It would be cool to have an option, and I'm sure if I bothered to Google stuff, options would abound. But just throwing things out, I think there's one that sets its beginning to Hiroshima or the first test explosion of the manhattan project, because that would be the beginning of the atomic age. Alternatively, perhaps we could somehow roundout a year in the Boral age to the agrarian revolution and start from there. It would com to 10.000 or so, but big numbers are neat.

Funnily enough, I was taught to use CE and BCE in an extremely Christian high school. In religion class. Because that was what they used, we were told, in seminaries at the university level. (Which turned out to be true.)

(My view on CE dates, for what it's worth, is that they're pointless and arguably worse than BC / AD. The latter labels are at least transparent about the fact that the calendar of one particular Christian sect has gained a sort of international default status as a result of western imperialism. BCE / CE rebrands the exact same calendar as some kind of universal non-ideological system, which does nothing to deal with the ickiness of the situation but just makes it more icky by disguising how it came about and implying that everyone just freely decided to measure time starting from an agreed arbitrary point that had nothing to do with this Jesus guy.)

Fair enough; it is only a minor cosmetic change. On the other hand, I can see how someone would want to not use BC/AD and yet also not want to try to convince everyone currently using that calendar to switch to whatever system they would replace it with (which would require a bunch of conversion of dates and learning the new thing and so on).[1]

[1]I may be extra-pessimistic about this due to living in one of the last few countries that hasn't officially adopted the metric system. And that has more practical reasons to use it!

I'd forgotten whether it was Common Era or Christian Era (can't work out if the latter is more or less problematic than the Before/After Christ configuration). I've never seen it written A.C.E. either.

I like BCE and CE more than AD and BC because, well, Christ was born around 4 BC, which is kinda embarassing.

I read quite a lot of history books

Why do I suspect that the author of that post doesn't?

(My view on CE dates, for what it's worth, is that they're pointless and arguably worse than BC / AD. The latter labels are at least transparent about the fact that the calendar of one particular Christian sect has gained a sort of international default status as a result of western imperialism. BCE / CE rebrands the exact same calendar as some kind of universal non-ideological system, which does nothing to deal with the ickiness of the situation but just makes it more icky by disguising how it came about and implying that everyone just freely decided to measure time starting from an agreed arbitrary point that had nothing to do with this Jesus guy.)

Yeah, I've never heard or seen 'ACE' (and I read quite a lot of history books). Also it makes no sense: BCE is 'Before the Common Era' so if you replace AD with 'After the Common Era' it requires the Common Era to have had a duration of zero.

I thought it was just C.E. (and B.C.E.)?

and then the author gives a date not in A.D. but in A.C.E., a terminology no one used in the Sixties, and which was obnoxiously politically correct. ... I realized I was not in the magical faraway hills of New York in the Summer of Love, but listening to crap propaganda from an enemy of Christ who was so bitter against Christendom that he could not even bring himself to refer to the Gregorian calendar honestly.

Oh wow, that's actually in there?? I must have started skimming by that point. And yeah, I do agree that A.C.E. is weirdly jarring, but its hardly "crap propaganda from an enemy of Christ".

I didn't know Christ made enemies so easily

Why is it the "political correctness gone mad!" folks can never write a blogpost that isn't saga-length?

I guess by the time someone gets THAT fired up about 1)being asked not to be a total shithead and/or 2)other people making their own attempts not to be shitheads, they have a lot of bile stored up.

and then the author gives a date not in A.D. but in A.C.E., a terminology no one used in the Sixties, and which was obnoxiously politically correct. ... I realized I was not in the magical faraway hills of New York in the Summer of Love, but listening to crap propaganda from an enemy of Christ who was so bitter against Christendom that he could not even bring himself to refer to the Gregorian calendar honestly.

Isn't it just awful when Christianity isn't given absolute preference in every single thing, no matter how small and insignificant? :( You haven't been oppressed until you've had someone maliciously not mention Jesus at you.

Why is it the "political correctness gone mad!" folks can never write a blogpost that isn't saga-length?

Because they think quantity can substitute for quality?

Not that I can really talk.

Why is it the "political correctness gone mad!" folks can never write a blogpost that isn't saga-length?

For someone so keen on preserving and celebrating the history of the fantasy genre he seems to have a very slack grasp of the timeline.

Well, he also completely missed that the very article he is defending the Barsoom stories from is actually quite positive towards Burrough's work, so I'm thinking he just mashed together some thoughts he had recently without checking to see if they made sense.

"Gladiatorial fighting is like a Pokemon match, except with humans!"
did make me laugh harder than it should have, though.

I like how he calls Robert E. Howard "the father of our beloved genre" when there's stacks of fantasy adventure material that preceded Howard and exerted a major influence on him - including the very Barsoom material Wright defends elsewhere in his screed.

For someone so keen on preserving and celebrating the history of the fantasy genre he seems to have a very slack grasp of the timeline.

Oh dear. John C. Wright has called me "a long-lost twin or something." I'm not sure how to feel about this.

E-Life has certainly gotten interesting just when my internet access has been limited to exactly an hour at the library every couple of days.

Not helping Cammalot...

You will curse the day you did not do
All that the Captain asked of you!

I'm visualizing it as more of a Phantom/Les Mis affair, with bombastic music and tons-o'-pathos, and not so much with the rhyming and dancing around in unison...

Nope, nope, that doesn't make it less weird.

When wounded I have been known to do all of my own stitchin'
And with this bottle I'm gonna pound your dirty Commie faces in!

Also I note that the Pale Man can't see unless he's doing jazz hands so there's that.

I can't decide how I feel about that ...

Because on the one hand MUSICAL. But on the other ... I just can't see how it would be remotely improved by, well, song and dance numbers. I quite like Pan's Labyrinth as is.

I am the very model of a modern nazi-Capitan
Of Falangism and Dictatorship I can count myself fan...

'Pan's Labyrinth' is being adapted as a stage musical.

I. Wow.

Re: Yahtzee

I hadn't watched Zero Punctuation for a year or so prior to the Blops II review, but his critique was far more astute than I expected from him. Of course, his delivery was standard Yahtzian smugness, but I can't blame him; that's his schtick.

While the Call of Duty series itself may be self-aware enough to realize its jingoistic worldview, I agree with Yahtzee that its fanbase isn't always onboard.

That Extra Punctuation is back to the typical muddled incoherence I've always disliked about his review style, but I think the final line ("It's like a Transformers movie; a load of noisy, pointless spectacle because it doesn't know any other way to engage.") pretty much sums up my feelings towards the CoD series for the last few releases.

Well, I hope she pops over, then! I'm halfway through book 4 (and book 1 - my reading habits are very strange) and it's still exceedingly awesome.

Well, maybe once I've read the second one I'll be in a better position to talk it over, then. I'm sure Mary J would love to talk about the books as well.

To return to Yahtzee for a second, he backpedaled a bit in this week's Extra Punctuation. (He also claims that he's a high school dropout. How about that.)

I've been irked by Yahtzee whenever he rants against modern-day shooters before, and he's definitely been growing more strident over the past few years, but I've been more irritated by the knee-jerk anti-American or anti-military sentiment. It always reminded me of something Orwell once wrote about H. G. Wells. Wells originally hailed from the non-military middle class, and as a result he had little patience for the paraphernalia of British nationalism, the empire, the army, navy, and so on. He saw it all as a holdover from mankind's dark brutish days, but he never really understood what attracted people to it in the first place, which meant he was consistently off the mark when trying to assess something like the appeal of Adolf Hitler. Yahtzee doesn't go that far, but he always seems to resort to name-calling when some broader understanding of the appeal of things like Call of Duty would allow him to criticize it more effectively.

And now I've just compared a high-school dropout who yammers about children's toys on the Internet with one of the great English writers of the 20th century.

I'm so, so sorry, Herbert.