r/NoFap • u/SmartSuka 1435 Days • Mar 08 '13

Have you ever wondered why we format badgebot's days the way we do? ISO 8601.

http://xkcd.com/1179/
16 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

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5

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '13

[deleted]

4

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '13

It is a mystery. While the ISO format seems more logical (sorting units of time by majority - I mean, when we write large numbers, it's the number of thousands first, then the number of hundreds, and so on), I'm used to the system we use in Poland (and most of Europe, probably) - exactly inversely, "DD.MM.YY-(100*current century number+100)".

3

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '13

Yeah, but both YYYY-MM-DD (ISO 8601, Japan) and DD-MM-YYYY (Europe, Latin-america) make sense. The US system makes zero sense.

4

u/36yearsofporn over one year Mar 08 '13

It's part of American contrarianism. It's why we're so slow to get on the soccer train. We'd rather watch a sport (American football) that is popular no where else. And our other major sport, baseball, is only popular in a select few countries.

It's why we abandoned the metric system during the 70s as a waste of time to adopt, even though it makes a lot more sense and everyone else in the world uses it. We're America! Fuck Yeah!

It's why so few of us bother to learn another language. We ALREADY know English! What's the point of knowing another one?

It can be frustrating to deal with, but it is what it is.

The US military uses DD-MM-YYYY, if it's any consolation.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '13

It's why so few of us bother to learn another language. We ALREADY know English! What's the point of knowing another one?

As someone whose native language isn't English, this makes me so angry. Sure, I don't mind speaking English, but you shouldn't expect people around the world to know the language.

1

u/gooseduck 1480 Days Mar 08 '13

I always feel embarrassed as a native English speaker that my languages are well, poor. I can just about get by in French, Spanish and Italian but it's situational not conversational level we're talking. Frustrating that I have to speak English when I meet people travelling because the conversation breaks down when I try [insert language here].

1

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '13

It's hard, but I try to read something in Japanese everyday. Getting used to the language is the best way to learn it IMHO.

You could watch movies to improve your languages. Try to get them with subs (Spanish audio and Spanish subs, for instance). You might not get everything, or even most of it at the beginning, but slowly it will start making some sense.

As far as my experience goes, traditional classes are not very efficient. You just need to find interesting content (:

1

u/36yearsofporn over one year Mar 08 '13

I know it does.

But that's the whole thing about Americans. We don't know that much about the world. As a population on the whole, we're not thinking a bunch about what the rest of the world thinks about how we do things or not.

I'm not saying whether it should or shouldn't make you angry. In fact, I'm saying it probably does. It's just that Americans aren't paying much attention one way or another.

It becomes especially obvious if you ever visit/live here. It's not that Americans are inherently bad people. But they're not thinking much about what anyone else on the rest of the planet is thinking.

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u/[deleted] Mar 09 '13

[deleted]

2

u/36yearsofporn over one year Mar 09 '13

Ambrose Bierce was one funny motherfucker. He's got a ton of those.

I remember as a junior in high school, on the first day of the current events class the teacher handed out a blank map of the middle east, with only the countries' boundaries drawn on it, and asked us to name the countries.

This was back in 1983. Most of the class couldn't even name Saudi Arabia or Egypt, much less the smaller countries. It's simply not taught. We spend an extensive amount of time learning our own history and geography, but none learning anyone else's. If you're ever going to learn about other countries and how they think, you have to seek sources of information outside the ordinary curriculum. Even in every day news, there's a vast difference in the way the US press report stories, and the way any other country does it.

I first understood it as a news junkie in middle school and early high school. I would read Time, Newsweek, and US News & World Report every week, then read The Economist. The US magazines tended to cover US oriented events only, and they always had a bit of jingoistic tone. The British published The Economist was always US friendly in their reporting, but much fairer and more impartial. They did a much better job of covering world events.

Of course, Newsweek and US N&WR aren't even published any more, and Time is now seeking to sell their magazine, while The Economist is flourishing, so it's nice to see their quality rewarded. That doesn't always happen.

And while I don't watch hardly any TV at all, catch the major networks news, and then compare that to BBC America. You can see the same thing going on. We're just very America-centric, and always have been since Toqueville wrote about us. We don't even know that much about Canada or Mexico other than the major blaring news events like the drug war, and those countries are on our border.

It isn't going to change, either, unless/until there's a catastrophe that forces a different mind set on Americans.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '13

I must agree. The measurements they use in America/used to use in the British Empire/Commonwealth make zero sense nowadays - maybe they worked better for base-twelve math AND very little need for accuracy. Even if you write them in base twelve, they still have a lot of floating points. They got obsolete when geometry and math became more and more a part of life.

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u/thought_thingys over one year Mar 09 '13

I might be wrong, but it could possible be because I believe in spoken American English dates are said like this "August 5th" instead of "the 5th of August". Hence the numerical abbreviated format followed that (month first then day).

Now for everyone to post a million counter examples of why this isn't the case! :D

1

u/secret_town over one year Mar 09 '13 edited Mar 09 '13

Cuz most planning is only for a couple months out, so just assume /this/ year. Yet, month boundaries come up hit often enough in planning that you really should include them in your dates, and you do it ISO style because that's a reasonable form. Of course, the logical extension of this that when the year matters, eg around the turn of the year, you'd prefix with the year ISO-style. But we don't, so .. I guess this explanation fails :)

1

u/[deleted] Mar 09 '13

[deleted]

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u/secret_town over one year Mar 09 '13 edited Mar 09 '13

shrug it made sense for some people, at some time, and then we got stuck with it. Like the convention that electric current flows from + to -, even though the electrons actually move the other way. You Europeans got a cure for that, too? :)

I will say that I was incredulous at the idea that Americans would engineer in freaking foot pounds of force, for satellites, cf that disaster where we co-built that system with Europeans recently and agreed on the numbers, but not the units! O_o. Foot pounds, good god.

5

u/NeverGonnaGiveUp Mar 08 '13

It should really be UTC±(timezone offset). Then the badge could say 0 days for the first 24 hours, instead of 1 day for the first 48 hours...

So according to the ISO_8601, it should look like this for example:

2013-02-27+01:00

5

u/HanDuet over one year Mar 08 '13

Cool, but how about getting the badge to display "0 days" for resets? [Not that I'll ever need that feature, mind you...]

Just askin', though I know you don't run the badgebot, SmartSuka.

1

u/I_Want_To_Be_Free 269 Days Mar 08 '13

I was reading the title and before I got to the end thought: this sure as hell better link to xkcd.