Happy New Year

shirak · Post by **shirak** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 10:55 pm

As of 49 minutes ago, another one bit the dust.

Many wishes to all

the_taken · Post by **the_taken** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 11:01 pm

Awesome. I had this crazy idea once.

Hang out in New Zealand.
Toast to the new year.
Get on a jet plane.
Keep flying east.
Reach the next time zone every hour on the hour and toast to the new year.
Donate Liver to science.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 11:49 pm

You know if you really want to do that go to either the North Pole or the South Pole (I would suggest the later, it's daylight there and you don't want to stumble around an unknown place in the dark) where you don't need to jet and you can do it as a crawl.

rapa-nui · Post by **rapa-nui** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 5:12 am

Happy New Year Gaming Den!

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 5:27 am

Happy Man-created Division of Time. You know, if you believe in that and all.

the_taken · Post by **the_taken** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 5:37 am

New years rolled by ten minutes ago, for me. Happy It. Not much happening here, but the real party is tomorrow, er later today.

Cielingcat · Post by **Cielingcat** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 6:16 am

Happy New Year!

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 7:28 am

Happy new years and stuff TGD!

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 7:45 am

Happy iPhone 3G Soft unlock!

I mean... Happy New Year!

shirak · Post by **shirak** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 9:25 am

the_taken wrote:Awesome. I had this crazy idea once.

Hang out in New Zealand.
Toast to the new year.
Get on a jet plane.
Keep flying east.
Reach the next time zone every hour on the hour and toast to the new year.
Donate Liver to science.

There are two sets of islands seperated by the time line. So not only can you do that, you'll have several thousand people as company. I remember reading about that in National Geographic a couple of years back. People stat partying on the eve of New Year on one set of islands and a few hours after the New Year comes they move a few miles and it's NY eve again. Which means the party is back.

the_taken · Post by **the_taken** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 3:35 pm

shirak wrote:
the_taken wrote:Awesome. I had this crazy idea once.

Hang out in New Zealand.
Toast to the new year.
Get on a jet plane.
Keep flying east.
Reach the next time zone every hour on the hour and toast to the new year.
Donate Liver to science.
There are two sets of islands seperated by the time line. So not only can you do that, you'll have several thousand people as company. I remember reading about that in National Geographic a couple of years back. People stat partying on the eve of New Year on one set of islands and a few hours after the New Year comes they move a few miles and it's NY eve again. Which means the party is back.

Cool, but that's just two new year parties, I want 24 new year parties in one day.

Oh wait. Am I supposes to be flying west to hit every time zone?

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 4:32 pm

TOZ wrote:Happy Man-created Division of Time. You know, if you believe in that and all.

EPIC FVCKING WIN.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 5:06 pm

TOZ wrote:Happy Man-created Division of Time. You know, if you believe in that and all.

Man did not "create" the division of time known as the year. That was determined by the period of time that the earth rotates around the sun. (I mean had he created it you would expect due to his general lazy nature to make it an integer number of "days" and not something that isn't even a nice proper fraction like 1/4.) Now the exact location of where you begin and end each official measurement is arbitrary, much like Greenwich is the official longitude for UTC time (or GMT time).

More over January wasn't always the first month in the Roman calendar, which is why the "Eighth," "Ninth" and "Tenth" months (October, November, and December) are now months 10, 11 and 12 respectively.

People used to celebrate New Year's Day on April 1st. (Obviously they were fools I tell you!) Then there is the one celebrated in China, the one celebrated in Israel and so on and so forth.

In fact, forget it all, move to Orlando where there is a place in Disney where every night is New Year's Eve!

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 5:24 pm

Congratulations. You start by saying what everyone but retarded geocentrists should know. Then you proceed to prove all by yourself that it was humans who arbitrarily set the year's start - which's precisely the retardation being derided.

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 5:49 pm

Dividing time into ANY length is completely arbitrary. A year, a day, an hour, a minute, a second, a century, all of it is a man-made unit to quantify something that is infinite and unquantifiable.

And it changes depending on your location. A Martian year is different than an Earth year. How long is a year on a deep space exploration vessel? There is no satellite circling a star to measure it. Time is entirely subjective to the creature trying to quantify it.

Rambling post is rambling.

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 6:20 pm

TOZ wrote:Dividing time into ANY length is completely arbitrary. A year, a day, an hour, a minute, a second, a century, all of it is a man-made unit to quantify something that is infinite and unquantifiable.

And it changes depending on your location. A Martian year is different than an Earth year. How long is a year on a deep space exploration vessel? There is no satellite circling a star to measure it. Time is entirely subjective to the creature trying to quantify it.

Rambling post is rambling.

That's sort of wrong - seasons are worth tracking, and definitely on Earth scale until we inhabit any other planet. Sure, time is subjective, but there's some things subjective that are shared among huge populations, so those are useful. Recognizing Jan 1st as different from [random month] [random day]? Hell no, though. Reminds me of the classic rebuttal: "It's a good time to change to change our lives!" Yeah, what about today (assuming this was said before Jan 1st)? Besides, how're you gonna do anything meaningful on a day when nothing works (though it might not be true for the U.S.A.)?

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 6:27 pm

I didn't say that it wasn't worth tracking. After all, knowing when a particular lot of munitions was produced is an important part of my job. Just that placing more importance over one unit of time than the other is silly. It's why I no longer celebrate my birthday, the new year, even Christmas. I take the holiday they give me and treat it like any other day off.

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 9:07 am

TOZ wrote:It's why I no longer celebrate my birthday, the new year, even Christmas. I take the holiday they give me and treat it like any other day off.

Been trying to convince people to stop celebrating my birthday for years with no success.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 3:21 pm

There is an ancient expression "Man is the measure of all things." Protagoras of Abdera ( c. 480-410 B.C.) And for the most part it's true because the person who makes the measure uses things he is familiar with and those things are often based on himself or on the world around him.

To me I don't treat the New Year any different than I treat the three days of the year which were the dates I had Philharmonic tickets; it's just a day of the year where I typically have something to do. (By the way, I'm going to the Philharmonic tomorrow.)

Not everything is celebrated annually. Reunions are celebrated every five years in general. Olympics and presidential elections are celebrated every four years in general.

In some places of the year "Holidays" are inserted into the year in a distributed but random manner and given all sorts of excuses. The purpose is not to make any one say "Special" but to keep every day from being the same old dull routine.

I know for years Jan 1st was always an important date for me. Being a creature of habit it was always hard to remember to stop writing the previous year on the checks and to start writing the new year on the checks.

And yes, being a physics major I am well aware of relativity. As I said before "man is the measure of all things," or rather "I am the measure of all things for me." And technically it is space-time itself which is relative; you can just as easily warp distances and leave time constant as you can warp time and leave space constant with relative velocity changes.

By the way, technically speaking, Jan 1st is the 7th "Day of Christmas." Not that everyone celebrates "Seven Swans a Swimming" Day anyway.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 2:35 am

We used to celebrate Epiphany, but when we moved to the west coast, we switched to Christmas Eve.

josephbt · Post by **josephbt** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 11:04 am

my computer died at 18,00 on 31st of december. about 1TB of HDDs died. my cell phone died a couple of hours latter. the heating went to valhalla next. i can't drink bc of my medical crap aquired last year.

08 is over and i'm seriously happy. happy 09 to all