What?
We switched over?
No more AD/BC? (hey… nifty name for a christian rock band!)
Did I miss some important internal memo or something?
Why doesn’t anybody ever tell me these things?
OMG. I have to tell that to Jester!! (Sorry for prolonging the hijack.)
Here- just to make this not continue to be a hijack i’ll say something else.
The History Channel, which is the final authority on all things historical, utlized the term “Founding Fathers” for their TV program. And my history teacher used Founding Fathers. (A guy in my class likes “Pounding Fathers” better but that’s off the topic. :p)
I remember wondering once if Founding Fathers was an appropriate term. I think it is…they all were males…I don’t see the un-PC-ness of it all.
Am I the only person here who sees this whole thread as a total snipe hunt? I mean, we got one guy here who sort of noticed that people on TV were saying “Founders” instead of “Founding Fathers,” and extrapolated into a politically correct plot to manufacture female signatories to the Declaration of Independence. 'Scuse me? Maybe they used “Founders” cause it means exactly the same thing, but is shorter to say. And how many times a day during the Florida fiasco was your average reporter required to use the term? Maybe their jaws were getting tired. And how many times did reporters say “Founding Fathers” and everyone missed it because they only had an ear out for terms that would fuel their PC paranoia?
Sorry, but I’m sick of people bitching about political correctness. Not that it wasn’t warranted, just that its so tired. Its like my liberal friends who are still whining about Ronald Reagan. It’s, like, SO 1985. Get over it.
I’m with Nimune. Journalism is all about being succint, something that works to its benefit and detriment. “The Founders” is simply shorter. However, I also agree with two other posts that it’s not the correct term. “Framers” applies to the Constitution, “Founders” to the Dec. of Ind. And I learned that designation only 3 years ago, so I don’t think it’s archaic(pardon my butchering of the term).
I was relatively okay with PC language until, one day in my 12th grade religion class (this was in 1996 or 1997), I saw my ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION TEXTBOOK using the BCE and CE designations. I mean, c’mon! I don’t even support the Catholic Church and it just pissed me off. If you’re going to believe in something, go all the way and don’t use something that was devised for the purpose of excluding that which you believe to be true.
If you want to be really logical about it, all we really need to use is BC (which is not offensive from a historical sense, +/- 6 years) since references to years afterward are far more common. The AD can just be assumed.
Corvus wrote:
That’s exactly what I’m trying to figure out. I just noticed that over the past few years, in archaeological and other scientific publications, “A.D.” and “B.C.” have been pretty much eliminated in favor of the more PC “C.E.” and “B.C.E.” I’m very curious to know the mechanism by which this change occurred. Was there a conference at which this idea came up? A paper from a respected scientist? An article that suggested the change? I think I’ll start a thread on this in General Questions.
Great sig, by the way. I’m partial to the Flatt and Scruggs version of the tune.
Good idea about starting a new thread in GQ. It helped to clear some things up. The change does make sense to me when I think about it.
Besides, I can now claim it means “Before Corvus’s Era” and “Corvus’s Era”. 
Unfortunately I’m not familar with the Flatt and Scruggs version. I’ve only heard the Lonnie Donegan/Van Morrison version. Still a good song though.
FTR the latter half of my post refers to my sig, not the convention of BCE/CE dating.
Just to clear things up.