Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Shea Tisdale" <shea AT sheatisdale.com>]

Swatch put out watches using swatch beats which broke days up into 1000 even 
increments.  The hallmark of their now defunct system was no timezones and 
saying time in the format of @489.  For the digital age it actually made alot 
of sense 
since a conference call @715 would be at 715swatchbeats anywhere on earth.  
So no timezones translations, etc.

But alas, our old movement of the planets based time system is just to 
popular...


On Mon, 11 Nov 2002 23:31:25 -0500, Thomas Beckett wrote:

>Michael D. Thomas wrote:
>> 8:02 p.m. today will be an exciting minute!
>
>Shit, I missed it!  Got caught up in cooking dinner and, oh well.  No 
>other such opportunity in this lifetime.
>
>But seriously, did you have too much coffee this morning?  I mean, I 
>like symmetry as much as the next person, but this is quite a lot of 
>enthusiasm on the numerology.
>
>Ultimately, isn't the date and time a generally arbitrary counting 
>system?  Why are their 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and so 
>forth?  This "symmetry" has no relationship to the natural world.  We 
>know how long a day is, and we can mark each day from when the sun 
>reaches its zenith.  We can similarly mark the year.  But getting down 
>to a finer level of granularity beyond that imposes an artificial system 
>of measurement on the concept of time.
>
>Wouldn't it be more consistent, at least, to have 10 hours in a day 
>instead of 24?  That at least relates to the number of fingers on the 
>average person's hands.  And what makes today 11-11-2002 and not 
>yesterday?  Or last week?  It just boils down to symbols, empty symbols. 
>Devoid of meaning.
>
>Just like what I'm writing here.  It's all devoid of meaning.  I don't 
>know why anyone writes anything in the first place.  Writing is just an 
>abstraction and distraction from the natural world and genuine 
>experience.  Isn't it?
>
>TaB
>
>> In a world wrought with irregularity, that minute will be symmetrical -
>> 20:02, 11-11, 2002.
>> 
>> But it's not just an exception to our usually asymmetrical world, it's
>> symmetrical for most of the world. Not only will the minute be
>> symmetrical in the U.S., but will also be symmetrical in the 
>> British/European
>> format (20:02 11-11 2002) and in the ISO-8601/Chinese formats (2002-11-11-
>> 20:02).
>> 
>> Such a minute must be cherished. I know, it won't have the pristine,
>> diamond-like, 12-fold symmetry of 11:11, 11-11 1111. Still, you won't see
>> another minute quite like this one until 21:12, 11-11, 2112. After that, 
>> there
>> won't be many more such minutes. The clock is ticking.
>> 
>> As usual, today's symmetrical minute will get all the glory, but it's
>> really the day that should be.... well, taking the day.  First, 11-11 is
>> convenient for typists. It's one of only 12 dates that may be typed with 
>> one
>> number key. But it stands out from that assemblage of singularities - it's 
>> the
>> only one of the gang that always requires 4 digits. Give those other dates
>> their padded zeroes (03-03, 01-11) and they aren't symmetrical. 11-11 
>> always
>> is. 12-21 almost makes the mark, until you invalidate it by writing it 
>> 21-12.
>> (Non-Americans should transpose the dates in the previous argument.)
>> 
>>  There are other symmetrical moments on other days, but they just don't 
>> have
>> the same global impact. Since so many date-time renderings have the date 
>> and
>> month in the middle, the most interesting minutes occur on 11-11 - the most
>> pervasively symmetrical date.
>> 
>> With the middle token guaranteed symmetrical, 11-11 is the day for 
>> pervasive
>> symmetrical minutes. The next limiting factor of finding ISO-compliant (and
>> American, European and Chinese complaint) symmetry on November 11: the
>> palindrome of the last two year digits aren't guaranteed to make valid 
>> hours.
>> However, all inverses of valid hours are valid years
>> (23<-->32, 00<-->00, 22<-->22, 02<-->20, 21<-->12, etc.). Hence, each 
>> century
>> has 24 years where Nov. 11 has a chance at a symmetrical minute.
>> 
>> In the eternal search for symmetry, this only leaves one more limiting
>> factor. Watch out, it's the most limiting of all. Each hour has 60 minutes
>> whose inverses are valid century representations. But the 10 minutes 
>> ending in
>> zero present a padding problem like we saw with months and dates. For
>> instance, the minute :10 inverses to a valid century only if you write it
>> "01", such as: "In 0127, Ptolemy began to formulate his geocentric theory 
>> of
>> planetary motion that prevailed for 1400 years."
>> 
>> No one writes dates like that, so we really have to eliminate those 10 
>> minutes
>> and their corresponding centuries from our study. But no need to dwell on
>> those centuries --  they all preceded the glory days of the Byzantine 
>> Empire.
>> For the purposes of this discussion, those cases are ancient history.
>> 
>> Since we're now beyond the second millennium, all of those minutes ending 
>> in 1
>> have also seen their mirror century pass. So at the beginning of this year,
>> the minutes ending in 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9 inverse in to valid centuries, 
>> which
>> leaves 48 centuries that will have symmetrical minutes on Nov. 11. As luck
>> would have it, our current century is one of those. But enjoy them while 
>> they
>> last -- we're in for a big dry spell after 23:52 11-11, 2532. There will 
>> be no
>> symmetries between that minute and the year 3000.
>> 
>> Date format doesn't matter when talking about the outer tokens. An ISO-8601
>> date-time like:
>> 
>> 7432-11-11-23:47
>> 
>> is still symmetrical in the American and European format:
>> 
>> 23:47 11-11 7432
>> 
>> But they look different -- specifically, they aren't both composed of the 
>> same
>> sequence of digit characters. This is both an aesthetic and a semantic
>> problem: changing the date format can vary the minute by thousands of 
>> years.
>> If you want the strings to look the same regardless of date format, you 
>> have
>> to restrict your space to palindrome years and times. Following the rule
>> developed above, you just look for the times that are palindromes since 
>> years
>> have to be valid times. It's a small set, especially when you don't want
>> zero-padding problems: 10:01, 11:11, 12:21, 13:31, 14:41, 15:51, 20:02, 
>> 21:12,
>> 22:22, 23:32, 24:42 and 25:52.
>> 
>> This is another reason today is special: the year is a palindrome and
>> represents a valid time. Because of this, it is written the same 
>> regardless of
>> the various formats discussed. After today, there are only 5 such years -- 
>> and
>> thus, minutes -- left.
>> 
>>  Alas, after 23:59 11-11, 9532, November 11th looses its significance
>> altogether regardless of date format issues.  The possibly palindromic 
>> dates
>> 1-1, 01-10, 2-2, 02-20, 3-3, 03-30, 4-4, 5-5, 6-6, 7-7, 8-8, 9-9, 10-01 and
>> 12-21 loose significance, too. After that year the next batch of 
>> symmetrical
>> dates will look like 00:00 11-01, 10000 - but Americans will celebrate that
>> symmetry many months after it is celebrated in Britain. No longer will
>> date-time symmetries be such a global event and the formulas for deriving
>> date-time symmetry will become much more complicated. The length of the 
>> dates
>> will then be odd and the palindrome will then revolve around the 
>> tens-digit of
>> either the month or date, depending on your flavor of date format.
>> 
>> Sure, 11:11 11-11, 11111 will be an amazing celebration. But I'm just as 
>> sure
>> that, as that minute draws to a close, the partiers will reminisce about 
>> days
>> like today. "Symmetry was so much simpler then," they'll say.
>> 
>> But by then we (if there is a we) will probably have moved on to something
>> else with its own possibilities. As when Pope Gregory XIII decreed that 10
>> days must be skipped in October, 1582 to handle an 11 minute error in the 
>> old
>> Julian calendar, sometimes even time must change.
>> 
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>> ---
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