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Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix
For all you number nuts in the house, in case you haven’t seen this circulating around the web: At 3 minutes and 4 seconds after 2 AM (and PM, if you’re using a 12-hour clock) this Sunday, the 6th of May, the time and date will be
02:03:04 05/06/07
(And I should add that at 9 minutes and 10 seconds after 8 AM/PM, it’ll be 05/06/07 08:09:10) (I should also add, given the comments below, that this only holds true in the US, or places where the date is expressed mm/dd/yy)
It’ll happen again in the UK one month and a day later…
posted by Andrew Green on 5-3-2007 at 1:32 am
You mean this Sunday, May 6th . . . not this Saturday . . . :)
posted by Barry on 5-3-2007 at 2:09 am
My point exactly: we Europeans have some leeway to relish that particular point in time. Still befuddled by the US date system, after all, we dont count time in some weird minute:hour:second format, do we? ;)
posted by flyemoney on 5-3-2007 at 3:42 am
Well, more like a month minus a day… But in any case surely there was a slightly neater one last year, 01:02:03 04/05/06.
And next year we’ll get 03:04:05 06/07/08, and so on and so on…
posted by Janek Mann on 5-3-2007 at 5:11 am
As in the UK most of the rest of the world uses dd.mm.yy formats not the U.S. mm/dd/yy. It is typical American arrogance that everyone else should follow their example.
Even more interesting is the computer industries preference for reversing the order (most significant first) so 05 June becomes 07.06.05.
Of course since Y2k that’s now 2007.06.05 which ruins the entire premise.
posted by not given on 5-3-2007 at 5:45 am
It happens on my birthday, sweet.
posted by Kev on 5-3-2007 at 7:24 am
Not need to be baffled by the computer industry preference for:
YYYY/MM/DD
If you name files that way, they arrange in date order naturally when sorting in alpha-numeric order.
posted by n2y2 on 5-3-2007 at 9:23 am
However, next year we will have 03:04:05 06/07/08 and then 04:05:06 07/08/09. This progression will continue until 09:10:11 12/13/14, when it stop and then be resumed on 00:01:02 03/04/05. This, of course, assumes that we will still be around on March 4, 2105 and won’t be using some form of StarDate computation to mark time. It also assumes that the space-time continuum doesn’t bend around and intersect itself at some point in the “past” - which is theoretically possible under some variations of String (or Spaghetti) Theory.
If that happens, would the “past” then become the “future” and vice verse? And would we remember the “past” if it was the future, or would we all become prescient and be able to predict the “future” because it was also the past?
Perhaps we shouldn’t pay attention to any of this and simply remember the old Victorian philosophy of behavior and just “Muddle through”. But will we be remembering this philosophy or predicting it, because if it’s in the past, it might also be in the future. And if it’s in the future, how could we have knowledge of it from the past? (So, you see, we could theoretically revisit 02:03:04 05/06/07!!)
posted by WizardBoy on 5-3-2007 at 9:23 am
Heck, just over eight hours after that you’ll have: 05/06/07 08:09:10
(Ditto for 5 June in Yoo-rupp.)
posted by brian t on 5-3-2007 at 1:28 pm
SIX hours, that is.
posted by brian t on 5-3-2007 at 1:30 pm
“As in the UK most of the rest of the world uses dd.mm.yy formats not the U.S. mm/dd/yy. It is typical American arrogance that everyone else should follow their example.” made me LOL.
Maybe “not given” should go start up mentalfloss.co.uk
posted by Dave on 5-3-2007 at 3:46 pm
I’d visit mantalfloss.co.uk. (In addition to this site, that is.) Post it somewhere if anyone ever actually does it.
posted by Pointy-Hatted Geek on 5-3-2007 at 6:44 pm