I was just reading an interesting article out of Isreal National News about ruins of the first temple recently being discovered.  It was a good article but I had trouble understanding their referenced dates. For example, they referred to 8th century B.C.E. and 2nd century C.E. What does that stand for? 

When I was in school, albeit many years ago, I was taught that the Gregorian calendar used the birth or Christ as its basis. Years before the birth of Christ were noted as B.C. (before Christ) and the years after were referred to as A.D. or Anno Domini. This has worked well for about 1200 years or so.  Now we have C.E. and B.C.E. I don't even know what that stands for.  I'm assuming it is just changing the letters for some unknown purpose and leaving the same years but I'm not sure.

If someone doesn't want to use the Gregorian calendar then fine. There are plenty of other older calendars. Go make a new calendar up if you want but be more creative than using mine and perverting it to remove Christ. Unless the "C" in B.C.E and C.E. is Christ? 

The Mayan Calendar is out there though you can only use it for another 4 years or so.  There are Egyptian calendars, Babylonian Calendars, Indian calendars and etc. The idea of recording the passing of time is hardly a new concept.  Those 5th Century A.D. monks didn't dream up the whole idea of a calendar, they just made one that makes sense. Heck, there is even a Jewish calendar.  Why don't they just use that and instead of screwing up ours? Instead of saying "8th century B.C.E." just say back in the 3100's or whatever. They use it on their dateline now. Beside March 14, '08 they also say it is 7 Adar Bet 5768.  Why mess up the calendars in the news story itself?

If you want to use your own calendar, then fine. But don't screw up mine for your own weird purposes. Why on earth would they even do this?