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Abolish the Week! It’s unnatural. It’s unnecessary. Why the seven-day week has got to go.
Slate ^ | May 27, 2014 | Ben Schreckinger

Posted on 05/27/2014 11:23:42 AM PDT by C19fan

For eons, all manner of animals have lived their lives according to the cycles of the Earth’s rotation on its axis, the moon’s orbit around the Earth, and the Earth’s orbit around the sun. But why do we observe the week? The pattern of living on a seven-day cycle—with one or two of those days set aside for rest—is a relative novelty. Only in the past few centuries, with Western colonization of most of the world, have the majority of human societies adopted it.

The case for the week was never airtight. It’s now weak and getting weaker. Most Westerners no longer observe a weekly Sabbath, and the coordination advantages of keeping everyone on the same uniform schedule have evaporated. So why does this arbitrary time cycle still dictate the rhythm of our lives? Is it time to abolish the week and find a better way to structure time?

(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: benschreckinger; calender; politico; slate; week
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To: Reddy

its not it’s.


41 posted on 05/27/2014 12:42:38 PM PDT by Reddy (bo stinks)
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To: C19fan

Will they back off if we just call them quarter moons?


42 posted on 05/27/2014 12:43:42 PM PDT by dangerdoc
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To: C19fan
Wasn't this proposed on SNL years ago?


43 posted on 05/27/2014 12:46:15 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: C19fan

Abolish homosexuality. It’s unnatural and unnecessary.


44 posted on 05/27/2014 12:52:18 PM PDT by BuckeyeTexan (There are those that break and bend. I'm the other kind. ~Steve Earle)
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To: winner3000
I’m surprised that the way we count years from the birth of Christ hasn’t been attacked yet.

Already done

BC now is Before The Common Era. BCE

AD is now After the Common Era. ACE

45 posted on 05/27/2014 1:00:09 PM PDT by itsahoot (Voting for a Progressive RINO is the same as voting for any other Tyrant.)
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To: cuban leaf
The New Testament is all about every day being equal to every other day. They are all a gift from God, none to be celebrated over any others.

Right, we are free from the law and observation of rituals and days etc. Even the Sabbath, as Jesus said, was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

But the week was instituted before the law and tells us something about how God made us. Physically, it has been shown that we benefit greatly by resting one day out of seven. (More obvious, of course, is our need for approximately eight hours of sleep per day.) I believe God put man on hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly cycles, not for legalistic, religious reasons, but it seems like that's how he's made us because these are woven into the very creation itself as described in the first chapter of Genesis.

This has all the makings of oppression by trying to do away with the natural weekly cycle and regular rest (followed later most likely with attempting to do away with 24-hour days and regular daily rest).

The Bible predicts all of this in Daniel 7:25 during the very end of the age. So it's coming but, as the guy in the movie, Gladiator says, "Not yet."

46 posted on 05/27/2014 1:00:38 PM PDT by PapaNew
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To: idov
The seven-day week adopted by the Romans did not come from the Jews.

That's nonsense. It was instituted in the very first chapter of the very first book of God's Word, the Bible, in the Book of Genesis, at least 6000 years ago, way before anything called "Rome" was on the scene.

47 posted on 05/27/2014 1:08:30 PM PDT by PapaNew
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To: TalBlack
This fool thinks that replacing order with disorder will somehow work.

What big government and its supporters and minions try to do every day.

48 posted on 05/27/2014 1:10:44 PM PDT by PapaNew
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To: Steely Tom

It should be noted the French Revolution clock and calendar were part of the same “reforms” that included the metric system, which has been an enormous boon to science.

The USA is pretty much the only country that hasn’t gone metric at this point.


49 posted on 05/27/2014 1:18:30 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: C19fan

In the mid-1960’s, there was a proposal to add another day to the week. Maury Wills Day would be inserted between Friday and Saturday, creating an eight-day week with a three-day weekend.

It was around that time that the Beatles released a song entitled “Eight Days a Week.” They probably anticipated that if Maury Wills Day were added to the week, their song, being timely, would be a big hit.


50 posted on 05/27/2014 1:33:18 PM PDT by Fiji Hill
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To: PapaNew

You are calling nonsense my sentence: The seven-day week adopted by the Romans did not come from the Jews.

Since when are facts nonsense?

The week was adopted by the Romans and in the Hellenic world, who paid no attention to what the Jews did and most people never heard of, long before the Christians came along. If they got it from the Jews they wouldn’t be calling the days by names of planets. The astrologers did that.

This is from F. H. Colson who wrote a history of the week in 1924.

“The planetary week rests on a ... principle, namely, the idea that the whole of time is under the control of divine beings, each of whom rules in turn. In this case the length of the week is clearly determined by the number of the divine beings concerned. In the case of the planetary week, these divine beings are the planets (including the sun and the moon), and therefore the number was fixed by nature. The number of planets visible to the ancients was seven.”
“The planetary week ... cannot be traced to a date much prior to our era.”

“By the beginning of the third century, the habit of measuring time in cycles of seven days, each of them dedicated to one of the seven planets, had become universal or at least general in private life throughout the Roman Empire, though it had not received official recognition.”

“How did the planetary week gain its ascendancy in the empire? I do not think that the difficulty of this has been properly appreciated. We talk glibly of one nation ‘getting it’ from another, but as a matter of fact a new time-cycle is not a thing which spreads automatically. The most natural method of propagation is by official authority. ... But as we have seen there is complete silence as to any official enforcement or even recognition of the planetary week.”

This is from Gilbert Murray, an expert on ancient Greece.

“Even the way of reckoning time changed (in Greece) under the influence of the planets. Instead of the old division of the month into three periods of nine days, we find gradually establishing itself the week of seven days with each day named after its planet, Sun, Moon, Ares, Hermes, Zeus, Aphrodite, Kronos. ... It was not the Jewish week. The Jews scorned such idolatrous and polytheistic proceedings. It was the old week of Babylon, the original home of astronomy and planet-worship.”

I got more if two scholars who know what they are talking about aren’t enough.


51 posted on 05/27/2014 1:47:12 PM PDT by idov
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To: idov
OK, maybe I misread what you were saying. So it looks like what you're saying is the Romans came up with the seven-day week independently, not that the seven-day week originated with the Romans which is what I thought you meant.
52 posted on 05/27/2014 1:56:28 PM PDT by PapaNew
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist

Yeah, because LA and St Louis have sooo much in common... including a sunrise and sunset that are over 2:40 min apart


53 posted on 05/27/2014 2:03:24 PM PDT by Teacher317 (We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men)
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To: Sherman Logan
The USA is pretty much the only country that hasn’t gone metric at this point.

Science and engineering are metric in the USA.

Gas stations and Home Depot aren't.

Why hasn't all of Canada "gone French?"

Why hasn't all of Europe settled on German?

I'm sure it would be an "enormous boon" to do so.

54 posted on 05/27/2014 2:24:00 PM PDT by Steely Tom (How do you feel about robbing Peter's robot?)
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To: C19fan
Interesting about the French Revolution. I thought it was the Russians who played with the 10 day week, but apparently, they experimented with 5 day and 6 day weeks, trying very clearly to get the idea of God out of the calendar.

The French not only experimented with a 10 day week, but also decimal time: 10 hours divided into 100 minutes divided into 100 seconds.

Were there any practical advantages to decimal time, or was it just a matter of French decamania?

55 posted on 05/27/2014 2:36:01 PM PDT by x
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To: C19fan

Yes, let’s just add some more chaos to the chaos.


56 posted on 05/27/2014 3:45:44 PM PDT by VTenigma (The Democratic party is the party of the mathematically challenged)
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To: C19fan

There are few things more unnatural and less necessary than Slate. The author needs to be careful about eliminating unnecessary things.


57 posted on 05/27/2014 5:49:03 PM PDT by Cincinnatus.45-70 (What do DemocRats enjoy more than a truckload of dead babies? Unloading them with a pitchfork!)
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To: PapaNew

Yes, I do see it as just another front in the attack on Christianity in general. And because of the way it is playing out, I am more convinced than ever that we are in those last few years.

Frankly, the verse that says “this generation shall not pass away until all these things come to pass” got me thinking:
1. a generation’s life span, according to the bible seems to very much be roughly 70 years (search biblegateway for it).
2. The 70 years began, arguably, in 1948 (Israel became a nation).
3. The world is coming apart at the seams as an alarmingly increasing rate of speed.

Yep. Any day.


58 posted on 05/27/2014 6:46:32 PM PDT by cuban leaf
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To: PapaNew

Oh, and the most important part: The bible tells us that nobody but God the father knows the exact day, but we are admonished to recognize the signs that the end is near. It also says that although it will come as a thief in the night, that will not be the case for those of us who believe.


59 posted on 05/27/2014 6:47:46 PM PDT by cuban leaf
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To: cuban leaf
Yes, that's a good way to look at it. I believe it's the Bible way to look at it.

I have reason to believe it won't be for awhile. One reason is I believe that God has shown me I'm going to live a long, prosperous, fruitful life. And I also believe he's shown me I'll go to Heaven before the "rapture" when Jesus comes for His own. I usually tell people these things are coming, "but not yet."

60 posted on 05/27/2014 7:37:27 PM PDT by PapaNew
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