Editing 1340: Unique Date

{{comic
| number    = 1340
| date      = March 10, 2014
| title     = Unique Date
| image     = unique_date.png
| titletext = If our current civilization lasts another 8,000 years, it's probably fair to assume the Long Now Foundation got things right, and at some point we started listening to them and switched to five-digit years.
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic [[Cueball]] excitedly gives the current date (the date the comic was released) in {{w|ISO 8601}} format (year-month-day) and points out - correctly - that in the current calendar system, this date will never recur.

The calendar used by the USA and most of the Western world is the {{w|Gregorian calendar}}, which counts time using years, months, and days. Since time is percived to only move forwards,{{Citation needed}} except in some cultures where a cyclical perception of time exists based off the seasons of the year, dates in this system will never repeat and are thus all equally unique, even when the digits aren't in any kind of significant pattern. Unfortunately, Cueball has made it [[:Category:My Hobby|his hobby]] to point out this uniqueness daily, which would be incredibly annoying to his friends. Even worse, he is using the ISO 8601 date and time standard which is designed precisely to provide unique and unambiguous time references.

Cueball's behavior is a parody of the common practice of finding significance in numerically-interesting dates, such as {{w|palindrome}} dates which have the same digits when reversed (eg. 2nd February 2020, which was 2020-02-02 in the ISO 8601 format). These special dates usually occur infrequently and sporadically, and if using a date format with a defined limit such as ISO 8601 (which only goes up to the year 9999) it is possible for the entire stock of such dates to be exhausted, such that they will never occur again. Some people enjoy finding and celebrating these special days, treating them as a kind of collector's item to be treasured for their rarity and uniqueness.

Another commonly celebrated date pattern is when the year, month, and day all share the same numeric value - for example, 2001-01-01 (expressed as 01/01/01) or 2012-12-12 (12/12/12), which was the last such date until next century. People might plan special events on these "unique" days. For instance, [http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/08/nation/na-weddings8 2007-07-07] was considered a "lucky" day and had a record number of weddings. This is because humans, in general, are superstitious and like (and recognize) patterns in everyday life.

The title text refers to the {{w|Long Now Foundation}}, which uses [http://blog.longnow.org/02013/12/31/long-now-years-five-digit-dates-and-10k-compliance-at-home/ five-digit years] (e.g. this comic's date would be written "02014-03-10"). This is an effort to encourage people to think in terms of long-term benefits, rather than only the coming years or decades. The {{w|Y2K problem}} was due to using only two digits to store the year, which would have made dates ambiguous when it rolled from 99 back to 00. See also the "{{w|Year 2038 problem}}". Similarly, the {{w|Maya calendar}} had a repeating cycle of 52 years, and even their "long count" rolled over after 7885 years. As we currently use four-digit years this may cause a {{w|Year 10,000 problem|Y10K problem}}.

The Long Now Foundation designs a [http://longnow.org/clock/ 10,000-year clock] that should be able to run for this long — and in principle, it could display every date up to 9999-12-31. 8000 years from the date of the comic would be 10014 AD  — [[Randall]] jokes that by switching to 5-digit years, we'd prove the Long Now Foundation correct, although of course by this point there would be no other way to show years except by rebooting the calendar.

A previous comic on date formats was [[1179: ISO 8601]].  Randall addresses date formatting confusion again in the title text of [[1467: Email]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball speaking to Megan and another Cueball-like guy.]
:Cueball: Whoa, it's 2014-03-10! 
:Cueball: Under our system, that date will ''never happen again!!''
:[Caption below the frame:]
:My Hobby: Pointing this out every day.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:My Hobby]]
[[Category: Calendar]]