28 April—To paraphrase Walter Cronkite on “You Are There” from the good old days of medium-screen black-and-white over-the-air television in the fifties, what sort of week was it? Easy. It was a week like all weeks, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times. And we weren’t there.

So the week started, as usual, with Sunday. Or did it? The problem there is that in the ISO week date system, (it’s included in ISO 8601, if you’re really interested), the week didn’t actually begin until Monday. Leave it to our friends at ISO to complicate everything.

(You’ll recall reading about how ISO should be initialized as IOS rather than acronymized as it is in 9 April’s Astronomical Nothingburger disquisition.)

But it’s not just ISO that starts the week on Monday. Most European countries, including the UK and Russia, also get it wrong, as well as the execrable People’s Republic of China, half of Africa, and Australia and New Zealand, and most of oceania. And that’s quite possibly why ISO does it.

The historic reason for starting the week on Monday comes, like so many problems in the modern world, from Christianity. If you need reminding, the New Testament sets Sunday as the day of rest, thus implicitly making it the last of seven days. So it follows, as night follows day (and day follows night) and Monday follows Sunday, that Monday must be the first day.

But who says you can’t take a break in the middle of a job rather than—or in addition to—after you’ve finished? Isn’t that what unions and OSHA are for?

Don’t ask why the United States, a facially non-theocratic Christian theocracy, chose to start the week on Sunday.

Qur’an-based Muslim Asia and the other half of Africa start the week on Saturday because they end the week on Friday. While Friday is considered the sabbath in Islam, it’s supposed to be a day of prayer rather than rest, as Jews and Christians prefer.

Like North and Central America, most of South America, India, and the good guys of the Republic of China, Israel starts the week with Sunday because Genesis in the Old Testament maintains that after creating the heavens and earth in six days, God rested on the seventh day, which naturally makes Saturday special.

But what if God had started creating the heavens and earth on, say, Wednesday?

In all events, you wonder why an omnipotent, presumably indefatigable guy like God had to rest at all. At least he cleverly did it on the sabbath, which is the Hebrew word for rest. But just because God was supposed to have rested on the Sabbath, why are mere mortals expected to do it? People aren’t gods, after all. Except Donald Trump, of course.

Anyway, since the week isn’t really over, it would be premature to review it today . . .