----- Original Message ----- From: "Predrag Lezaic" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, 2004-01-01 03:47 Subject: [USMA:28052] Calendar, date and time
> Hi, > > Since I came to US 10 years ago there have been 4 things that bothered me. I > wonder if any of these almost exclusively (as far as I know) items have > anything to do with Metric vs. Imperial. > > 1. Why the heck every calendar has Sunday as first day of the week? For the > religious in this group, even god rested on the seventh day, not the first! First of all, Sunday is the first day of the week. The Sabbath rest day is and always has been Saturday. In Spanish and some other languages, the word for Saturday is "Sabbath" (Sabado). So if he rested on the 7-th day, then he rested on a Saturday, not a Sunday. > > 2. AM/PM To this day I have no clue what noon is. I cringe when someone > calls 13:00, military time. That is because most of the time that Americans are confronted with the 24 h clock, it is in military usage. Thus the association with the military. Most Americans have no clue as to whether AM or PM refers to midnight or noon. It is very confusing. > > 3. January 1, 2004. In Europe, it would be written 1 January, 2004. We try to promote ISO8601 which would write the date as 2004-01-01. I never understood why a comma is written after the month and before the year. Why not just 1 January 2004? The comma is needed in the american notation to seperate the number that represents the day from the number that represents the year. I tend to despise excessive use of commas and peroids and avoid them as much as possible. It looks like sloppy notation. > > 4. Letter sized paper vs. A4. For some reason that is the way it started out. Once a practice is begun it can never be undone or changed. No matter how much cost and confusion may arise from its continued use. It's the "We have always done it this way" and "If it isn't broken, don't fix it" way of thinking. And if the continiued use of old methods do cause error and cost, it is the fault of those who changed who have made the error happen. They just do it to be different then US. We are right and everyone else is wrong. > > Any comments please? > > Thanks, > Predrag > > Hope this helps Euric
