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May 17, 2005 12:01 AM
Broken: Sequence of hours in the day
Aaron Feaver writes:
This is broken. Why is it that we count AM or PM beginning with 12, then dropping down to 1 and continuing logically from there to 11? How illogical is it that 12PM follows right behind 11AM? I realize it's probably not going to change. Still, I'd sign a petition.
Do people still read this site because you find the examples of broken objects to be amusing or is it just for the purpose of claiming that everything that comes along isn't sufficiently broken enough (or philosophically important enough) to merit a mention? I can't tell anymore
Because the alternative is this rant:
This is broken. "AM" means "ante meridiem"--Latin for "before noon"--but 12:01 AM falls *after* noon, not before.
The AM/PM designations do create some confusion; hence the reason the military, medical, and other fields often use 24-hour designations.
Actually each of the 12:00 moments is a transition points, neither am or pm.
I once read that the correct way to differentiate between the two was to refer to one as 12:00 noon and the other as 12:00 midnight. So, it's 11:59 pm, 12:00 midnight,
12:01 am. Later that same day: 11:59 am,12:00 noon, 12:01 pm.
Also before the widespread use of clocks, schedules, dayplanners and all the other wonders of technology, punctuality and appointments weren't such a big deal, so people would often agree to meet either before or after midday; hence the before and after designation.
I don't want to further confuse things eithwe, but "noon" used to mean 9:00, as in "Hey Diddle Dollar a ten o'clock scholar/What makes you come so soon?/You used to come at ten o'clock/But now you come at noon!"
Now that "noon" means midday, our formerly enthusiatic scholar now becomes a lazy sleepyhead. Which is definitely broken.
ja, 12:01 follows *twelve hours and one minute* after noon.
in response to the post:
i believe that 12 comes sequentially after 11. how is this illogical? I doubt Mr. Spock would have any problems with this being logical.
I know, we could number all the hours in the day consecutively. Oh wait, 24-hour clocks, watches, etc. already exist (i.e. in the army). Each has advantages + disadvantages. It's unlikely that you're going to re-engineer the 12/24 hour clock in 15 minutes on an internet post, when they have been around a VERY LONG time. How long? Check your watch. In fact, check the oldest clock you can find. If you find one that isn't 12/24 hour, let us know.
I think that this, though broken and stupid, doesn't really belong on this site. This site's stated objective is, "A project to make businesses more aware of their
customer experience, and how to fix it." This is obviously not a business related mistake.
Also, julesh1959 is correct. You are supposed to say 12 noon or 12 midnight. Not only is this correct, but it avoids confunsion.
This really doesn't belong on this site. something like this is trivial. I think Mr. Feaver has too much time on his hands. No pun intended.
> This site's stated objective is, "A project
> to make businesses more aware of their
> customer experience, and how to fix it."
> This is obviously not a business related mistake.
Furthermore, I can name some business-related mistakes that I have submitted that STILL haven't run here.
And while we're at it, why do us Americans still use the stupid English Measuring system. Why can't we just go Metric?
My family was fortunate enough to import a Japanise car for me to drive. Since it was my first car, driving on the right does not bother me, but the twenty four hour clock on the radio took quite a few months getting use to. I am still not one houndred percent sure what time of day it is without doing the math first, but I am getting better. I can definitly see the benifits in this type of timekeeping.
-----"This is broken. "AM" means "ante meridiem"--Latin for "before noon"--but 12:01 AM falls *after* noon, not before."-----
12:01 AM is one minute past midnight, therefore, it is 11 hours and 59 minutes BEFORE noon, Mr. Brent Dax. I believe you do not understand time-keeping.
And yes, our system of timekeeping is very odd.
12:00:01 is one second after noon, hence it is afternoon, which is PM. Since signs stating lunch hours, office hours, etc usually only have hours and minutes, we can infer that 12:00 means 12:00:01 to 12:00:59. You can even break down the second to fractions of a second and it is still afternoon. "Noon" lasts for such a short time we always miss it in the blink of an eye. I guess it is like being born. First you are not born, then you "were" born. How long do you wait at the "being born" spot? That's like noon.
since we are on the subject...
why is midnight the middle of the night, if we refer to 1am as "one in the morning?"
that would mean that 11pm is the start of the night.
but two in the morning, with midnight still 12, would mean that the night started at 10pm.
when does the night start?
---- Time is an illusion.... lunchtime, doubly so. ----
Very deep...you should send that into the Reader's Digest--they've got a page for people like you. (Or is this that page?)
BTW, it could be even worse--I work at a television station where our broadcast day begins at 4:30am. Try explaining to someone why that show that airs Thursday morning at 3am is the Wednesday episode...:-)
ps: go to http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Douglas_Adams/ if you don't believe me(and for other great Adams quotes).
-----FYI: " Time is an illusion.... lunchtime, doubly so. " is a famous Douglas Adams quote.-----
Umm...yeah--so is the "Reader's Digest" line. :-) It's Arthur's response to Ford Prefect's 'lunchtime' line.
It should be noted that some countries adopt what the US call "military" time and omit AM/PM. 12:59 -> 13:00, 23:59 -> 0:00. "I'll meet you for dinner at 18." Except probably not in English.
"AM" and "PM" are abbreviations for the latin phrases "ante meridian" (before noon) and "post meridian" (after noon). But you have to be over 60 years old to remember stuff that is currently considered to be too trivial to teach.
And even then you get it wrong. As an earlier poster pointed out, the Latin phrases are "ante meridiem" and "post meridiem".
"Noon" does derive from the Latin for "nine", but would not have been our "nine o'clock". The ninth canonical hour on the monastic clock was (and is) much later, normally around three p.m., but came to be associated with midday generally--hence the weirdness.
Picho, allow me to refute some of your arguments.
"You do relise that time it self does not truely exist. We as humans created it so that we could keep another figment of our immaginiations, scheduls."
Time exists.
Absolute time under the current system of hours, minutes and seconds does not exist.
Absolute time by itself does not exist, but only as defined by Einstein's Special (or was it General?) Theory of Relativity, which is irrelevant unless you happen to be able to walk near the speed of light.
But relative time still exists. The current system of hours and minutes still exists. You're saying that since this system was created by humans, it doesn't exist?
Well, this computer I'm typing on was made by humans. I suppose you think my computer doesn't exist, either. But then, what am I typing on? A rock?
I rest my case.
"After as, it is a little hard to say i will meet you here tommorrow when the sun is right there"
It's easy. Watch this: 'I will meet you here tomorrow.' The sun was right there when I said it. I didn't find saying it very much. God didn't choke me or anything to prevent me from saying it.
Do you mean it's hard to get the idea across that you will meet someone tomorrow? I find it easy. If I tell someone to meet me tomorrow, they won't have any trouble understanding me. And what does the sun have to do with it?
"Im supprised no one has commented on your inability to cope with something that only exists in your mind."
Newsflash: It also exists in my mind, and your mind, and just about everyone else's mind.
"How is it that, despite the fact we have been using it for years, you have a problem with the hours?"
How is it that, despite the fact that racism has existed for most of the 10,000 years humans have existed, recently (in the past 200 years), some people have problems with it? Just because some people have a different opinion doesn't mean it's wrong.
It's perfectly logical. 12 is either 12 or 0. Just think - would it be logical to be at midnight and call it one o'clock, which seems to imply you're already 1 hr into the day?
That's where the real problem began - our time system was invented before computers. Had computers (which start counting at zero instead of one) been invented first, 12:00 would have been 0:00, which actually makes more sense. As in, "Let's meet tomorrow after lunch. I can be there by oh-thirty". That way the noon/midnight thing works itself out too. 0:00 a.m. is the first minute following the stroke of midnight, and you don't have the a.m. (or p.m.) period starting out at the highest hour number, then jumping down to the lowest an hour later.
And don't even try to tell me that Jan 1st, 2000 was the start of the new mellinium - I'll skunk you on that one.
"And don't even try to tell me that Jan 1st, 2000 was the start of the new mellinium - I'll skunk you on that one."
An infinite number of millenia start at any time you choose and end 1000 years later.
Zero is the most important number. Everything is referenced from none. Without zero, we would not be able to translate between numbering systems. Zero is the first symbol in all counting systems and the only symbol common to all of them.
The concept of zero is overlooked in most learning, probably due to the fact that counting is associated with the tallying of things and nothing was the assumed reference point.
There are probably very few people that have trouble destinguishing between moments in a day when making personal decisions in reference to themselves. Problems arise when we try to communicate our perceptions to others.
Oh yes, time is broken. I guess the people that made it and the thousands of people that kept using it are idiots.
If you don't like 12 hour time then use 24 hour time.
If you don;t like that then what do you suppose that we do? count from 0 to infinity?
The new millenium did start at 2000.
"But there was no year 0!"
Yea? I doubt there was a year 1 either. Or a 2, or a year 3. Just for argument's sake, let's say there was a year 4. As in, Mr. World Leader says "I declare this year four AD, and all years after shall be denoted as 4 + the number of years since this day." That would make the millenium start at 2004. But noooooo. You have to start it at 2001.
If I remeber correctly, years began (AD) around 24-35 or so. Millenium argument officially mooted.
"In about AD 523, the papal chancellor, Bonifacius, asked a monk by the name of Dionysius Exiguus to devise a way to implement the rules from the Nicean council (the so-called "Alexandrine Rules") for general use. Dionysius Exiguus (in English known as Denis the Little) was a monk from Scythia, he was a canon in the Roman curia, and his assignment was to prepare calculations of the dates of Easter. At that time it was customary to count years since the reign of emperor Diocletian; but in his calculations Dionysius chose to number the years since the birth of Christ, rather than honour the persecutor Diocletian. Dionysius (wrongly) fixed Jesus' birth with respect to Diocletian's reign in such a manner that it falls on 25 December 753 AUC (ab urbe condita, i.e. since the founding of Rome), thus making the current era start with AD 1 on 1 January 754 AUC. How Dionysius established the year of Christ's birth is not known, although a considerable number of theories exist. Although Dionysius proposed this system of counting it was not generally accepted.
When The Venerable Bede (673-735) wrote his history of the early centuries of Anglo-Saxon England he adopted the system of Dionysius and its use spread until it became a de facto standard."
(In this system of counting years, the monk decided on using the number '1' as the first "year of our lord", and thus did years, with our counting system, begin. When celebrating millenia, people celebrate it from that point. Thus, 2001.)
PS: I celebrated both (any excuse for more partying!)
Some languages use different spellings for the same words - I cant take or make the TIME necessary
to be an exponent in this dreary thread , although I did learn a few things about the subject of time
and placements of our presence on Earth , now
and in antiquity.
Comments on this entry are closed
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you waste your short life worring about 12am coming after 11pm? You do relise that time it self does not truely exist. We as humans created it so that we could keep another figment of our immaginiations, scheduls. After as, it is a little hard to say i will meet you here tommorrow when the sun is right there! Im supprised no one has commented on your inability to cope with something that only exists in your mind. How is it that, despite the fact we have been using it for years, you have a problem with the hours? This is why something that is commenly refered to as military time was created. since it was human nature to say i will meet you here at three, which compleatly left out wether it was am or pm, one could only assume that it was pm, because who would be daffy enough to actually want to meet up with someone at three am? However, it was for a fishing trip, which happens in the am, and you thought pm and compleatly missed it. So if you really want to complain about time, use the 24 hour clock instead.
Posted by: Picho at May 17, 2005 12:58 AM