Blogtrek

AM/PM Trouble

Sometimes a defect in the way we make, do, or say things can have positive effects; in fact, it can save lives. One such defect is AM and PM. Whoever made up this way of telling time was not trying to be user-friendly. One normally thinks of a day as a complete entity. Therefore, one expects 5 o'clock to represent a definite time. It does not. It represents two times: 5 AM and 5 PM. And this can cause confusion. Several times I have overslept because I set my alarm clock for PM instead of AM. Further, the way we tell time at 12 o'clock is really loony. We say the hour after 11 AM is 12 PM, even though this means the PM hours run 12, 1, 2, .. ., 11 instead of 1, 2, .. ., 12. And when it is 12 o'clock, then is it noon or midnight? For that reason, never say 12 o'clock or 12 AM or PM. Say noon or midnight. It is just too confusing. The military has recognized this so they threw out the system long ago and replaced it with 24-hour time in which the time from midnight to midnight ranges from 0000 to 2359, as numerical sense dictates.

But sometimes errors caused by AM/PM trouble can help; recently it has even saved lives. According to ABC News tonight, apparently the bombs in Trainattack in Spain were constructed out of briefcases or duffel bags with explosives, wires, and a cellular phone which was used as an alarm clock and a GPS device which was designed to tell the time, so that all bombs would explode at the same time. But one bomb did not explode, because its creator had AM/PM trouble. He had set it for 7:45 PM instead of 7:45 AM. Later on, well within 12 hours, investigators found it and traced it to the owner - an excellent lead in the case. That bomb not going off probably saved 20 lives. This was lucky.

I still say we will all be better off with military time. We should start junking the AM/PM system. That is not happening; I had a hard time finding an alarm clock that told 24-hour time. But I do believe that we will be better off. More police vigilance and better relations between nations are the way to prevent terrorist attacks and save lives, not reliance on an error.