Don’t argue with an idiot, it will just frustrate you and amuse the idiot.
Agreed - while it is nice to be non ambiguous about stuff - computers and modern record keeping - have sort of made this point moot - to me there is only one obvious choice.
It is pretty common now a days to keep at least some records by minute.
It looks silly to have these lists of numbers have one single minute with a different suffix every 720 minutes. Nor - in the case I am describing is it ambiguous - since you can see where it is - no one would be confused about:
11:57 AM
11:58 AM
11:59 AM
12:00 PM
12:01 PM
12:02 PM
12:03 PM
vs
11:57 AM
11:58 AM
11:59 AM
12:00 AM
12:01 PM
12:02 PM
12:03 PM
The second version looks stupid though - It gives the ridiculous result of having the hour switch over with the suffix one minute later. It looks weird - and makes no sense to do it that way. If neither is right - pick the option that is simpler.
I can think of no rational reason for 12 noon to be AM - and at least a couple reasons (for programmers and designers of mechanical digital clocks) for it to be the other way.
I’m curious if any time standard uses AM for 12 NOON. I haven’t checked real hard, but in the situations I am familiar with - if there is an option for AM/PM vs 24 hour - it is noon is PM.
In other words:
Noon is 12 PM since one minute after noon is 12:01 PM
but I will continue to use noon in situations where it would be ambiguous. Luckily that is pretty rare.
I only skimmed the linked thread, but I think the argument was to continue a.m. through 12, and once you flip back to 1 o’clock, go to p.m. There is a certain logic to that. So, it’d go 11:59 a.m., 12:00 a.m., 12:01 a.m., … 12:59 a.m., 1:00 p.m. I guess it could have gone that way, but it didn’t.
Yes, noon and midnight are their own entities, being instants outside of the AM and PM periods.
Of course, even with the 24-hour clock, there’s the issue of “which day does midnight belong to?” The way I understand it, 00:00 is the midnight starting a day, and 24:00 is the midnight ending a day. So 24:00 on Thursday is the same instant as 00:00 on Friday; I have seen train schedules that say things like ‘arrival 24:35’ to refer ro a service which started before midnight.
I don’t like “12 PM.” Why not just an unambiguous “12:01 PM” or “11:59 AM”?
Better to get there a minute late than 12 hours too early. :rolleyes:
…and he wouldn’t be the first person on this board who authored something somewhere else on the internet and then tried to use it as a cite.
In any case there appears to be a number of people in California that are misinformed victims of a radio host.
I’m surprised he has any listeners what with the confusion of when his show is on.
I suspect that that third clock was actually sidereal time. It’s not actually a 26-hour clock, it’s a 24 hour one, just with slightly shorter hours (but then, the poster admitted that e wasn’t sure how it worked). Just as a normal clock tracks (roughly, on average) when the Sun rises and sets, a sidereal clock tracks when the stars rise and set. One can see how this might have some relevance for satellite tracking, since satellite orbits would probably be specified in a star-based coordinate system.
The Y2K bug erased all the SDMB pre-2000 poster names! See, the doomsayers were right after all! We didn’t listen!
Noon is 12NN, Midnite is 12MN. But yes, since one split second after 12MN is 12.00001 AM, you can say 12AM without being a idiot.
zombie or no
switching AM and PM doesn’t solve the problem, though it’s a novel suggestion.
The correct solution is that there be no 12:01, 12:02, etc. It should be 0:01, 0:02, etc with the AM and PM shown as follows:
11:58 pm
11:59 pm
12:00 pm
0:01 am
0:02 am
Because that is what is really intended by current convention of calling midnight 12:00 am.
Or you could go 0:00 a.m.
Look, all I need is an obvious and unambiguous way to remember if I fuck up my alarm clock and have to reset the time between midnight and one in the morning, do I want it to say PM or AM?
You laugh but this has been an issue in the past.
That would require replacing the 12 on all clocks. As it stands, you could just declare that the highest time is 12:00 and then resets to 0:00:01
You’re not only dead wrong, you’re really adamant about it, which is amusing.
Try using your logic again, except, instead of counting hours, count minutes or seconds. You’ll see where your logic fails. One second after noon is one second post-meridium. Even if we think of seconds as being fractions of hours (which is correct), one fraction of an hour after noon is one fraction of an hour AFTER noon, not before it.
In addition to being wrong, you’re contradicting the way every computer I know of works (including Macs, Linux, UNIX, Windows, Android, TOPS10, TOPS20, OS8, RT11, and no doubt others.) So, you’re convincing everyone to use a new “standard”, which even if it was correct from some point of view, would lead to far more confusion than being “wrong” but consistent.
Finally, the guy I know of who knows the most about time is Dave Mills, originally of UCS (ucs.edu), who invented the Network Time Protocol. He’s deeply educated on the issues of measuring, recording, and communicating about time. Consider reading his papers; you’ll find them authoritative, informative, and interesting. I wish I’d kept all his old work; you can no longer find all of it on line. But he covers all the stuff from early time recording through the Georgian calendar revolution up to modern calculations of the leap-second, and diverse issues that need to be taken into account when trying to synchronize an arbitrary-topology plesiochronous network.
I wouldn’t use 0: unless I were using a 24-hour clock, so it’d be 23:59, 0:00. (Or as mentioned, 2400 using military time, but it’s been long since I did that.)
Since it’s after midnight, it’s ante-meridium, so AM. 12:01 AM is a minute after midnight.
I’m going to retract my statement that he’s dead wrong. On rereading, his argument does make sense, even if it is wrong from a different point of view. However, it’s wrong because it disagrees with nearly universal conventions: it would cause even more confusion when trying to communicate.
Going from 12:00 to 0:01 requires no more changes than going from 11:59 to 0:00. Furthermore, it’s more consistent. Try adding seconds to your proposal* and see how it works out! If we’re going to use 0, it should start at midnight!
- Which I see you just did, but not consistently with your earlier example. Which is it?
I remembered a sign in the NY Subway talking about some hearing on the subway system and wanting input from the straphangers. The meeting according to the sign would start at 12PM. A week later, the sign changed the time of the meeting to 12:01pm.
I’ve noticed that much of the non-English speaking world uses a 24 hour clock. That is 5:00pm is 17:00. Is AM and PM a strictly Anglo phenomenon? If so, why the split? Did the rest of Europe abandon the AM/PM notation or did the British think drinking tea at 14:00 seem a bit late?