(meteorobs) 2005 Perseids still scheduled for August

Bruce McCurdy bmccurdy at telusplanet.net
Tue Jun 14 17:01:49 EDT 2005


    Bob L. wrote:

> George seems a bit confused by the use of the European date format of 
> DD/MM/YY. 12/08/05 may appear to be December 8, 2005 to Americans reading 
> this message, but one needs to consider the source before interpreting the 
> exact date.

    These dating conventions have long been a pet peeve of mine which has 
become an open sore since the odometer turned over into the Third 
Millennium. They are a testament to illogic, akin to the insanity of 
dividing the day two 12-hour clocks. I say time to chuck tradition and fix 
it!

    I will give the Europeans credit for improving the American convention, 
by getting the three increments in the right order, albeit backwards. Even 
ISO short form, useful in the last decades of the 20th Century, now looks 
like the other two forms. (e.g. the space shuttle Columbia came down on 
02-01-03, 01-02-03, or 03-02-01 depending on which system one is using.)

    The *only* unambiguous date form for the Gregorian calendar is ISO long 
form, where the Perseids will occur on 2005-08-12. Of course ever finer 
information can be tagged on in diminishing order HH:MM:SS.s.(using, *of 
course*, the 24-hour clock, preferably UT  :)

    I liken it to a logical search for a document in an archives: first of 
all you find the right building, then the right floor, the right room, the 
right cabinet, the right drawer, the right file in the drawer, and bingo! 
Doing it in any other order will result in confusion.  Entirely unnecessary 
confusion.

    Bruce 




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