AD versus Common Era

[Rush Limborg]

Trek[/I] universe, the debate over AD vs. CE is basically moot.

Still...whenever references to "years" are made, it appears that the Gregorian calender is being used--doubtless, out of tradition.

The question, however, is why parts of the Gregorian tradition should be acknowledged, and others abandoned. Despite the now acknowledged innaccuracy of the dating of the appropriate origins of the calander, the traditions of the calender are as they are.

You actually might have hit the nail on the head there.

(Takes a bow.)

Maybe some aspects could be observed merely out of a long-practiced cultural tradition, even if the tradition itself is historically inaccurate.

Exactly. Frankly, I see no reason why a calender based off of Christ's birth (despite, again, the fact that they got the date wrong*) should not be used in conjunction with the appropriate reference to that tradition.


(*Interestingly enough, I've recently come across a theory that the "Star of Christmas" was an historical allignment of Jupiter, the planet of the kings, with Regulus, the star of the kings. Narrowing down the appropriate time period, the true exact date of Christ's birth would seem to be...September 11th, 3 BC.)

 

[JWolf]

The calender should not be based off of any religion. It's just wrong. How do we know it to be correct? In fact, we could be basing the calendar on a work of fiction.

 

[BillJ]

I'd go with something like the first television broadcast or first continent to continent communications.

Why not the first official telegraph transmission? On May 24, 1844, the message “WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT” was sent by Morse telegraph from Washington to Baltimore. At that moment, the age of instantaneous long-distance communication began — a paradigm shift no less significant than the discovery of fire-making or the invention of the wheel.

Works for me.

 

[Sci]

Frankly, I see no reason why a calender based off of Christ's birth (despite, again, the fact that they got the date wrong*) should not be used in conjunction with the appropriate reference to that tradition.

Does it also bother you that we use a calender system that calls Thunor's Day (aka Thor's Day) by a modified term, Thursday, thereby obstructing the appropriate reference to the originating tradition for the day's name?

'Cause using CE/BCE instead of AD/BC is basically the same thing as using Thursday instead of Thunor's Day. It's a system originally named in honor of a god whom later persons cease to believe in, but a system which those later persons do not wish to dispense with wholly out of social utility, so they modify it into a non-religious form. Thunor's Day becomes Thursday and ceases to be in honor of Thor; AD becomes CE and ceases to be in honor of Jesus.

 

[Christopher]

^You know, it's a shame the Thor movie didn't come out on Thursday. It would've been fitting.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ You're not feeling thor that this didn't happen, are you?

 

[Trilliam]

We had to use BCE/CE instead of BC/AD when I was doing an Archeology subject in the mid 90s. It's not a new thing. We had to use "human/people" and "humankind" instead of "man" and "mankind" as well. THe language had to be gender etc neutral.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Regarding when stardates were established, why not the founding of the Federation?

 

[BrotherBenny]

Regarding when stardates were established, why not the founding of the Federation?

Because we've not had any canon going that far back.

The 23rd century had 4-digit stardates and presumably there was another system in place between the end of that 4-digit stardate system and the start of the 5-digit stardate on January 1, 2323. Starfleet of the 25th century may well choose another stardate system instead of switching up to a 6-digit system.

Also, the use of the Gregorian calendar in ST09 means that the Federation in this alternate universe is just as human-centric as the original universe Federation was said to be in TUC.

I think that for the purposes of an independent calendar to be acceptable for x number of worlds, the founding of the Federation is the most apropos. The only problem there though is what day/week/month system is followed for the annual calendar? I looked at the Darian calendar for Martian timekeeping and it looks fairly interesting but is still based on a terrestrial timekeeping system.

I don't think there's ever going to be a perfect calendar which will appeal to/be accepted by everyone.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I remember an old fan idea that each starship had its own stardate system during TOS and they were pretty much run like mission clocks separate from what was going on back on Earth...

 

[F. King Daniel]

Regarding when stardates were established, why not the founding of the Federation?

Because the Xindi were already using stardates in season three of Enterprise.

 

[Thestral]

I still use BC/AD in my thinking and regular communication because I don't really see any need to switch. The origin point's the same, and the switch to BCE/CE is essentially the same thing that the Church did with Saturnalia, Samhain, and many local deities. "Oh you poor benighted people we'll let you keep the traditions and actual functionality, but we're going to file off the serial numbers and pretend there's an actual difference" - just with nicer, more enlightened language. If anybody asks "Why is that particular year the year when it switches" you have to explain the whole thing anyway, and you're giving the label more power than you should. Nothing's actually been changed.

'Cause using CE/BCE instead of AD/BC is basically the same thing as using Thursday instead of Thunor's Day. It's a system originally named in honor of a god whom later persons cease to believe in, but a system which those later persons do not wish to dispense with wholly out of social utility, so they modify it into a non-religious form. Thunor's Day becomes Thursday and ceases to be in honor of Thor; AD becomes CE and ceases to be in honor of Jesus.

The difference is obvious. "Thursday" is closer to "Thor's Day" than "Thunor's Day" anyway and is obviously still in honor of Thor; there's a pronunciation and spelling shift, but the actual reference is clearly the same. Really, the days of the week are IMO a better argument for keeping a relatively meaningless BC/AD than to do away with it.

FWIW, historically my fellow Quakers referred to the week as "First Day," "Second Day," etc. specifically to get away from honoring non-Christian deities.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Regarding when stardates were established, why not the founding of the Federation?

Because the Xindi were already using stardates in season three of Enterprise.

They were? I don't remember that. What exactly did they say?

 

[BillJ]

Regarding when stardates were established, why not the founding of the Federation?

Because the Xindi were already using stardates in season three of Enterprise.

They were? I don't remember that. What exactly did they say?

Plus, just because the Xindi were using something called 'stardates' doesn't mean they're the same as what later comes into use in the Federation.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Because the Xindi were already using stardates in season three of Enterprise.

They were? I don't remember that. What exactly did they say?

In "Damage", Degra sends Enterprise a message to rendezous on a particular stardate, which T'Pol calculates to be three days away.

Plus, just because the Xindi were using something called 'stardates' doesn't mean they're the same as what later comes into use in the Federation.

To which of the three different Federation stardate systems are you referring?

 

[Glitch]

I think stardates are, to borrow a phrase, indistinguishable from magic. We don't get them because we don't understand the technology that necessarily gave rise to them. That, or they make no sense because they are completely fictional and subject to the writer's whim. I prefer the former.

That said, would anyone have minded if we had never received a complete timeline of the Trek universe? What if it had simply begun in the TOS era and continued on, and we had no idea when exactly it took place?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Considering the sheer size of the Trek universe, some basic timekeeping had to be established. I think Trek erred in being too specific in many respects (particularly with the abilities of future technology), but other than the 20th/21st century stuff being an overloaded discontinuous and confused mishmash, it's timeline is pretty solid - at least as far as "X comes before Y but after Z" arguments go.

 

[Christopher]

I long since resolved not to worry about stardates. They were specifically conceived by the creators of TOS to contain a complete lack of meaningful chronological information, because those creators didn't want to pin down when the series took place. I just think of them as placeholders representing some unspecified actual chronological information, rather than something that actually conveys diegetic meaning. True, when writing 24th-century books, I use the stardate calculation scheme preferentially employed within the novels for the sake of consistency with other books, and because it's as good as any other approach, but I have no investment in the "reality" of that system.

 

[captcalhoun]

when writing my TOS-era fan-fic, i almost always avoided stardates and simply employed terrestrial calender dates and/or comments about it being X years/months since Z event in either TOS or the movies.

 

[Sci]

'Cause using CE/BCE instead of AD/BC is basically the same thing as using Thursday instead of Thunor's Day. It's a system originally named in honor of a god whom later persons cease to believe in, but a system which those later persons do not wish to dispense with wholly out of social utility, so they modify it into a non-religious form. Thunor's Day becomes Thursday and ceases to be in honor of Thor; AD becomes CE and ceases to be in honor of Jesus.

The difference is obvious. "Thursday" is closer to "Thor's Day" than "Thunor's Day" anyway and is obviously still in honor of Thor;

Oh, come off it. The overwhelming majority of people in the English-speaking world don't even believe in Thor; their calender system's Thursday ceased to be in his honor when they stopped believing he was real, and most of them don't even know that it was originally "Thor's Day." The name is still there because of inertia, not to honor Thor.