populating sundry 'think tanks' that drive such policies will never learn. Morons.
"The world will be a better place when we grow up enough, as a species, to put away childish things like religion."
Here's the odd thing: the 'lower' mammals don't have any such thing as religion, as far as we know. And religion probably developed pretty far along in the evolution of the human species. If religion is a backward thing, how come it came about as an 'advancement' at some point in the development of the human species?
No, I'm neither trolling nor am I believer or any such thing. Just trying to understand how these things happen. Of course, the unstated assumption here is that all development occurs in a monotonic fashion, from less advanced to more advanced; from a given situation to an improved situation. And evolution need not necessarily have the 'forward' impetus all of the time. Or does it?
Don't forget the 1 billion plus people in India and another 400 million in the Indian continent (and hundreds of millions elsewhere) who watch Hindi movies. So, English, Mandarin, Hindi. Also don't forget Arabic, Spanish, Russian and German, each of which shelter a whole class of sub-cultures, languages and dialects. These will be the dominant, international languages, and a few score others will occupy local niches.
... there have been no [significant -- okay, I'm covered] terrorist incidents on US soil since 9/11; so perhaps such aggressive methods of 'terror detection' are well-warranted. On the other, the US is rapidly being turned (or at least the attempt is being made) into a highly orderly and compliant society what with [well-meaning] paramilitary SWAT teams raiding the houses of innocents, TASERS, pain rays, and other highly militarized and uber-aggressive methods of social control. The metaphor of 'war' is used in just about every context: War on Drugs, War on Cancer, War on Illiteracy, War on Poverty, War on, well War. Hollywood seems to have skewed American culture towards highly macho, ultra-aggressive responses to just about every challenge. 'War' is transplanting 'sport' -- ball park figure, home run, first base, Monday morning quarterbacking, football field, touchdown, etc. -- as the lens that Americans use to view and engage with the world.
I have nothing against 'U S Americans' - as our Teen Queen recently stated -- doing everything to defend 'their way of life', 'freedom', or whatever. If SWAT teams and over-reaction is what is needed to protect those 'freedoms' then so be it. But the rest of the world is laughing at them. And maybe the rest of the world is wrong. But those 'freedoms' are gradually ebbing away.
Oh, incidentally, proofs are no longer taught in geometry -- I was shocked when my son's teacher told me that proofs are optional because they tend to bog down the kids. So there!
Having traveled and lived in the US, Europe and India, and also in the "Muslim world" I harbor the conceit that I know a bit about cultural diversity. I merely quoted population and linguistic figures as surrogates for cultural diversity -- they are indicative of diversity. How much religious diversity is there in Europe today? Yes, there have been fairly recent immigrants of the Muslim persuasion and isolated populations of "pagans", and besides, gypsies of Indian origin. But among the Christian majority -- Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Lutherans etc. -- they all ultimately worship Jesus Christ. I suppose you know little about Hindu Dharma, and by your comments I imagine you haven't visited India for any length of time. There ain't just one prophet, dude -- there are, in principle, 300,000 or 300,000,000 of them, depending on who you ask.
How many varieties of classical music are there in Europe?
How many varieties of classical dance?
How many varieties of traditional attire still worn today?
And your comment" "And as far as languages, there are historical reasons for so few being around in europe today, like greek and roman empires eliminating local tribal cultures and languages, the only remaining non-anatolian(indo european) derived language is in the isolated basque region, but this is all accident of history stuff." Whose talking about history? We're talking about the state of things TODAY. Else we could talk about the hundreds of tribes and languages spoken in North America.
I would recommend you travel a bit; reading, watching television and taking college courses just isn't enough. Trust me on this one.
BTW, India is hardly "monocultural" -- the country has 23 official languages, and numerous "unofficial" ones, each spoken by more people than live in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Slovenia and other such "different" cultures. The Indian subcontinent (including Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and the Maldives) has more than three times as many people who live in Europe, and if you exclude Russia, the subcontinent is larger than all of Europe. BTW, there is no reason for Europe to be called a "continent" -- it is not an independent land mass at all. There are more cultures to be found in the Indian "continent" than in all of Europe.
I don't understand this obsession with "People of the Book" among Christians, Muslims and Jews. Why are Non-Booky-People relegated to the periphery. I read this sort of thing all the time in US newspapers. There is absolutely no sensitivity to the fact that half the world is made up of Non-Bookies. Don't they deserve to be treated with decency? Isn't it a form of discrimination to speak of POtB? I don't understand how otherwise educated and intelligent people - both here and in the MSM - can continue to use the term POtB? BTW, When much of India was being ruled by Muslims of Persian, Afghan, Turk and Arab origin (interbred, of course), Hindus were given the following choices: convert, die, or pay what was called the Jaziya Tax if they didn't comply. The Portuguese Catholics who spent a few hundred years on the West Coast of India streamlined things a bit: convert or die a slow, horrible, painful death. Yeah, nobody likes to talk about the Portuguese Inquisition in India.
I'm done with that -- but... I agree that there is nothing "Islamic" about these inventions. The Islamic world is not monolithic. Islam was not responsible for the inventions -- smart people were. Any many of the "inventions" -- the decimal system, soap/shampoo, plastic surgery, surgical instruments, toothbrushing with Margosa/Neem, the shape of the earth, astronomical calculations, etc., came from the Hindus. The classical Arabs themselves call the decimal system the Hindu system -- they never claimed credit for it -- I wouldn't blame them for the behaviors of today's disaffected Muslims.
Come on mods, this deserves better than 1 -- how about informative, interesting or insightful (one of the i's). I wait 6 years to make my first post and all I get is a lousy 1.
Personal story here. My son was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome (they're called Aspies in the trade) at age 4 after a long battery of tests prompted by concerns raised by pre-school teacher about whether my son was having problems with comprehension. There is no definitive diagnosis for AS. AS is named for Hans Asperger, Swiss child psych who noticed a certain pattern of behavior among some kids who were brought to him. Slashdotters would love to leaf through the behavioral and mental health professionals' bible, DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) currently in version V. I guarantee you will find at least a few entries there that will match your peculiar combination of traits. In other words, we're all nuts. Well, not nuts, really, but you get the point. Back to AS -- it's a wastebasket diagnosis, and a huge number of schoolkids these days are being diagnosed as AS. Some 15-20 years ago, the same kids might have been labeled ADD or ADHD. So AS is the flavor du decanne.
But I won't knock AS. My son clearly has significant "problems" or "behavioral anomalies". He has little or no interest in socializing or having friends. Actually, this is an accommodation he has developed - he lacks the ability to make friends; he just doesn't know how. In pre-school, he had no idea how to get together with other kids and play. He used to wait, in vain, for some kid to invite him over and tell him what to do. Now, he is no way "retarded". On the other hand, he has strong interests in math. He likes to explore the calculus (he's 12). Oddly enough, he has little fascination for computers; his close friend of the same age and also an Aspie is even more severe in his symptoms and is a computer whiz (spends his time hacking Nintendo and other games).
My son is what is termed "hyperlexic" -- he is fascinated with words for their own sake and his spelling ability (including his ability to guess the spellings of complex words) is quite remarkable.
I have learned that academia may be filled with Aspies, especially in math, CS, the physical sciences and engineering.
Incidentally, I am a geek myself, and so is my son's mother. I am not socially inept (even if I say so myself) but the mother shows strong symptoms.
No two aspies have identical symptoms. There is long laundry list, and if you can check off a significant number of them, and at least a few are quite strong, then a case can be made for an AS diagnosis.
My guess is that what's called AS today, in another couple of decades, will be reclassified as a bunch of other diagnoses.
But social ineptitude, poor motor coordination, and a bias for socially-deficient fields of endeavor involving focused, analytical thought, especially involving the abstract are what's in an aspie's future
Slashdot Mirror
There is the name Lund, for instance, which is a crude term used in North India for the male organ. When a US dignitary of that name visited India, people had a hard time referring to him without bursting out laughing.
You didn't bother to read but took the time to respond? How slashdottish! You wasted your own time, dude! BTW, who's the 'we' you refer to?
Good suggestion, actually. (In fact, people in non-English cultures actually use different names for weekdays and months, as you might have noticed. In fact, they even use different start and end points for months.) The use of CE/BCE as a secular alternative to AD/BC is slowly spreading in many circles, and many scientific journals have standardized on the practice. Perhaps a similar thing could be done for weekdays too. The key issue is one of frequency of usage. Weekday names are used practically everyday by everyone everywhere. AD/BC, on the other hand, do not come up frequently in writing (in most everyday contexts) and rarely in speech, since most everyday conversations reference the present, the immediate past, and the immediate future. Therefore, it would be much more difficult to get people in English-speaking cultures to use more secular names for weekdays. This is similar to (but not the SAME AS -- lest Slashdotters pile on trying to make semantic and pragmatic distinctions and so forth) how Americans have been unable to switch from the British (Imperial) to the metric system. [Yeah, I know, this will probably launch a variety of tirades on both/all sides of this issue, this being Slashdot.] The point is not to uniformly achieve consistency of usage (either secular or non-secular) across all contexts. Consistency may be valued by techies (for good reason), but cultures often resist it (often for good reason, again). The point is to move forward where it is both makes sense and is feasible. The names of days might be arbitrary and culturally grounded, but there is nothing arbitrary about the start and end of days -- these are physical facts. On the other hand, the starting point of the period labeled 'AD' (or the end point of the period labeled 'BC' is clearly directly grounded in the tradition of one specific religious tradition that is currently very much alive and whose recent history and domination arouses mixed feelings in a significant fraction of the world population. When Americans kicked the British off their soil, they didn't reject the British people and their traditions wholesale, but they stopped saying 'God save the queen.' [Okay, I don't want to get into a discussion of whether the soil of Americans was actually theirs rather than belonging to Native Americans; that's a whole other debate. We're talking here about deliberate changes in language employed.]
I'm assuming that the majority of Slashdotters are proscience and not pro-Creationism. In the interest of maintaining scientific temper on this forum, may I request Slashdotters to employ the more secular 'CE' -- Common Era -- rather than the forthrightly Christian 'AD' -- Anno Domini, meaning, 'In the Year of Our Lord'. I think most here, including myself, have utmost respect for Jesus and his followers even we don't necessarily consider him to be 'Our Lord'. The usual response is, 'Who cares? Nobody knows exactly what AD means, anyway. And it's become established so why change it.' I would there are many perfectly rational individuals who might object to the above response. The corresponding term for 'BC' is 'BCE' -- Before Common Era. Thanks. No flames please!
Somewhere along the way in this subthread, the distinction between irony and paradox was lost. And given this is slashdot, the sandbox of anal retentives, that's a paradox. And an irony. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_(literature)#Paradox_and_irony
I completely agree that this is a dumb idea -- as dumb as training Osama bin Laden to kick out the Soviets. As dumb as arming Saddam to attack Iran. As dumb as propping up the Saudi theocrats in return for unlimited oil supplies. You don't raise a snake and expect it not to bite back. Unfortunately, the 'smart' Ph.D.'s who've probably never had the sun shine on their skins populating sundry 'think tanks' that drive such policies will never learn. Morons.
"The world will be a better place when we grow up enough, as a species, to put away childish things like religion."
Here's the odd thing: the 'lower' mammals don't have any such thing as religion, as far as we know. And religion probably developed pretty far along in the evolution of the human species. If religion is a backward thing, how come it came about as an 'advancement' at some point in the development of the human species?
No, I'm neither trolling nor am I believer or any such thing. Just trying to understand how these things happen. Of course, the unstated assumption here is that all development occurs in a monotonic fashion, from less advanced to more advanced; from a given situation to an improved situation. And evolution need not necessarily have the 'forward' impetus all of the time. Or does it?
Don't forget the 1 billion plus people in India and another 400 million in the Indian continent (and hundreds of millions elsewhere) who watch Hindi movies. So, English, Mandarin, Hindi. Also don't forget Arabic, Spanish, Russian and German, each of which shelter a whole class of sub-cultures, languages and dialects. These will be the dominant, international languages, and a few score others will occupy local niches.
... there have been no [significant -- okay, I'm covered] terrorist incidents on US soil since 9/11; so perhaps such aggressive methods of 'terror detection' are well-warranted. On the other, the US is rapidly being turned (or at least the attempt is being made) into a highly orderly and compliant society what with [well-meaning] paramilitary SWAT teams raiding the houses of innocents, TASERS, pain rays, and other highly militarized and uber-aggressive methods of social control. The metaphor of 'war' is used in just about every context: War on Drugs, War on Cancer, War on Illiteracy, War on Poverty, War on, well War. Hollywood seems to have skewed American culture towards highly macho, ultra-aggressive responses to just about every challenge. 'War' is transplanting 'sport' -- ball park figure, home run, first base, Monday morning quarterbacking, football field, touchdown, etc. -- as the lens that Americans use to view and engage with the world. I have nothing against 'U S Americans' - as our Teen Queen recently stated -- doing everything to defend 'their way of life', 'freedom', or whatever. If SWAT teams and over-reaction is what is needed to protect those 'freedoms' then so be it. But the rest of the world is laughing at them. And maybe the rest of the world is wrong. But those 'freedoms' are gradually ebbing away.
Oh, incidentally, proofs are no longer taught in geometry -- I was shocked when my son's teacher told me that proofs are optional because they tend to bog down the kids. So there!
Having traveled and lived in the US, Europe and India, and also in the "Muslim world" I harbor the conceit that I know a bit about cultural diversity. I merely quoted population and linguistic figures as surrogates for cultural diversity -- they are indicative of diversity. How much religious diversity is there in Europe today? Yes, there have been fairly recent immigrants of the Muslim persuasion and isolated populations of "pagans", and besides, gypsies of Indian origin. But among the Christian majority -- Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Lutherans etc. -- they all ultimately worship Jesus Christ. I suppose you know little about Hindu Dharma, and by your comments I imagine you haven't visited India for any length of time. There ain't just one prophet, dude -- there are, in principle, 300,000 or 300,000,000 of them, depending on who you ask. How many varieties of classical music are there in Europe? How many varieties of classical dance? How many varieties of traditional attire still worn today? And your comment" "And as far as languages, there are historical reasons for so few being around in europe today, like greek and roman empires eliminating local tribal cultures and languages, the only remaining non-anatolian(indo european) derived language is in the isolated basque region, but this is all accident of history stuff." Whose talking about history? We're talking about the state of things TODAY. Else we could talk about the hundreds of tribes and languages spoken in North America. I would recommend you travel a bit; reading, watching television and taking college courses just isn't enough. Trust me on this one.
BTW, India is hardly "monocultural" -- the country has 23 official languages, and numerous "unofficial" ones, each spoken by more people than live in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Slovenia and other such "different" cultures. The Indian subcontinent (including Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and the Maldives) has more than three times as many people who live in Europe, and if you exclude Russia, the subcontinent is larger than all of Europe. BTW, there is no reason for Europe to be called a "continent" -- it is not an independent land mass at all. There are more cultures to be found in the Indian "continent" than in all of Europe.
I don't understand this obsession with "People of the Book" among Christians, Muslims and Jews. Why are Non-Booky-People relegated to the periphery. I read this sort of thing all the time in US newspapers. There is absolutely no sensitivity to the fact that half the world is made up of Non-Bookies. Don't they deserve to be treated with decency? Isn't it a form of discrimination to speak of POtB? I don't understand how otherwise educated and intelligent people - both here and in the MSM - can continue to use the term POtB? BTW, When much of India was being ruled by Muslims of Persian, Afghan, Turk and Arab origin (interbred, of course), Hindus were given the following choices: convert, die, or pay what was called the Jaziya Tax if they didn't comply. The Portuguese Catholics who spent a few hundred years on the West Coast of India streamlined things a bit: convert or die a slow, horrible, painful death. Yeah, nobody likes to talk about the Portuguese Inquisition in India. I'm done with that -- but ... I agree that there is nothing "Islamic" about these inventions. The Islamic world is not monolithic. Islam was not responsible for the inventions -- smart people were. Any many of the "inventions" -- the decimal system, soap/shampoo, plastic surgery, surgical instruments, toothbrushing with Margosa/Neem, the shape of the earth, astronomical calculations, etc., came from the Hindus. The classical Arabs themselves call the decimal system the Hindu system -- they never claimed credit for it -- I wouldn't blame them for the behaviors of today's disaffected Muslims.
In one of our local designer coffee shops, the paper cups actually sport this warning: "Hot coffee is hot." Yes, and it may contain nuts.
Come on mods, this deserves better than 1 -- how about informative, interesting or insightful (one of the i's). I wait 6 years to make my first post and all I get is a lousy 1.
Personal story here. My son was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome (they're called Aspies in the trade) at age 4 after a long battery of tests prompted by concerns raised by pre-school teacher about whether my son was having problems with comprehension. There is no definitive diagnosis for AS. AS is named for Hans Asperger, Swiss child psych who noticed a certain pattern of behavior among some kids who were brought to him. Slashdotters would love to leaf through the behavioral and mental health professionals' bible, DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) currently in version V. I guarantee you will find at least a few entries there that will match your peculiar combination of traits. In other words, we're all nuts. Well, not nuts, really, but you get the point. Back to AS -- it's a wastebasket diagnosis, and a huge number of schoolkids these days are being diagnosed as AS. Some 15-20 years ago, the same kids might have been labeled ADD or ADHD. So AS is the flavor du decanne. But I won't knock AS. My son clearly has significant "problems" or "behavioral anomalies". He has little or no interest in socializing or having friends. Actually, this is an accommodation he has developed - he lacks the ability to make friends; he just doesn't know how. In pre-school, he had no idea how to get together with other kids and play. He used to wait, in vain, for some kid to invite him over and tell him what to do. Now, he is no way "retarded". On the other hand, he has strong interests in math. He likes to explore the calculus (he's 12). Oddly enough, he has little fascination for computers; his close friend of the same age and also an Aspie is even more severe in his symptoms and is a computer whiz (spends his time hacking Nintendo and other games). My son is what is termed "hyperlexic" -- he is fascinated with words for their own sake and his spelling ability (including his ability to guess the spellings of complex words) is quite remarkable. I have learned that academia may be filled with Aspies, especially in math, CS, the physical sciences and engineering. Incidentally, I am a geek myself, and so is my son's mother. I am not socially inept (even if I say so myself) but the mother shows strong symptoms. No two aspies have identical symptoms. There is long laundry list, and if you can check off a significant number of them, and at least a few are quite strong, then a case can be made for an AS diagnosis. My guess is that what's called AS today, in another couple of decades, will be reclassified as a bunch of other diagnoses. But social ineptitude, poor motor coordination, and a bias for socially-deficient fields of endeavor involving focused, analytical thought, especially involving the abstract are what's in an aspie's future