This reminds me of the man and the alien that meet in The Martian Chronicles and they can't tell which one's from the future and which one's from the past. We kind of need a standard for these things and there's nothing particularly wrong with the one in play.

And Jesus dies 33 years AD (After Death). Good thing these people weren't programmers or they'd still be arguing what day was when, huh?

Yeah, I looked it up too, I wanted to be a smart-ass also but just figured "After Death" makes more sense than "In the year of our Lord"...

EDIT:
Damn, just thought of something, he didnt actually die in the year 0... So yeah, "After Death" is very very wrong.

I disagree
We'll see by 2013 though. I'm wagering that 2012 will be year 2000++, but this time with real things going on due to the proliferation of the idea by mass media. They even made a blockbuster movie about this one entitled "2012".

Interesting. The year 2001 was truly the completion of 2000 years of the calendar. Interesting play of events.

I'm thinking 2012 is when a bunch of the Mayan "spirits" come back, and 2001 was when the spirit of Jesus came back. The turn of the bak tun ushered in a forced economy reset and huge celebrations, as if to say the souls were of a new source.

I've already mentioned some of the things I find wrong with it. That's just the tip of the ice berg I'm sure. I just wrote that up on the spot

Nope. It wont. Changing the way we perceive time only changes our perception of time and absolutely nothing else, except for that which is affected by our perception of time.

People have talked about the end times for many centuries, not just the last few decades. It just seems to have increased in the rate it reoccurs (like a lot of other things) around the 80's.

I sure hope not, because I haven't told you to do anything.

Sadly that doesn't work. The moon, jupiter and mars are fiction. So are numbers, so you can't even say "fourth planet from the star".

I mean according to Derezo you can't even name anything, or put a number to anything because they are human concepts, and thus fiction.

None of that is actually "wrong", though. I'll grant you that it's arbitrary and no better than any other system you could write up on a napkin over lunch, but it's no worse either. This is one of those funny situations where "because everyone else does" is a perfectly sound reason. I could understand if you were petitioning to make counting in base 12 instead of 10 or something, but this is just silly buggery ...

The names are.

I want a revised system for telling time and dates on my desk till next Monday, Mr. Derezo!

And NO, you CANT number the pages! Why? Because 1 + 1 = 2 is a purely fictional human concept!

HOP TO IT!

No you don't... Everybody understands it. And even if someone doesnt.

What does 2009 mean? 2009 means 2009 years passed since a guy got poked in the hands and feet. Simple.

Names are arbitrary. I remind myself of that every time I look at an anime title (Bubblegum Crisis? Pumpkin Scissors? Bleach?)

I disagree very much. Ever hear the story of the girl named Temptress?

Freakonomics was an interesting read. Names are not arbitrary, and there is no proof of that. There is meaning to names.

I don't agree, ML.

Yeah, ML is right.

/raises a middle bone

Isn't a month the time it takes for the moon to revolve around the Earth? A day is the time it takes for our planet to spin around its axis.

So, Derezo wants the moon and the stars to tell us the time. Wait... Aren't we already doing this?

Damn, don't have time for this anymore, before I continue thinking basing time on rotations and movements of stellar bodies is a good idea I'm going to get stoned and drunk to see if I can see from Derezo's POV then.

See you later! ( much later)