10/10/10 — a Nice Day To Celebrate the Meaning of Life 296
st2000 writes "My wife noted that tomorrow's date is 10/10/10. This was probably some time after Illinois whomped Penn State's butt. I pondered that for a moment, noting that 101010 was a valid binary number. Then it dawned on me that 101010base2 was 42base10. Verifying that this truly was the answer given after typing 'meaning of life' into Wolfram's web site, I thought I was onto something." You may say he's a dreamer, but he's not the only one.
Just thought I would point out... (Score:3, Informative)
Why all that fuss? (Score:3, Informative)
Enjoy it now (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's (Score:3, Informative)
The phrase 'meaning of life' appears twice in the first five Hitchhiker's Guide books. The first time, it appears in the following context:
However, what Fook and Lunkwill ask of Deep Thought is more specific:
They don't ask about the meaning of life. They want an answer to 'Life, the Universe, and Everything', and Fook 'wants to get on and ask the question'.
So, please, shut your face. And don't bring up that shitty movie.
Re:It's (Score:4, Informative)
So, please, shut your face. And don't bring up that shitty movie.
It has a redeeming quality. Zooey Deschanel. In the shower.
pfft (Score:4, Informative)
worse. judeo-christina centric..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar#Currently_used_calendars [wikipedia.org]
Currently used calendars
Calendars in widespread use today include the Gregorian calendar, which is the de facto international standard, and is used almost everywhere in the world for civil purposes, including in the People's Republic of China and India (along with the Indian national calendar). Due to the Gregorian calendar's obvious connotations of Western Christianity, non-Christians and even some Christians sometimes justify its use by replacing the traditional era notations "AD" and "BC" ("Anno Domini" and "Before Christ") with "CE" and "BCE" ("Common Era" and "Before Common Era"). The Hindu calendars are some of the most ancient calendars of the world. Eastern Christians of eastern Europe and western Asia used for a long time the Julian Calendar, that of the old Orthodox church, in countries like Russia. For over 1500 years, Westerners used the Julian Calendar also.
While the Gregorian calendar is widely used in Israel's business and day-to-day affairs, the Hebrew calendar, used by Jews worldwide for religious and cultural affairs, also influences civil matters in Israel (such as national holidays) and can be used there for business dealings (such as for the dating of checks).
The Iranian (Persian) calendar is used in Iran and Afghanistan. The Islamic calendar is used by most non-Iranian Muslims worldwide. The Chinese, Hebrew, Hindu, and Julian calendars are widely used for religious and/or social purposes. The Ethiopian calendar or Ethiopic calendar is the principal calendar used in Ethiopia and Eritrea. In Thailand, where the Thai solar calendar is used, the months and days have adopted the western standard, although the years are still based on the traditional Buddhist calendar. Bahá'ís worldwide use the Bahá'í calendar.
Even where there is a commonly used calendar such as the Gregorian calendar, alternate calendars may also be used, such as a fiscal calendar or the astronomical year numbering system[6].
Re:42nd birthdays? (Score:5, Informative)
1 in 365.25 I suppose.
Not exactly true. Statistically there are a greater number of births in the month of September, probably thanks to the end of year festivities 9 months earlier. Considering that pregnant women can't get pregnant again unless she loses the baby, and the duration of term is the same whether conceived in Jan or Nov, this necessarily decreases the number of women "available" to give birth any other time of year. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to confirm what OB/GYN's and midwives have known for a long time...
Summary is wrong, as per usual (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Just thought I would point out... (Score:2, Informative)
I thought most places used 2010/10/20. Isn't that some kind of ISO standard? I try to use it everywhere I can due to its easy sorting.
Just looked it up actually it's ISO 8601
YYYY-MM-DD or YYYYMMDD
PS: Why can't we all just switch to UTC and big-endian times with 24 hours in a day not 12am + 12pm? It would make maintaining computers so much easier and we wouldn't have to keep updating those timezone parts in various things. We could also finally kill off Daylight Saving Time.
Powers of 10 Day Media (Score:3, Informative)
Pardon my blog-whoring, but I've posted a short history of powers of 10 media [ideonexus.com], which goes:
Just another way to celebrate an exponentially awesome day. : )
Re:Why all that fuss? (Score:3, Informative)
Hah, yes. I always just use the gregorian date and so far noone has complained. But birth dates do seem to be always in the year of the emperor.
Re:Just thought I would point out... (Score:3, Informative)
12/12/1212 and all significant repedative dates have already passed
You just need to wait a while for 11/11/11111.
Re:Just thought I would point out... (Score:2, Informative)
No need to compile anything, GNU date command does it:
$ date +%s -d '10/10/10 00:00 GMT'
1286668800
Re:Just thought I would point out... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Richard Feynman on the meaning of life (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Just thought I would point out... (Score:3, Informative)
In Lithuania it's yyyy mm dd or yyyy-mm-dd. Makes the most sense, slowest changing number is the first and fastest changing number is last, like in regular numbers: 100 -> 101 -> 102 ...
Screw you nerds (Score:2, Informative)