CE means “common era” which refers to the same time period that AD does, which stands for Anno Domini and means “the year of our lord,” which is rooted in the Christian faith.
You will also see “BCE” and it means Before Common Era, which replaces BC, which means “Before Christ”.
The Georgian calendar (at least in the numbering of years) is a Christian construct, and it therefore makes sense to name year 0 after the year of Christ's birth. Whether or not one acknowledges his lordship or whatever, you are still operating in the Western tradition which is impossible to understand without Christianity.
It's just petty power tripping. Some people have that need to feel superior by swapping the dating system to something meaningless and arbitrary. What makes this era "Common"? Presumably the birth of Christ, since that's still when you are setting the origin of years. So the rename is utterly pointless. It's still A.D and should be referred to as such.
I'd have more respect if these revisionists went full Jacobin and plonked Year 1 down as some new date, and named the calendar after something new.
I quite like Neil deGrasse Tyson's take on this. In science, we usually let the person that invented something name it. The Christian church invented the current calendar, therefore we should accept the name they gave it.
We never canceled other religious names in our calendar, including the months named after Roman gods or the days of the week named after Nordic / Celtic gods.
The problem becomes more evident if you write the meaning out in full: "anno domini nostri Christi", or the year of our lord Christ. Recognizing Jesus Christ as lord obviously presents some theological issues to non-christians. Saying Wednesday doesn't have the same issue of recognizing Odin's divinity.
You’re right. It’s the nature of things, being inclusive often means excluding an other.
On the other hand I’m glad we’ve all converted on one common reference for dates and don’t have one for each sphere of influence, cuz then something published in China vs Japan vs Taiwan vs Europe and the Americas vs Egypt vs… who knows what would be messy.
> I’m glad we’ve all converted on one common reference for dates
At least most places that use other calendars also keep track of the Western year in parallel.
My Thai wife was born 543 years after me, even though we were born in the same year. ("Hi, this is my wife, from the future!") Our wedding certificate contains only the Thai year. As I remember, for official purposes, Japan counts years of the current emperor's reign, along with an official name for each reign.
It doesn't fundamentally change the fact that we date things based on Jesus Christ. It doesn't make it inclusive, since its still rooted in Christianity. Papering over it doesn't change that fact. It's just stupid.
A couple of things to consider. ADHD is more than the lack of focus, it also affects your emotions as well. People with ADHD tend to feel things more deeply and react more strongly. Meds can help.
And if you think: that’s not me. You may be right. But you may also not realize that you’re actually playing life on hard mode and while it may work now, it is unsustainable in the long term. Better to find something that helps now rather than wait until you are in crisis.
there is also marketing value. features that may rarely get used but many potential customers won't give your product a second glance if you don't have them.
The 50% number is actually horribly exaggerated. It is closer to 30%. I'll dig up sources later, but basically the divorce rate is calculated by dividing the number of new marriages with the number of divorces in a given year.
This doesn't account for repeat offenders (people on their second, third, or tenth divorce) or age or region or any number of factors that can affect your chances of remaining married.
After much digging, here is what I have found. It surprised me and I learned a lot in the process. Very excited to share.
The Divorce Rate is not a measure of the chances of your marriage ending in divorce, though many people use it like that.
The Divorce Rate calculation is a measure of the number of divorces in a given year compared to the number of new marriages. If we accept that at face-value, we're okay. I would like to see it broken down by first-time marriages to first-time divorces; second-time marriages to second-time divorces. I have not been able to find this data, but didn't look exceptionally long ... as I need to get back to work. ;)
There are a lot of blog posts about the myth of the 50% divorce rate. They are attacking this statistic as representing something that it does not. (Even though it is not far from the truth.)
Still, I think it would be worthwhile to evaluate the usefulness of this statistic. Sure, it's an easy number to track. But why? Especially when everyone assumes that this is revealing something that it is not.
Now, onto the chances a first-time marriage might actually end in divorce.
Your baseline chances for divorce in a first-time marriage are calculated using a Life Table and the chances vary depending on a variety of factors. Age, region, education, and I am sure there are others. And if you input all your data, you get the chance that a first-time marriage will end in divorce.
"...a woman who is over 25, has a college degree, and an independent income has only a 20 percent probability of her marriage ending in divorce"
The article does not cite a source for this statistic, but it does cite various requisite factors in calculating a first-time marriage chances of ending in divorce.
I managed to hunt down that the chance for divorce in Australia in 2007 was around 30%, down from a peak of around 50% in 2000. It was last around 30% in the early 80s.
I'm still hunting through some more recent papers on the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) site devoted to "Family Formation and Dissolution"[1] but haven't found anything solid yet. I found many sites with unreferenced figures, and the only referenced figures all came back to the ABS, so I figure that their census data matches the marriage and divorce registrars pretty closely.
I may be basing my statistics on Australian figures (last I heard we were running at around 53%ish). I'll also confirm the general trend across "western" nations, and would really appreciate you sending me any links you manage to dig up!
Is it all javascript based? So it would integrate with any codebase? Rails, Python, Java?
Very excited about this. Social is such a critical aspect of many systems these days, but it's another piece of the puzzle that doesn't actually distinguish one product from the competition.
The more great services like this that get built, the more great products are going to get built.
I am very excited to see what Hull can do for companies like mine that need this kind of functionality, but have been focused more on our unique value proposition.
One of the things we learned a lot about at TSF was a beach-head market. It's the first market you take on to get traction (however you're measuring traction). So, I'd suggest talking about "knowledge management and collaboration" as your beach-head and WHY you've selected that as your beach-head...and, possibly most importantly, why traction within this beach-head will allow you to tackle some of the other markets you have on your radar more easily.
Also talk briefly about the potential market size of your other target markets. You don't have to have all the answers for your other markets -- after all, they are not your target market, yet -- but you should show some knowledge about those markets and be able to talk convincingly about how your product solves a real problem in those markets.
As for market expertise: I think it comes down to two things. How long have you been working in that industry and how many contacts do you have so that you're not jumping in cold. If you don't have either of these, it's going to be a big red flag. I'm guessing you have had some way of validating the problem, so I am going to focus on the network problem. Find an adviser that works in the industry that is well-connected and can tell others that your solution is heads-and-shoulders above what's out there now and is solving problems in new ways that add 10x more value than current solutions. I use 10x as you're going to have problems convincing people to switch unless you are able to provide a ton of value.
Anyway, just my $.02. The other thing you'll learn about, if you get into TSF or any accelerator: mentor whiplash. You're gonna get a ton of advice and most of it conflicting. So take these suggestions for what they're worth: one person's feedback based on your 5 paragraph post. ;)
One of the things we learned a lot about at TSF was a beach-head market. It's the first market you take on to get traction (however you're measuring traction). So, I'd suggest talking about "knowledge management and collaboration" as your beach-head and WHY you've selected that as your beach-head...and, possibly most importantly, why traction within this beach-head will allow you to tackle some of the other markets you have on your radar more easily.
Yeah, that's text-book "Crossing the Chasm" stuff. We'll need to narrow down the "beach head" to something more precise than "the market for companies that need km and collaboration," of course. And we have some research we've already done in that regard. Depending on how things shake out, there's a chance we'll focus on finance related firms first, even though my initial penciled-in list of possible target markets did not include finance... due mainly to the idea that finance is highly insular, very regulated, and has a ton of domain specific vocabulary, and none of us have specific experience in the field. But, as things have worked out, we've talked to several finance related firms, and my $dayjob as a consultant actually has me in Chicago now working for a finance firm. And I'm making new connections here, in this industry, so it's looking more and more realistic.
That said, I'm still thinking that "old school" industries like manufacturing, distribution, logistics, retail, etc. might be better for us. But that's the kind of stuff we're still working on settling.
As a co-founder to one of the companies (ruzuku) that went through the Triangle Startup Factory, I can't recommend the program enough.
Chris and Dave are amazing. They have lots of experience working with startups and they are well connected to the local and national startup scene.
They connected us with a couple of amazing mentors that saw some of the potential that Abe and I had missed and helped us realize that fairly quickly. We've now got a new business model and are kicking ass and taking names. :) And even though the program has ended, our mentors are still involved.
Pitch Day was great. They spent a lot of time the last couple of weeks really helping us refine our pitch -- ended up with a couple of solid pitches. One more of a story meant to generate excitement and another rooted more in the market and financials -- all the details that an investor would be looking for.
Not sure how many people showed up, but there had to have been 200 or more people -- at least, that's what it felt like up on the stage giving our pitch. We're now busy following up with potential investors and executing our new business plan. Crazy, hectic times. And we get to squat at the American Tobacco Campus in the TSF digs at least until the new class arrives.
Their application for the Fall class is tomorrow. You don't have to be located in the Triangle to get in -- at least one of the companies (Berst) was from Chicago and I know several of us had people living and working from other places in the country.
Happy to answer any questions about the program for those considering applying. Also willing to give any advice on how to get in.
Surprised no one has mentioned the Eden UI on Notion Ink's Adam. It allows you to run three apps side-by-side in compact view. Pretty slick, really. See: http://notionink.com
