Two of Your Earth Minutes: Difference between revisions

 

See also [[Microts]].

{{examples}}

* The ''[[Keroro Gunsou]]'' manga has a weird, [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|fourth-wall denting]] example in chapter 69, where Keroro tells Natsumi and Fuyuki "I shall only [[Character Filibuster|lecture you]] for about [[Medium Awareness|two of your Pokopenian pages!]]"

* The rules for the ''[[Death Note]]'' inconsistently fall into this.

** Ryuk wrote the rules in English specifically so humans could understand them. Presumably he calculated shinigami time spans into human measurements as well.

 

* In ''[[Nextwave]]'', a representative of the Beyond Corporation summons Dread Rorkannu, Lord of the <s>Dark</s> Dim Dimension, to ask to rent out his minions, and offers him a hundred dollar bill as payment. Rorkannu holds the money triumphantly, saying "Yes! I have a hundred of the Earth dollars!"

** Ironically, there are [[wikipedia:Dollar#Economies which use the dollar|a whole bunch of types of dollars]] on Earth.

 

* The [[Ed Wood (creator)|Ed Wood]] B-Movie ''[[Plan 9 from Outer Space]]'' has an alien refer to "a can of your gasoline." Apparently, gasoline exists nowhere else, or he's digging at the quality of Earth gasoline. Or, maybe he's just poorly written.

** That same alien also refers to technology grasped "aeons of your years ago".

{{quote|'''Chinfa, Queen of the Cantaloupe People:''' For many many days of your days, we have existed here in seclusion, away from your so-called non-cantaloupe, civilized ways.}}

 

** The same commander also says that the plans to have Earth destroyed were being held only "4 lightyears away". Certainly he meant to say 4 of ''our'' lightyears, but he was getting annoyed by that point.

*** [[Fridge Brilliance|It is later revealed that since Earth was an artificial planet, all of its planet-related measurements (days, weeks, years) conform exactly to the Galactic Standard.]]

* The [[Isaac Asimov]] short story ''The Last Trump'' revolves around the Devil's apparent triumph over God, having convinced Him/Her/It to bring about Judgement Day on Earth, thus "winning" since humanity as a whole has not yet conformed to the divine plan. However, the angel whose job is to watch over the Earth protests this move and eventually manages to get Judgement Day overturned since God's decree of when the Earth would end referred to a specific date, apparently based on the Gregorian calendar, but the angel points out that nowhere in the decree itself was the specific calendar system identified. Since there are so many different calendar systems in use on Earth, and they can not just randomly pick one, Judegement Day can not actually occur and the Earth continues as it always has. The story ends with the Devil, accepting that his immediate plan was foiled, planning a global calendar revision to mark the beginning of the "Atomic Era" for all mankind.

** In the later [[Foundation]] novels it's noted that the time standard on all inhabited planets is 24 hours although no planet has exactly a 24 hour day. This is due to the original Earther colonists establishing the day as 24 hours, even though by the time of the Foundation Earth is unknown except in legends.

* Subverted in Andrey Livadny's ''[[The History of the Galaxy|Living Space]]'', where Sheila Norman is hooked up to a neural interface with a reactivated alien computer. The machine asks how long it has been off-line, and Sheila replies that it has been 3 million years, prompting the machine to clarify an unknown unit of measurement. She defines a year as the time for a full orbit around a star. The machine further attempts to clarify exactly what orbit she's talking about. Finally, it just scans her mind for the location of Earth and finds the planet in its database. Then it off-handedly comments that its creators visited Earth in the [[Ancient Astronauts|past]] and may have accidentally been responsible for Christianity and the myth of Jesus.

* In ''[[The Thrawn Trilogy|Dark Force Rising]]'', Leia asks the Noghri matriarch how long ago the planet Honoghr [[Apocalypse How|suffered biosphere destruction]]. The matriarch answers her in Honoghr years, then reiterates it in [[Standard Time Units|standard years]].

 

* A comic set in the ''[[Babylon 5]]'' universe had a Minbari use the phrase "30 of your minutes" when addressing Jeffrey Sinclair.

** Also used in the show, in which an alien claiming jurisdiction over a planet says he will give Sinclair "ten of your hours to stand aside."

{{quote|'''Daniel:''' "Earth minutes"?

'''Mitchell:''' Yeah, [[I Always Wanted to Say That]]. }}

** A strange example comes from "The Savage Curtain": The Excalbian recreation of Abraham Lincoln asks if they still measure time in minutes, to which Kirk responds that they "can convert to it".

** One of the ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' novels involved an alien threat with an absurdly specific (into the tenths of seconds, IIRC) deadline; the characters simply assumed it came out roundly in the aliens' units.

** ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield".

* In a sketch on ''[[A Bit of Fry and Laurie]]'', a shopkeeper tells a customer "That will be twenty of your Earth pounds". In another sketch, a gameshow contestant is informed that he has "thirty Earth seconds" to answer.

* The Imperial Master in ''[[Star Fleet]]'' informs his subordinates that they have two Earth months to complete their mission, despite the fact that there's no reason to use their enemies time system when talking to each other...

* In the ''[[Thunderbirds]]'' spinoff record "Parker - Well Done!", Jeff Tracy (an American) while speaking to Lady Penelope (a Brit) refers to "your Scotland Yard". Of course, ''Thunderbirds'' was actually British, and the voice actor who played Jeff Tracy was Australian....

** Yeah. It has been said elsewhere that a Rel is approximately equal to a second. So it's still technically their own unit of measurement, just close enough to be dang convenient.

** A non-canonical 1966 feature film implied that there were precisely 50 rels to an Earth minute, making one exactly 1.2 seconds.

* ''[[She Spies]]'' episode 11. "He was supposed to be here three of your American days ago."

* Played for laughs in the ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' episode "Emohawk".

* Spoofed in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' as Xander twists his and Willow's infidelity to their significant others to be their fault - Buffy comments "Your logic does not resemble our Earth logic."

 

 

* In [[The Bible]], [[God]] tells Adam and Eve that the day they eat from the Tree of Knowledge, they will die. Since Adam lives [[Long Lived|about 900 years after this]], the general interpretation is that God spoke metaphorically that they would turn mortal. One Jewish tradition, however, says that God was merciful and gave them a "day" in Heavenly reckoning—which is one thousand years.

** Stretching this trope a bit, more liberal interpretations of Genesis suggest that the seven "days" of Creation could also refer to longer periods of time. Though this is largely used to fit evolutionary and astronomical theories, some of these interpretations [[Older Than They Think|go back a few thousand years]].

 

* ''[[Spore]]'' completely ignores this, every single race in the entire galaxy seems to use the same measurements of time for no apparent reason.

** [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|Acceptable Break From Reality]]. Who actually wants to go around converting Planet X's years into Planet Y's [[Battlestar Galactica|yahrens]] for every new planet they come across?

* In ''[[Freedom Force]] vs the 3rd Reich'', Mentor makes the throwaway comment that he is proficient in "several thousand languages, of which Earth Spanish is one". Now, think about that one for a moment...

** Maybe Mentor wanted to clarify that he's not referring to the language spoken in [[Doctor Who|Planet Barcelona]].

 

* Spoofed in [http://evil-inc.com/comic/early-occulore/ this] ''[[Evil Inc.]]'' strip. Bonus points for the author having stated in a blog post a few days earlier how much this trope annoys him.

* Averted and parodied in ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]''. After the Partnership Collective proposes the term "two thousand ''freem''" as the compensation for Schlock killing two attorney drones, the [[Lemony Narrator]] explains that two thousand ''freem'' is the amount a Poliforian hypernetter could earn in one Efrickalian week. They then propose suing for twenty thousand kilocreds, which the narrator explains that the Poliforian hypernetter would have to work during the entire festival of Ku'laa to earn even one thousand kilocreds. They then decide to simply kill the heroes by blasting them with a few billion terawatts of plasma. The narrator explains that that amount of energy, [[Dissimile|if it hit the same Poliforian hypernetter]], would [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|disassociate its molecules into a cloud of sub-sub-atomic particles the size of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud]].

* In [http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=2127 this] ''[[Dinosaur Comics]]'' strip, [[God]] notes that [[The Bible]] has been in the [[Public Domain]] for "a thousand of your Earth years". The caption text declares that particular phrase useful in identifying "TOTALLY AWESOME WRITING".

 

* A [[College Humor]] skit has a genie claim to have been imprisoned for "millions of your Earth eternities."

* [[Chakona Space]]: Different stories play with this thanks to genuine aliens as well as Terran colonies on distant planets that, for obvious reasons, use a different clock and calendar.

 

* A variant occurs in ''[[Futurama]]'', in an episode where Planet Express is hired to transport candy hearts. One of the receiving aliens notices that one heart has spelled love as WUV, "with an Earth W!"

* Happens sometimes in ''[[Megas XLR]]'': one line has Kiva mentioning a place far away, to which Jersey City native Jamie says "Far as in Planet of the Alien Bounty Babes, or far as in Hoboken?".

* Averted in ''[[Transformers]]'', where the Cybertronians typically use their own terms: astro-clicks, cycles and nanocycles, for example. When around humans, at least in ''[[Transformers Animated|Animated]]'', they know when to switch to Earth units of measurements like years without adding a "your."

* ''[[Star Trek: The Animated Series]]'' episode "The Lorelei Signal". Every 27 years, a starship is lured to a planet where female aliens drain the life force of the male crew members. While explaining the situation to Lieutenant Uhura:

{{quote|Head Female Theela: To survive we must vitalize each 27 years of your time.}}

 

* The [[wikipedia:Axeman of New Orleans|Axeman of New Orleans]] stated in a letter where he claimed himself to be a demon from Hell that he would kill again on March 19, 1919 at "12:15 (Earth time)".

* A variant actually happened back when the metric system wasn't that widespread, and countries used different measurements. It can sometimes be seen today between Imperial and Metric system users. In old Swedish novels translated from other languages it used to be very common to find someone traveling so or so many miles, and there would be a footnote telling that this was an ''English'' or ''Russian'' "mile", and give a conversion. The writer Falstaff Fakir spoofed it when writing a [[The Three Musketeers (novel)|Three Musketeers]] parody; at one point a number of minutes are described as ''French'' minutes "of which there are a whole lot in one Swedish".

* The people working on the Mars Rover program have to go by the ''Martian'' Day schedule - they have to go to work a half hour ''later'' every Earth day, because Mars rotates a little slower than Earth does.

* Because interstellar units such as light-years and parsecs are also derived from Earth's orbit around the Sun, it would be necessary to specify whose planetary orbit you are using as the baseline. So an extraterrestrial alien could state, "I come from thirty of your light-years away."

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Tropes in Space]]

[[Category:Language Tropes]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]