I woke up...

[Peter Percival]

I fell asleep with the radio on so when I woke up in the middle of the
night it was probably the World Service that I heard, but since
uk.media.radio.bbc-world-service is moribund I thought I'd post to
uk.media.radio.bbc-r4 also.

I heard some NASA (?) bloke say "Since the dawn of time mankind has..."
I'm not too sure when the dawn of time was, but I think the big bang was
about 14 billion years ago, while humans emerged a mere 200,000 years
ago. I'm happy to be corrected on either or both figures, but I'm
darned sure it's utterly daft to say "Since the dawn of time mankind
has..."; and it's surprising (to say the least) for a NASA bloke to say
such a thing.

Mind you, it sounded more like an advert than a news conference. 'twas
to do with TESS, I think, but I was half asleep.

[Whiskers]

To be fair, 'since ...' doesn't have to mean 'throughout all the
intervening time'. It could also be argued that time is a human concept
and so didn't exist at all before there were humans to conceive of it.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

[Peter Percival]

Whiskers wrote:
> On 2018-04-16, Peter Percival <peterxp...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> I fell asleep with the radio on so when I woke up in the middle of the
>> night it was probably the World Service that I heard, but since
>> uk.media.radio.bbc-world-service is moribund I thought I'd post to
>> uk.media.radio.bbc-r4 also.
>>
>> I heard some NASA (?) bloke say "Since the dawn of time mankind has..."
>> I'm not too sure when the dawn of time was, but I think the big bang was
>> about 14 billion years ago, while humans emerged a mere 200,000 years
>> ago. I'm happy to be corrected on either or both figures, but I'm
>> darned sure it's utterly daft to say "Since the dawn of time mankind
>> has..."; and it's surprising (to say the least) for a NASA bloke to say
>> such a thing.
>>
>> Mind you, it sounded more like an advert than a news conference. 'twas
>> to do with TESS, I think, but I was half asleep.
>
> To be fair, 'since ...' doesn't have to mean 'throughout all the
> intervening time'.

Are you sure? 'I've been up since dawn' could mean 'I rose at ten and
went back to bed at eleven'?

> It could also be argued that time is a human concept
> and so didn't exist at all before there were humans to conceive of it.

And yet you would read something like 'the dinosaurs lived during the
Jurassic period' and not object. Well, maybe you wouldn't, it's not for
me to say :-).

>

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In article <slrnpda4s8.j...@ID-107770.user.individual.net>, on
Mon, 16 Apr 2018, Whiskers <catwh...@operamail.com> wrote
[]

>To be fair, 'since ...' doesn't have to mean 'throughout all the
>intervening time'.

Hmm. I'm not sure that's so: language is of course fluid, but I think
most people would indeed thing that is precisely the definition of
"since".

> It could also be argued that time is a human concept
>and so didn't exist at all before there were humans to conceive of it.
>

"Time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so."
"I never could get the hand of Thurdsays."
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

That's how he [Dr. Who] seems to me. He's always been someone who gets the
/Guardian/. There are some parts of the universe where it's harder to get hold
of. - Peter Capaldi (current incumbent Doctor), RT 2016/11/26-12/2

[Guy Barry]

On 16-Apr-18 9:33 PM, Peter Percival wrote:

> I heard some NASA (?) bloke say "Since the dawn of time mankind has..."
> I'm not too sure when the dawn of time was, but I think the big bang was
> about 14 billion years ago, while humans emerged a mere 200,000 years
> ago.  I'm happy to be corrected on either or both figures, but I'm
> darned sure it's utterly daft to say "Since the dawn of time mankind
> has..."; and it's surprising (to say the least) for a NASA bloke to say
> such a thing.

"Since the dawn of time" is something of a cliché, I agree; but I don't
think it's intended to be taken literally. Even NASA people are allowed
to use metaphor, aren't they?

--
Guy Barry

[Whiskers]

But 'since waking up I've had a headache' (continuous) while
concurrently, 'since waking up I've had dinner' (just once, several
hours later).