Shortly after noon today — at 12:12pm and 12 seconds to be precise — I took note of the time and engaged in a very human ritual: celebrating the arbitrary.
After all, there is nothing inherently special about today. This day just happens to fall on the twelfth day of the twelfth month of the twelfth year of the current century. All of these conventions — the numbering of day, month, and year — are themselves completely arbitrary conventions based on historical happenstance.
The same goes for the fact that we count twenty four hours in a day, and sixty minutes in an hour. The roots of that particular convention can be traced all the way back to ancient Babylonia.
It could be argued that the Babylonian system of counting in base sixty was indeed a very cool thing. After all, sixty is satisfyingly divisible by an impressive array of proper factors — 2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15 and 30 — but that doesn’t mean that there is anything inherently interesting about any of these choices, even if they have resulted in a day and time whose digits line up rather pleasingly. I mean, it’s not as though we’ve discovered some sort of cosmic slot machine.
Still, I took a little time today, at just a bit over twelve minutes past the noon hour, to mark the sheer coolness of the moment, however silly it may be.
Which I guess just makes me human. 🙂
One interesting point is that people find and use these arbitrary symmetries or exceptions as excuses to celebrate and socialize. Even in my country (Iran) people paid so much attention to this date. I know a music orchestra who continuously played 12 hours of music on this date. Interestingly, even the official and commonly used calendar is not Gregorian calendar here.