Discussion Main / OlderThanTheyThink

The Guiness World Record's website (http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/) kept a very good and accurate archive of every first achievement in every field, which will surprises a lot of people how far a certain achievement goes back.

Just thought that it would be a good idea to reference the site on this page.

Why is this article locked?

Wow...just wow. All i can say here is that not only this trope is subjective, the complaining here is ridiculous.

Everyone compares any dystopian fiction they ever read to The Giver. That is frustrating.

Pulled this out:

• That would not necessarily make things better; considering the size of the territory and population of British America compared to Spanish and Portuguese America in the 1640s, using "American" that way to the exclusion of the inhabitants of territories colonized by other countries would seem even more arrogant. Also, a not inconsiderable part of what was then British America (e. g. Canada) did not become part of the United States in 1776-1783.

Sounds like the same kind of Justifying Edit trolling mentioned up above, someone trying justify the accusations that Americans are arrogant just because the term has been used by the British for so long.

I am reading through all of these examples and most of them sound like BS. "People" thought "Fantastic Four ripped off the Incredibles"? Who really thought that? Lucky to find maybe one person out of twenty who could imagine that(something easy to do on the internet, but doesn't mean you should even consider it anything less than an extremely unpopular idea). Basically every example is like this. "Many people" and etc - yeah, right. Compared to the "Newer Than They Think" page, this one is a mess. (Also I get the sense people are name-dropping series just to bash them. For example: FF 7 gets mentioned because it being inspired by Berserk, but since when was it called the originator of giant swords?)

I don't understand the Metroid vs. Halo example. What, exactly, do people think originated with that short? Metroid itself?

Removed natter concerning the whole "calling people American" example:

12/May/10 at 07:58 PM by 67.149.29.70

***Did Not Do The Research. Haiti was independent from France at least 15 years before Gran Columbia.

14/May/10 at 01:25 AM by Dryhad 121.44.253.4

** Does the age of that particular terminology make it any more correct?

First of all, the troper who decided to make an Accuracy Attack edit crooning how the previous troper was wrong really should have just deleted the comment about Gran Colombia outright, or—even better—just edit the example to replace Gran Colombia with Haiti, rather than anonymously flaunting his or her historical knowledge as a reply. (I took care of that.)

Second, Dryhad, who added the conversational edit attempting to question the validity of the example sounds very much like the Mean Brits who harass Americans (and sometimes Canadians) for using a different dialect of English as "incorrect."

The point of the example, which That Troper obviously missed, is that Americans did not choose to call themselves American out of ignorance of/arrogance to other nations on the continent (as there were no other nations formed out of European colonies at the time, and by the time the Revolutionary War occurred, much of the Americas were claimed as European colonies, regardless of the native nations that still existed). The English language had already made the name a convention.

Attempting to claim that the English language's usage of the word "American" is "incorrect" is like claiming that the British are wrong for calling a truck a "lorry." It speaks strongly of cultural imperialism to claim that another culture's language is "doing it wrong" when it's clear the development was natural.

The calendar example (reproduced in all its horror here) needed severe pruning:

• What is usually called the "Christian" calendar was introduced, in substantially its present form, in 45BC — some 80 years before the birth of Christianity.
  • Actually, the Egyptians had been using it for centuries (12 months of 30 days + 5 extra days), and the leap year was part of the Degree by Canopus made in 238BC.
  • Actually that calendar is only used by the Orthodox Churches as a liturgical calendar, and the one in widespread use in the Western world was adopted in 1582, by papal decree. Considering it was created by the Vatican's astronomers, and adopted on the Pope's orders, "Christian calendar" is a pretty accurate description. Also, "Christian calendar" usually refers to dating from the hypothetical date of Christ's birth — rather than the founding of Rome (Ab Urbe Condite) or the reigns of Roman consuls. Just a guess, but that's probably a Christian practice too.
    • Actually, this example is referring to the calendar, not the way in which years are numbered (introduced in 532 AD). The only differences between the Julian calendar (45 BC) and the Gregorian (1582 AD) are the renaming of Sextilis (around 8 BC) as August (the Julian renamed Quintilis as July), the movement (around 8 BC again) of one day from February to August, and a minor tweak in the counting of leap-years, and consequent adjustment in the Easter calculation; pretty minor differences, compared to the differences between the Julian and pre-Julian calendars (all years having twelve months instead of most having ten and some having eleven or twelve; the permanent inclusion of January and February (eleventh and twelfth months, when used, were previously called "Undecember" and "Duodecember"); leap years occuring regularly every fourth year, instead of whenever they were felt to be needed; and the abolition of the now-useless Calends which gave year-reckoning its name). Read the Calendar FAQ, people.

The first "reply" may have something to it (I don't recall it being mentioned in the Calendar FAQ), but is obviously wrong; the Egyptian calendar is not the Julian calendar, no matter how similar to the Julian calendar it might be.

The second "reply" is almost laughably wrong in several ways; for a start, whoever wrote it clearly missed the point that the example says "substantially the present form", not "exactly the present form down to the last detail". He(?) also made the common error of using "the Christian calendar" to refer to the AD year-reckoning; AD is an epoch, not a calendar (an epoch is the reckoning of the years, a calendar is the reckoning of individual years).

Furthermore, the difference between the Gregorian and Julian calendars was a minor tweak in leap-year reckoning (and adjustment of the Easter reckoning to match), to clean up the accumulated Julian error of about one day every 128 years, and make sure it didn't happen again any time soon; whereas the difference between the Julian and pre-Julian calendars was to clean up the unholy mess that the calendar itself (not just the equinoctal reckoning) had got into, with years varying wildly in length and leap-years sometimes being skipped because they were felt to be "unlucky". The Julian calendar was thus, as claimed, a major innovation, whereas the Gregorian was barely an innovation at all; really more of a reform.

It is thus the author of the second "reply" who Did Not Do The Research, not I.