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News & ArtsThursday, December 29, 2011
??!! Tomorrow Will Not Exist...
Posted by Paul Constant on Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 5:34 PM
...in Samoa:
On Thursday night, it will be December 29 when they go to bed and Saturday Dec 31 when they wake up - meaning they'll skip Friday forever.
This neat bit of time travel is the result of a very contemporary concern: trade and economic relations with Pacific neighbors Australia and New Zealand, who are currently nearly a day ahead on the clock.
Now, with the disappearance of Friday, Samoa will shift west of the international dateline and share the same date and time as its two key partners.
I know this is a perfectly logical thing to do, and the explanation makes perfect sense, but this still blows my mind on some basic, superstitious level.
5
Kwajalein, in the Marshall Islands, did this in 1993 when I lived there. They staged a fun run starting a few minutes before midnight. It ended up being over 24 hours long! I still have the commemorative T-shirt from this event.
7
"As for all the people born on the 30th, they are allowed to skip a year and claim that they are a year younger. They don't get any birthday presents, however, except from particularly sympathetic friends."
9
Well, Paul, the Gregorian Calendar story is going to blow your mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_c…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_c…
10
I can't wait for Mudede's existential incoherence on the topic tomorrow, when he inevitably reposts this.
12
I didn't realize Samoa had an economy. I thought it was just all jolly dark fat people, coconuts and beaches.
14
Was going to post about the uproar when Poop Gregory adjusted the calendar but tiktok beat me to it. Less well know was the riots when standard time instituted. In the old days noon was when the sun was straight up but that made railroad scheduling impossible. The US was divided into 4 time zone & by the railroads in 1883, the government followed suit a year later. People were up in arms because man was placing the railroads above God!
15
I wonder why they didn't just wait a couple of months and skip leap [day] year. They've been talking about this for over a year now, what's another two months?
16
When you cross the International Dateline westbound, you lose a day; when you return eastbound, you repeat one day. If you continue westbound around the world, you gain the day back in one hour segments for every 15-degrees of longitude.
There are two Samoas, BTW - American Samoa will remain a day ahead unlike the independent nation" of Samoa, formerly Western Samoa that became independent from New Zealand in 1962.
God - or Whomever - doesn't recognize calendars - just take it one day at a time like recovering (fill in the blank). Happy New Year in any event.
There are two Samoas, BTW - American Samoa will remain a day ahead unlike the independent nation" of Samoa, formerly Western Samoa that became independent from New Zealand in 1962.
God - or Whomever - doesn't recognize calendars - just take it one day at a time like recovering (fill in the blank). Happy New Year in any event.
17
Anyone who's read Mason & Dixon knows that that missing day will now and forever exist "In a slowly rotating Loop, or if you like, Vortex, . . . tangent to the Linear Path of what we imagine as Ordinary Time, but excluded from it, and repeating itself,-- without end."
19
Frankdawg notes people were upset by man placing railroads above God but in modern day America we have spent much more time and money on God than maintaining railroads. Result? In any time zone in USA it is easy to find a fancy church or a heated argument about God but hard to take a train to anywhere West of the East coast.
20
@12, "jolly dark fat people, coconuts and beaches."
.
sounds like an economy to me.
I can't keep the EST compared to MST straight. I lived in CST all my life up to last year; a 1 hour time difference made perfect sense, 2 or more hours fucks me up entirely. I'm a reasonably intelligent woman, but add DST into the mix and I'm done. Losing a day entirely would probably make my mind melt.
.
sounds like an economy to me.
I can't keep the EST compared to MST straight. I lived in CST all my life up to last year; a 1 hour time difference made perfect sense, 2 or more hours fucks me up entirely. I'm a reasonably intelligent woman, but add DST into the mix and I'm done. Losing a day entirely would probably make my mind melt.
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