January facies duos capra 01/01/20
7TL;DR Summary:
Thesis: Connection of the concepts of January to general Goatness
Conclusion: January is a month of dualities (duh)
Recommended Follow-up: What’s with you and January, anyway?
Happy New Year! It’s January, and beginning of the 20’s! A new cultural decade – I heard a harrumphing historian on the radio the other day saying that, well, it’s sort of okay to start the decade with the 0-numbered year because that’s how our wrong-minded culture refers to them – the aughts, the teens, the twenties, thirties, etc., but just don’t forget, like centuries and millennia, that they really don’t start until the 1! Harrumph.
Soooo, what is January? Named after Janus, the Roman God of Beginnings, of gates and doors, the Guardian of Entrances and Exits - an old Italian god that is often depicted as having two faces or two heads, for looking forward and looking back.
January also is, mostly, within the arc of the “classic” zodiac known as Capricorn, the beloved but stubborn Goat. “Responsible, disciplined, self-control, good managers, … know-it-alls, unforgiving, condescending, expecting the worst, likes family, tradition, music, understated status, quality craftsmanship and dislikes almost everything at some point - A goat with the tail of a fish is created to face fear and create panic.” (courtesy of the astrology-zodiac-signs.com website).
Trying to connect these together led to unexpected results, the most interesting (well, to me, anyway) was the discovery of the gene tyrosine-protein kinase JAK2 - Janus kinase 2 [ Capra hircus (goat) ] – a gene subject to mutation in that: “…The JAK2 V617F mutation is an acquired, somatic mutation present in the majority of patients with myeloproliferative cancer (myeloproliferative neoplasms) i.e. nearly 100% of patients with polycythemia vera and in about 50% of patients with essential thrombocytosis and primary myelofibrosis.” (I’m in way over my head, here) It was first mapped in the genetic code of Capra hircus, which shares this gene with humans, hence the goat reference, and “ … The name is taken from the two-faced Roman god of beginnings, endings and duality, Janus, because the JAKs possess two near-identical phosphate-transferring domains.”
Just not sexy enough … apologies any geneticists out there.
Well then, as an appropriate mascot, meet Caramel, the two-headed “taxidermied” goat from New Zealand. You can read the story here:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/01/whakatane-couple-selling-two-headed-taxidermy-goat-to-fund-wedding.html
At least they didn’t append a fish tail to her.
For me January is a month of the winterest of winter weather, and the horrors and often silent beauty that it brings. It starts out dark (all the damn time) with too much time cooped up to dwell on the crappy things of last year but ends up with the realization that the days are actually getting longer, and hey, there’s stuff I want to do and we’re gonna get out of this alive.
What’s January for you?
- 8 comments, 51 replies
- Comment
Today’s date is also dual-natured, written the same, whether you use the ridiculous USA date notation of MM/DD/YY or the more sensical everywhere NOT the USA notation of DD/MM/YY. The optimal notation is YYYY/MM/DD, of course, since it automatically sorts in correct date order, all the time.
@mike808 Yes, and which form was I using? We’ll find out next time …
Someone pointed out to me that MM/DD/YY makes sense because that’s how you would reply (in the USA) if someone asked you the date: January 1st, 2020. I’m not sold, but … maybe other countries are more formal and would say, “The 1st of January, 2020.”
I tag all my important computer filenames with YYYYMMDD so they sort correctly by date when I’m looking up correspondence and stuff.
@mike808 @stolicat While we are on it, why is the dollar sign in front of the number when we say 50 dollars it should be written as 50$
@mike808 @therealjrn like 50¢?
@therealjrn I agree, and since there are several countries in the Webosphere that use their own “dollars”, it should probably be written something like 50$US.
@macromeh @therealjrn
The common currency identifier for the US is “USD”, so as to avoid any special characters. Namely A-Z. Arguably, the 2B+ Chinese have a valid point about being forced to accommodate our limited and hugely simplified Western character sets in a lowest-common-denominator sort of way.
@mike808 Fuck off you globalist calendar denier.
As for the “decade doesn’t start until year 1” idiots, they’re full of complete horseshit. You aren’t born 1 year old. Neither was the alleged (calculated) birth year of the Christian deity Jesus, on which the modern calendar is based. The time between birth and your first birthday is your “year zero”.
So Jesus (if one is a believer) wasn’t born in the year 1 BC (or BCE), any more than he popped out on his first birthday on 1 AD. He was born on year zero, the modern calendar starts with a year zero, the time between thd year -1 and the year 1 (which is actually two years).
@mike808 As I’ve heard it, 0 is a point in time (neither BC or AD), like noon or midnight (neither am or pm), and the first year before/after the 0 point is the first +/-year. The birth of Jesus, for purposes of the calendar creators, was at point 0, neither BC or AD. After the first year (year 1 AD) he was one year old. When you count a decade of things (like years or eggs or goats) you start with 1 and end with 10. 0 is a lack of thing.
I’m okay either way - I celebrated the millennium twice, just to be sure.
@stolicat I lump the “decade/century doesn’t start until 2021/2001” people in with the flat earthers, “Earth is only 4,000 years old”, climate change deniers, and anti-vaxxers.
On day 1 after your 10th birthday, you are a decade old. Not after your 11th birthday, as imagined and proclaimed by these attention-whores.
Just because people don’t believe in Math or Science doesn’t make them any less true. Both-siderism is not “critical thinking”. It is the hallmark of lazy journalism/research and creates a false equivalency between Truth and Fiction that does not exist. The world is not the better place for it, nor is giving those that foist that nonsense a platform.
@mike808 Thank you for stating that so clearly. I think I love you.
@mike808 It is also an extremely common programming mistake. Used to be much worse before everybody settled on always starting at zero for array indexes and so forth, at least as I remember.
I’m glad to see that our Lord and Savior’s birth didn’t take after the arrays I was stuck with when I had to program in Visual Basic. Always knew there was something I liked about Christianity.
@InnocuousFarmer @mike808 @OldCatLady
@mike808 @OldCatLady @stolicat Wait, Wikipedia says there is no year zero AD. So if it’s all about a hypothetical 12/25/0001 AD birth, then 12/25/2020 has Jesus turning 2019. This is VB all over again. This is terrible.
You’ve heard it here first: I’ve had a personal revelatory experience that Jesus was born on 12/25/0001 BC instead. That can be year zero AD. Then he turns 2020 next Christmas, so things work out reasonably. Basic should never have gained traction as a family of languages. It’s those (I wouldn’t disparage or speculate on anyone’s destinations hereafter but I think we all know this to be true) damned business people.
…
This random webpage says maybe BC 4 or earlier, since that’s when King Herod died.
Pffffft.
@InnocuousFarmer @OldCatLady @stolicat
Dec 25 is a myth. Two months were added, giving us the Julian calendar. Shepherds wouldn’t be tending their flock in the fields in the middle of winter. They’d be in the barn, er, “manger”. And we have two different accounts of that night - one with visiting Magi (“the 3 kings”) and one without. And if they did bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, what happened to the gold? Why wouldn’t they have upgraded with it?
Not to mention that the four gospels we know today were oral histories passed down for at least three generations before being committed to writing on vellum and parchment. And why didn’t a single one of the other eight apostles write/tell their stories? Or Mary Magdalene? It’s all been sanitized and heavily patriarchified over centuries.
Then there is the matter if the whole of the Christian high holiday calendar was decided by fiat long after the fact, and just happens to coincide with the high holidays of the other local religions, so as to hide the Christian celebrations in plain sight, since it was a banned/heretical religion/cult at the time.
Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox. Yeah, not pagan at all. I’m not knocking Christianity, just saying that its traditions, dogma, and doctrines have been shaped by the priests running the churches, the followers, and the times they lived in. Why should today’s churches be any different at bending Canon to the times and today’s cultural influences?
@InnocuousFarmer @mike808 @OldCatLady @stolicat dec 25 is a convenience, and there was no 0, and likely Christ was born in about year 4.
I had a physics teacher in high school who was very religious but understood that the Bible is a tool for understanding Christ and guidance to be better people, not a historically accurate science text. So a couple times a year he’d do a class on some aspect of “how Christians think x but we now know it was likely y, and that’s okay.”
In Dec the lesson was the “star” that guided folks was actually likely 2 different very bright astronomical convergences, one brought the shepherds around his birth summer of 4 and the wise men/kings came a few weeks later based on the other (in a different part of the sky so they came “from the East” while the shepherds came in a different way based on the convergence that looked like a bright star from where they’d have been tending sheep relative to Bethlehem). Note even now while manger scenes show the wise men so people think “they were there day 1,” that is just a display. Many cultures have Jan 6 as the day the wisemen/kings showed up, because it didn’t happen on his birth and even with moving his “birthday” to Dec they still recognized the separation of events.
And again, manger scenes are just a display that is not historically accurate, there was likely no big boxes of gold etc, so not enough to “upgrade.” Think more like a ring or pendant or other small object you could not buy a mansion with.
Point to me is: what Christians have done over the centuries that make us look crazy is not what Christianity is about. I can believe in God and that miracles happened that prove Christ is His son sent to save and teach, without getting hung up on every little nuance of “can you have more than one baptism” (generally Baptist v most other Protestants) “can you eat meat on Fridays” (many Catholics) ”did dinosaurs exist or is the earth only 4000 years old.” (Those that treat Bible as literal v rest of Christians and most non-Christians).
Same as I can Identify with one political party due to most of their platform, but not agree with certain policies and do not vote party line in elections.
@mollama I was just saying 1 BC has to be part of the first decade, if 2020 is the start 203rd, and not the last year of the 202nd.
I usually try not to talk about Christianity with Christians. It never goes well. It’d be a rare person with a faith so comfortable being tested that they didn’t get defensive. I still call myself an atheist, though, as time wears on, I’ve been finding less that I can relate to in the crowd that usually labels themselves that way.
@InnocuousFarmer @mike808 @OldCatLady @stolicat
Yes, December 25th is pretty clearly not the birthday of Christ. It is also not said to be in the Bible.
No, no biblical account has the Magi arriving on the day of Jesus’ birth. This is clearly later, as the don’t visit Herod until after the birth (Matthew 2).
John is the only Gospel held to have been written by a disciple. Matthew, Mark, and Luke were not disciples.
Saying that being pedantic about the calendar is equivalent to a rejection of math and science is exceptionally ironic.
@InnocuousFarmer @Limewater @OldCatLady @stolicat
I just find it easier to believe in a Caucasian male magical sky friend that just also happens to proclaim as undeniable Truthiness the exact same beliefs that I believe in. What a coincidence!
On the other hand, in a bet as to whether or not there is some kind of deity in a hypothetical afterlife, I would rather believe and be wrong, rather than the other way around.
@InnocuousFarmer @Limewater @OldCatLady @stolicat
For Bonus Points:
@InnocuousFarmer @mike808 @OldCatLady @stolicat
I can’t argue that such people don’t exist…
I’m not sure your point with the “bonus points” question. I don’t see any biblical basis for the first answer given, so it’s not surprising that the line of reasoning leads nowhere…
@InnocuousFarmer @Limewater @OldCatLady @stolicat
I was noting another of the many disconnects in religious dogma, doctrine, and canon that simply cannot be reconciled even within their own systems and algebras. It’s not just calendars that are “a bit off”. It’s a sloppier version, a hack, if you will, of the theoretical physicist’s mathematical trick of introducing new magical constants or extra dimensions to reconcile the disconnects.
The pedantic irony was not lost, but transmogrified.
/giphy ironic pedantry
@InnocuousFarmer @mike808 @OldCatLady @stolicat
When you’re getting basic, verifiable facts about a subject wrong, it’s really hard to take your argument seriously. But I’m glad you’re feeling good about yourself, Iron Man.
MEALS! DEALS! EELS! AWESOME!
@InnocuousFarmer @Limewater @OldCatLady @stolicat
I was being Ironic. Get it?
You confuse irony for sarcasm.
Surely you’re not defending the dogma of a 4,000 year old earth as one of the “verifiable facts” I’m mistaken about?
When it comes to Christianity, there is literally no tangible, verifiable evidence the person existed. It’s all eyewitness testimony filtered by generations of oral tradition, politics, and power. Doesn’t mean it’s not true or that parts are true, it just means that it is truly a matter of faith.
I don’t buy the “year 1BC was followed by year 1AD” math either. Because that means that all time differences within AD or within BC are simple subtraction, but if they cross, then you have to subtract an extra year? How is that consistent at all points on the timeline? It’s not. Hence, the folks arguing the decade doesn’t start until 2021 are full of it. QED.
Wikipedia is not an authoritative source, btw. It is a crowd-sourced layman’s outline. Try using Wikipedia as a reference in a dissertation or peer-reviewed journal and see how far that flies.
@InnocuousFarmer @Limewater @mike808 @OldCatLady @stolicat
I’m still waiting for CalTech to approve my crowd-sourced thesis and dissertation project.
Damn, they’re slow.
/giphy math, y’all.
@InnocuousFarmer @Limewater @mike808 @OldCatLady @stolicat
/giphy you go, giphy!
@InnocuousFarmer @Limewater @mike808 @OldCatLady @stolicat
/giphy “giphy is en pointe tonight!”
@InnocuousFarmer @mike808 @OldCatLady @stolicat
Amusingly, that is another thing you are wrong about, but not in the way you think. Young-earth creationism does not claim that the earth is as young as 4,000 years old. The strictest literal interpretation of the Bible still has the earth older than that.
But no, I called out those specific claims or premises that you laid out specifically because they are verifiable, factual issues that any secular scholar on the topic could set you straight on. You don’t have to exercise any faith to look and see what the church claims about the authorship of the gospels. You can just look at the gospels themselves to check the Magi references. These aren’t difficult or mystical things.
You don’t have to “buy the math” about year 1 BC and year 1 AD, because it’s not math. It’s a convention that people use. It’s a convention where the year is numbered upon entry. We’re IN the year 2020. We haven’t COMPLETED the year 2020.
When a baby is one day old, he is in his “first year,” even though he is only about 0.003 years old. He is one year old in his second year.
Attempting to “disprove” a convention using mathematics is fundamentally wrong.
I don’t know why you bring up Wikipedia.
@mike808 BC counts backwards. It’s like negative numbers on a number line that doesn’t contain a zero.
For the “decade doesn’t start until…” thing, it’s just counting. Here, with rows as decades:
@InnocuousFarmer @Limewater @stolicat
The gospels are not contemporaneous eyewitness written testmonials, that Christian faiths espouse as if they were “fact”. They were oral traditions for 3-400 years before being put to paper to form the New Testament. Translation has had effects as well. Politics and culture has also affected the contents.
My point wasn’t to “disprove” religious claims, but rather to demonstrate that they’re not as intellectually honest as they claim to be, especially with respect to historical accuracy. In particular, in the context of how we estsblished the modern calendar and the selection (because thats what it was - a selection) of anniversary dates of when certain historical events occurred. Think about that for a minute. There is no historical corroboration of who these “Magi” were - only the circular self-supporting “evidence” of the gospels.
I’m not saying the whole thing is fiction. Just that it ain’t Truth, and especially not unadulterated Historical Truth unaffected by and intact from centuries and generations of oral tradition, politics, special interests, corruption, language translation, and cultural influences.
At best, it is a collection of “based on true events” stories that don’t tell us which parts are fact and which parts are fiction. Again, that’s not saying it doesn’t have value or meaning, any more or kess than the writings in the Book of Mormon, the Qur’an, or L. Ron Hubbard to their respective adherents.
@InnocuousFarmer @mike808 @stolicat
This is, again, factually inaccurate. By a wide margin. No legitimate secular historian who has studied early church history would sign off on this statement. This sounds like you read The Da Vinci Code and took Dan Brown seriously.
You can’t crow about “intellectual honesty” while being so clearly, thoroughly, and willfully misinformed. I mean, you can. You’re doing it. Congratulations?
The New Testament canon was established way, way before the First Council of Nicea in AD 325. That’s not “church talk.” Secular scholars will tell you the same thing. For this whole thread thus far, I am only reflecting the positions of secular scholarship, not church doctrine.
@InnocuousFarmer hey I did not mean to ding anyone with the statement I made at the start of my long comment. I have respect for all religions, and even the agnostic, though I am relatively religious (if my husband precedes me in death I may join a convent) but do realize that if I had been born into a family that was (put religion name here) I’d likely be that. Though like I said, the miracles are what to me set Christianity apart, as I’ve studied (novice level) several religions and find it the most compelling. I know others will say that is likely the oral tradition (whisper down the lane) changing of history.
My point (and that HS physics teacher I had) was that science has definitely shown several things (in addition to Dec 25, the weird way Easter is mapped out, and the Earth is way older than even a loose interpretation of the Bible appears to define; there was a large flood so Noah, but it wasn’t world-wide), yet Christianity is not diminished by that. The book Screwtape Letters also talks to not confusing/replacing faith with objects or traditions that some may start to worship instead.
So again, apologies if you thought I was putting you down. I like meh because it exposes me to others’ thought, and we (mostly) debate respectfully, even with all the fucks doled out.
@mollama Thanks for the sentiment. You seem nice. Nothing you posted read to me as offensive. I was hoping my being silly about personal revelation wasn’t something anyone would take seriously.
I was trying there to make a note as to why I was taking a step back from the thread. When I first lost my faith, I was a little too… enthusiastic, in my conversations with believers – my sense of the centrality and importance of religious beliefs remained even as the beliefs themselves did not.
From a secular perspective, without eternal souls in the balance, it shouldn’t be that hard to be a bit lighter and more even, regarding religion, at least where some religious dogma isn’t intruding on day-to-day life in a way that doesn’t seem to follow from rational principles – evolution vs. young earth creationism in high school curriculum, for example, or maybe a loved one making highly dubious financial decisions, something like that.
I don’t know that it’s true to say that everyone is entitled to their beliefs… but Christianity these days has carved out a large amount of room that allows for mutual tolerance and coexistence with other religions. I’m not sure I would disabuse Christians of their beliefs even if I had the power. That kind of conversion is a mixed bag.
@InnocuousFarmer @mollama - This is another great thread - some fascinating ideas and expressions - together with the usual disappointing expressions of scorn and derision. It’s good to avoid getting sucked into time-wasting arguments with trolls, but it’s great to see people refine their ideas in response to challenges, because I think all of us have a tendency to assume we know things that we don’t, necessarily, or are much more complex than we thought.
When I was a teenager I went through the whole “now I am an enlightened atheist” thing, and it was, not necessarily a big shock, but kind of a frustrating surprise to discover that all these arguments are millennia old and far more complex than I was really interested in pursuing. Equally importantly, I had a tendency to generalize about some VERY large and VERY diverse groups of people, and it often turned out that statements I thought were funny, or even obvious common sense or whatever, were pretty condescending and simplistic when considered with a little more sensitivity.
Everyone has sacred cows, and whether it really means anything to say that everyone is entitled to their beliefs, obviously not everyone is entitled to PRACTICE their beliefs, especially on other people. However I think it’s incredibly important to EXPRESS your beliefs, because it will probably turn out that no matter what they are, there are better variations - more successful or valuable than what you’ve been working with. I know it doesn’t always seem to be true, but I still think that the most successful beliefs are those that offer the most inclusion and tolerance for disagreement.
The ultimate authority.
That’s a mighty fine essay. January to me is nice because my daughter was born on the 5th. And I think MLK day is this month too. For a womanizing asshole, he was an OK guy. We all have some sort of clay feet, some sort of dual struggle going on…or is that just me?
@therealjrn We are all clay-footed, in some way. I believe it’s part of how we learn to grow whilst here in these lives.
Thanks for the comp - I had a running start so might be the best thing you’ll get all month.
January means another year older! Yup, I am a stubborn goat
Nice start @stilicat
What is January for me…hmmm
Well my dissolving stitches have almost all the way dissolved so there is that
It’s t-minus 44 days till my birthday
It’s supposed to be a month of snow and ice skating instead it’s almost 60 out
/giphy snow
Damn you al gore
/giphy al gore
Other than that it’s 78 days till the first day of camping season. (We start on the wife’s birthday in March then go till school starts in Aug.)
The arrival of January means that football is nearly over, and that there’s a chance – a near zero chance, but…a chance – that it might never return.
@UncleVinny My extreme regrets to tell you that football does not end until February this year - something you can blame on the next goat.
@bleedmichigan made an embarrassing solo album of holiday carols they pray never resurfaces.
@bleedmichigan @mediocrebot hey, he’s served his time - leave him alone!
@bleedmichigan @mediocrebot @stolicat Ask @oldcatlady how long she had to put in overtime after her reign. lol
@stolicat January means the end is near, though. The death knell keens. The miasma dissipates. The sickness slinks back into the darkness. Clean-living men and women can once more fill their lungs with the untainted, unmolested air of sweet grass and hearty meadows.
KuoH
@UncleVinny The Iowa caucus is the day after the superbowl - the sickness will slink back out and until November you’ll be able to cut the miasma with a knife …
@stolicat I’d rather be wetly groped by Rudy Giuliani for a month of Sundays than live in a world with football. The political season I can live with.
KuoH
@mediocrebot @stolicat some how still the goat
@stolicat @UncleVinny if Rudy has won would he be the Groper in chief
/giphy groper in chief
@bleedmichigan @mediocrebot @stolicat That’s because you haven’t suffered nearly enough. As of 1022 EST on Wednesday, you’re still goat. Blame!
@bleedmichigan brought frankenberry and mirth to the party.
@mediocrebot @OldCatLady @stolicat make that 1220 EST it seems the Meh employees are either off today or busy making goat trophies.
@bleedmichigan @mediocrebot @OldCatLady I’ve seen this take a couple days - we can share the blame for now, just collect yours in a bucket and pass it along when the time comes.
@bleedmichigan declared war on Christmas.
@mediocrebot delivered goat trophies to ALL past goats after having their heart grow three sizes
So far this year, January is springtime.
/giphy spring in January
@eonfifty Where are you? That’s what’s happening here in the SF Bay Area - as it’s cold and rainy, it never quite gets down to freezing so all the grasses are sprouting and the hillsides are turning green.
@stolicat
I’m on the southern shores of beautiful Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio.
But it did snow last night
/giphy lake effect snow