[ntp:questions] Re: noon/midnight

Jason Ozolins jason_abroad at yahoo.com.au
Wed Dec 3 11:45:07 UTC 2003


J B Carr <jbcarr12 at adelphia.net> wrote in message news:<rNGyb.1487$oe4.701896 at news2.news.adelphia.net>...
> I little off topic, but I thought someone here would know the answer to 
> this question.
> 
> Is noon 12:00 AM or 12:00 PM? Can you give me a reference to the standard?

Think about this: Everyone would say that one second past noon,
12:00:01, was PM, yes?
How about 1 nanosecond past 12:00?  Still PM.
One picosecond?  Still PM... and so on.

It seems pretty clear that the only consistent way to treat noon would
be PM, because then AM changes to PM as the hour changes, not at some
infinitesimal time after noon.  Of course, as Terje Mathisen has
pointed out elsewhere in this thread, 12-hour time is a basket case
anyway, but 12-hour time with weird infinitesimal PM and AM states
would be even worse.

-Jason =:^)



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