The Next Three Days are the x86 Days

Pinky wrote in to note that "Today, tomorrow and the next day are the only days we'll get dates like this: 2/8/6 3/8/6 4/8/6 like the x86 computers :-)" And yes folks, in the August news cycle vortex, even this strikes my fancy. In recent years we've seen numerical giants like 3/1/4, 6/6/6 and 1/2/3, but now really, what do any of us have to look forward to? Is our future dull and meaningless without cool numbers in dates? Oh the humanity of it all ...

Comments

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

[cayenne8]

" I've lived in Canada my entire life, and everyone I know uses dd/mm/yy."

Ok...guess it is early...I was wondering what the hell planet these posts were from...

I looked at the date on my calendar and on my computer desktop, and it said 08/02/06...cobwebs cleared and I remembered that in other places, they switch the day and month around.

Just curious...how many places do it d/m/y vs. m/d/y. I'd never seen the d/m/y thing till a couple of years ago....

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

[Red Alastor]

Just curious...how many places do it d/m/y vs. m/d/y. I'd never seen the d/m/y thing till a couple of years ago....

Every place that speaks French use d/m/y. It's because it's the way it's naturally spoken in French : 2 août 2006.

The Best Day Already Was...

[Snowcap557]

I still remember 12:34 pm on May 6, 1978 as the best such thing of all time. It was 1234 on 5/6/78!

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

[carnifex0]

Maybe we should all use the "Official" ISO date format - YYYY-MM-DD and avoid confusion. I have a system that I administer that uses the ISO dates, and every single one of my users hates it.

Next Palindrome Day...

[GuruBuckaroo]

January 2nd, 2010 (01/02/2010) for Americans, February first for the rest of you. Last one was October 2, 2001 (10/02/2001) here - I threw a party (any excuse, really).

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

[teh kurisu]

In UK English, "It's the second of August" is common. I'm guessing this form is less used in America because American English has more of a tendency to drop prepositions (ie. the 'of'). For example, "he went Tuesday" rather than "he went on Tuesday", or "the kids are out back" rather than "the kids are out the back".

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

[cayenne8]

I've wondered if this is because in other languages...they often put the description after the object. For example, in English you'd day 'red car'. In Spanish, it would be 'Coche rojo'...which is basically 'car red'.

I wonder if this might be similar to how we speak the dates differently. 22nd is the day...and the month is synonymous to the descriptive part of the date?

Sounds strange, but, was just trying to figure out why the difference. In Europe, the English speaking nations are close together with nations with other languages...that structure their languages as mentioned above, whereas in the US, well, we're pretty much to ourselves, and wouldn't have the influence of foreign languages...

Of course...that situation is starting to change...si

Re:SORRY!

[roystgnr]

2006/8/2 is the only logical and correct format.

Close, but it doesn't sort alphabetically, and the / character has a double meaning on Unix systems and in URLs. 2006-08-02 is better, with the added bonus that it's part of the ISO standard.

Of course, it's harder to get interesting date numbers when you've got 8 digits to work with, two of them can't take many values and two or three more only change values very infrequently. 2011-11-02 20:11:11.02 is coming up, I guess.

Re:Except..

[camperdave]

I suspect it is from the old manual/paper based days of business. You'd keep separate years in separate filing cabinets, so the year becomes irrelevant. Thus using month/day makes it a lot easier to sort.

What about time for pi ?

[Asprin]

3/14/15 9:26:53

Mmmmmm.... pi...

See, there's still stuff to look forward to!

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

[name*censored*]

Nah, its just because 'mericans like to be different.. or cbf spelling out words in full? See: colo(u)r, thr(o)u(gh), neighbo(u)r, program(me), etc

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

[Zelbinian]

Indeed, much like only the US (and the places it thereby influences) pronounces the letter 'z' as 'zee' or uses feet and pounds. What a wacky bunch we are.

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

[idontgno]

Nope, in the US, if you asked what time it was, you would most likely get the answer "three-twenty".
Occasionally you'll get it the way you mentioned (twenty after three), but, most of the time I hear it hour-minute.

And that raises a couple of interesting points.

• Brevity. "Three twenty" is less of a mouthful than "Twenty past three". "August 8th, 2006" is somewhat shorter than "The 8th of August, 2006" (no possessives or articles; their function is implied in the shorter pharaseology.) Are we Americans hasty?
• The "decline" of the analog clock. Does anyone in the US say "A quarter till 4 PM?" A quarter of a what? The notion of an hour as a divisible entity (vice an integral entity, accompanied by an integral entity called the minute) is most intuitive if you can see the quarter-circle of the full-circle hour, as marked by the "big hand". I'm middle-aged; I was taught to read the classic analog clock, but now I have to think about it because the digital "hour:minute" format dominates. I wonder if my babies, as they grow up, will be taught in school to read analog clock faces at all? (I'll see to it that they learn, but I wonder if it won't fall out of public school curriculum.)
• The format of shortcut dates in the US verus elsewhere. I think it matches the syntax of the abbreviated US spoken date. That's speculation, but I find it fascinating that some of our English correspondents in this topic tend to speak out dates in ISO (or traditional European) numerical date format order, even if it requires the use of syntactic glue words. ("the 8th of August, 2006." I guess you could drop the glue, but it would sound funny and a bit spastic to me. But maybe that's how we 'merkans look to y'all anyways.)
• So, what of the notable US exception, the Fourth of July? I think it stopped being just a date a long time ago. If, God forfend, the government here in the US tries to make this holiday another "federally observed on the Monday of the week it falls on" holiday, it'll still be called "The Fourth of July" even if it's observed on the 30th of June.