It's still not a Freedom Tree -- and it's AD, fercryingoutloud!

re: It's still not a Freedom Tree -- and it's AD, fercryingoutloud!

John Cowan — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 15:53:49 GMT

Originally "CE" was read as "Christian Era", but as more and more non-Christian cultures adopted it, it was retconned as "Common Era".

I like it.

re: It's still not a Freedom Tree -- and it's AD, fercryingoutloud!

Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 21:12:00 GMT

The problem with BCE and CE is that the C could as easily be understood as Christian. Same problem again...

re: It's still not a Freedom Tree -- and it's AD, fercryingoutloud!

Michael S. Kaplan — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 10:10:01 GMT

I vaguely recall that surveys have shown lots of people think it is:

BC == Before Christ
AD == After Death

Though since that would leave the 30-odd years in the middle they would have to add:

JT == Jesus Time?

:-)

re: It's still not a Freedom Tree -- and it's AD, fercryingoutloud!

Dean Harding — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 09:14:33 GMT

Besides, I'm sure if you asked the average person on the street what "AD" or "BC" actually stood for, I'm sure most people wouldn't have a clue (maybe they might know "BC" but I doubt many people would know "AD"). If you asked people "what is the Gregorian Calendar" you'd get equally blank faces, I'm sure.

It kind of reminds me some of the more pedantic policies on Wikipedia: you *HAVE* to use "CE" and "BCE" because that's "politically correct" (or is that "religiously correct"?). You also *HAVE* to use "MiB" "GiB" and so on, because that's "unambiguous".