Re: Default date output format changed after an upgrade to buster
On Thu 12 Sep 2019 at 14:13:19 (-0500), John Hasler wrote:
> rhkramer writes:
> > If 12:01 pm is two minutes after 11:59 am, then 12:00 is AM.
>
> AM means "before the meridian", that is, before the Sun crosses the
> meridian[1]. PM means after the meridian. Time is the ordering of
> events. The Sun crossing the meridian is an event which we call noon:
> everything else happens either before or after it[2]. 12:00 is noon
> (except when it's midnight[3]) so it makes no sense to call it either AM
> or PM: call it noon. Say "12 noon" if you feel like being redundant.
>
> It makes no sense to speak of something happening at noon: only noon
> itself happens then[2]. People are going to do so anyway, though, so one
> must assume that when they say "The event will occur at noon" they mean
> that it will occur during the interval between noon and the first clock
> tick after noon. This makes "12:00 noon" 12:00PM. Thus colloquially
> 12:00PM is in the middle of the day.
Odd that they decided to employ that logic in the 21st century after
(most) clocks had ceased to tick.
But it is remarkable to use logic to prove a contradiction,
and infinitesimals to explain an arbitrary colloquialism.
> [1] Notionally. The ancients used local solar time.
>
> [2] This applies to any tick of your clock.
>
> [3] Same argument applies to midnight (it's when the Sun crosses the
> other meridian), making it 12:00AM.
Cheers,
David.
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