The perpetual calendar

Adam Funk wrote:
On 2010-03-11, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
R H Draney writes:

It's certainly one of the world's more *presentable* anthems....

In English.

Ô Canada!
Terre de nos aïeux,
Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux!
Car ton bras sait porter l'épée,
Il sait porter la croix!
Ton histoire est une épopée
Des plus brillants exploits.
Et ta valeur, de foi trempée,
Protégera nos foyers et nos droits
Protégera nos foyers et nos droits.

Sword in one hand, cross in the other, valor steeped in faith. I
wonder how non-Christian Canadians feel about that.

They don't speak French.

Two solitudes. (See below*.)

The difference came up in a TV panel discussion recently, and a
Quebecker there pointed out that the French words date to the 19th
century, never having been changed, and that francophone Quebeckers
are perfectly indifferent to the anthem. The only time they hear it
is at Canadiens hockey games; the rest of the time, they sing
Vigneault's "Gens du Pays". Not with an invariable seriosity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tke4f...eature=related

*As Yvon Deschamps said, he couldn't sing "Gens du Pays" to his boss,
because "il comprendrait pas."

On 10 Mar 2010 21:13:54 -0800, R H Draney
wrote:

Let's see, we've already got votes for:

Star Spangled Banner - current titleholder, unsingable tune taken from a
drinking song, harshly imperialistic lyrics

I think that's wrong, it's not imperialistic. People who say so
seem to forget that it was written in the heat of a battle
between the imperialistic British and the Americans as the former
attacked a fort of the latter. It's about resistance to
imperialism.

It's not about *American* rockets and their red glare or American
bombs' bursting in air. It's a song of joy and relief that the
Americans survived.


--
************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

Brian M. Scott wrote:

Robert Bannister wrote...

[(B)CE for BC/AD:]

It was a pointless change, which, in any case, has only
been adopted by a few.

In fact it's becoming increasingly common in the U.S.

But only among the "hip" and "cool" ones. Some 99.99% of all (native)
speakers of English worldwide -- including Americans -- do not use and
understand those ridiculous, pompous abbreviations "BCE" and "CE."

--
~~~ Reinhold {Rey} Aman ~~~
Born A.D. 1936

On Mar 12, 2:03*am, Reinhold {Rey} Aman wrote:
Brian M. Scott wrote:

Robert Bannister wrote...

[(B)CE for BC/AD:]

It was a pointless change, which, in any case, has only
been adopted by a few.

In fact it's becoming increasingly common in the U.S.

But only among the "hip" and "cool" ones. *Some 99.99% of all (native)
speakers of English worldwide -- including Americans -- do not use and
understand those ridiculous, pompous abbreviations "BCE" and "CE."

He, Bub, du bist ein sehr widerlicher und widerwärtiger Typ.

Peter Moylan wrote:
Robert Bannister wrote:

Since most people have no idea what "AD" stands for, any more than they
know the meaning of "am" or "pm" or even "ie" and "eg", I really can't
see it makes any difference. With one exception: most grown-up people
did their growing up with "AD" and most history books still have "AD" in
them. Moreover, I bet a lot of people who do use "CE" think it stands
for "Christian Era" which is as explicit as you can get.

It was a pointless change, which, in any case, has only been adopted by
a few.

It does have one point: you can use negative numbers in the "CE"
notation. This avoids the confusion caused by the missing zero in the
BC/AD system


In that case, what is this "BCE" that I also see all over the place?

--

Rob Bannister

Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote:


It was a pointless change, which, in any case, has only been adopted
by a few.

China has been depopulated? This is a momentous event. When did this
happen?


Sorry. Are you saying that the Chinese write in English?

--

Rob Bannister

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
On Mar 10, 9:28 pm, Andrew Usher wrote:
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????
Why would you put "C.E." on a cornerstone?
If it means the same thing as AD ...

It makes no sense to use "A.D." in any context that isn't explicitly
Christian, which is why "C.E." was invented in the middle of the last
century.
Funny, then, that exactly that has been done for over a thousand
years.

And for how many of those thousand years have those elided agents of
the passive verb given a damn about the non-Christian majority of the
world's inhabitants?

Very few people - Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, atheist - object to
days of the week named mainly after Norse gods in the Germanic languages
or Roman gods in the Romance languages, nor do you hear a clamour to
rename the months, whose names appear in even more languages. People who
get upset about a little thing like "AD" are just looking for something
to complain about.
--

Rob Bannister

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
On Mar 10, 7:50 pm, Robert Bannister wrote:
Brian M. Scott wrote:
Dr J R Stockton wrote:
[...]
It is OK to use CE to stand for Christian Era, as long as
the readers will know that.
Which is unlikely, since those who know it at all will
likely know that it stands for 'Common Era'.
Brian
Why would they? I see "CE" frequently on the Net - on Usenet and on the
Web. I know it is a twee version of "AD" and "Christian Era" is the most
obvious interpretation once I've given up on "Calendar E?".

In First Grade, when Sister Dorothea was teaching us about B.C. and
A.D., I ventured the guess that it stood for "After Death." She said,
"That's very, very close." And introduced us to the concept of
"Latin."

"C.E." may not have been invented yet in 1957, or if it had been, it
hadn't yet gained currency.

I like "After Death", but I suspect that most English speakers have
forgotten or never knew what the letters stand for.

--

Rob Bannister

Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" writes:

On Mar 10, 7:50 pm, Robert Bannister wrote:
Brian M. Scott wrote:
Dr J R Stockton wrote:
[...]
It is OK to use CE to stand for Christian Era, as long as
the readers will know that.
Which is unlikely, since those who know it at all will
likely know that it stands for 'Common Era'.
Why would they? I see "CE" frequently on the Net - on Usenet and on the
Web. I know it is a twee version of "AD" and "Christian Era" is the most
obvious interpretation once I've given up on "Calendar E?".

The Wikipedia page on it implies that both "Christian era" and "common
era" go back at least to the seventeenth century, the latter
originally being "vulgar era" and distinguishing the dating system
from regnal dates (e.g., "in the fourth year of the reign of ...")

In First Grade, when Sister Dorothea was teaching us about B.C. and
A.D., I ventured the guess that it stood for "After Death." She said,
"That's very, very close."

Hey, if Jesus could be born four years before himself, why couldn't he
die thirty years after his death?

And introduced us to the concept of "Latin."

"C.E." may not have been invented yet in 1957, or if it had been, it
hadn't yet gained currency.

The subtitle of Morris Raphall's 1856

_Post-Biblical History of the Jews: From the Close of the Old
Testament, About the Year 420 B.C.E. till the Destruction of the
Second Temple, in the Year 70 C.E._

would seem to imply that it had been invented. Raphall doesn't bother
to explain the notation, so it was presumably already current, at
least among Jewish historians.


Why would Jewish historians use a dating system based on the supposed
date of Jesus' death? Since it's you, I won't ask whether you are sure
that the edition you're looking at hasn't been reprinted and tampered
with by a later publisher, but it is surprising.

--

Rob Bannister

R H Draney wrote:
Hatunen filted:
On Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:46:26 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"
wrote:

On Mar 10, 3:56 pm, Hatunen wrote:

@nd BTW, someone in some op-ed column this week noted that the
Olympically much played "O Canada" is about the only national
anthem you can hum.
Did they check out all 205 or so national anthems? Including the dozen
or more that use the same tune as "America"?
Good grief, you're literal. I, personally, take the "about" to
indicate there could be others.

It's certainly one of the world's more *presentable* anthems....

I, myself, would be quite content if the SSB were replaced by
"America the Beautiful"

Let's see, we've already got votes for:

Star Spangled Banner - current titleholder, unsingable tune taken from a
drinking song, harshly imperialistic lyrics

God Bless America - upsetting (to some) religiosity

America the Beautiful - better, but there's still that "God shed His grace"
business

My Country, 'Tis of Thee - same tune as "God Save the Queen", already pulling
duty as the "national hymn"

This Land Is Your Land - plagued with pinko associations

Battle Hymn of the Republic - simultaneously nationalistic and religious, plus
you have the whole "John Brown's Body" connection

Clearly none of these is a perfect choice if we insist on universal
acceptance...someone's got to sit down and write a new one....r



Aren't national anthems fun? We've got someone here agitating again to
have Waltzing Matilda as ours.

--

Rob Bannister