15 Responses to “Happy 1/23/4”

1. Raznor Writes:
   January 23rd, 2004 at 2:17 pm

   Well you know what they say, when life gives you lemons, you clone those lemons and make superlemons.

   What do you expect? I got nothin’.

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2. Jimmy Ho Writes:
   January 23rd, 2004 at 2:21 pm

   A subtle allusion to the fact that today is the second day of the Chinese New Year, I guess. Quite in time to wish happiness and prosperity to all of you. The Monkey be with you.

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3. Raznor Writes:
   January 23rd, 2004 at 2:23 pm

   I’m dancing like a Monkey.

   (and yes, that makes two cartoon references in as many posts. Brownie points to whomever recognizes either or both references)

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4. Charles Writes:
   January 23rd, 2004 at 2:38 pm

   Neat!

   I had completely missed that. We get another one in December (12/3/4), and then no more until 2034 (1/2/34). After 2034, there is one a decade (2/3/45), (3/4/56),etc, but it isn’t possible to construct one higher than 1234 until you can use the year for 2 of the numbers (unless you use the European date sequence, in which case you have 23/4/5 next year).

   I can’t believe I missed powers of 2 day (1/2/4) as well. I was much more attentive to these last year (1/2/3,3/3/3,etc.) and in 00, 01 and 02, but I haven’t been paying as much attention this year.

   Does anyone know if there is a term for aesthetically pleasing dates (besides ‘a very geeky interest’)?

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5. Jake Squid Writes:
   January 23rd, 2004 at 3:02 pm

   How about 2/3/4 which we get next month? Which also leads into 3/4/5, 5/6/7, etc. I’ll also be pleased with 4/4/4.

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6. Raznor Writes:
   January 23rd, 2004 at 3:15 pm

   I’m looking forward for 8/16/32. Or even more awesome will be 4/16/64. And we can look forward to 1/2/12 and the like next decade, and 2/4/8 in 4 years. We’ve also got 1/3/9 and 3/9/27 in the meanwhile.

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7. Jimmy Ho Writes:
   January 23rd, 2004 at 3:27 pm

   I’m not sure it’s a good idea to say it openly, but: believe it or not, I hadn’t got the 1234 thing before I read Charles’ comment. That’s easily explainable by the fact I don’t write dates the way you do in any of the three languages I use most (Greek, French and Chinese), but still.

   Time to stop commenting.

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8. --k. Writes:
   January 23rd, 2004 at 4:05 pm

   That placeholder zero in the year is cheating, to my aesthetic eye. 1/23/04? Please. You can whittle a year down to two digits–there’s precedent. But to whittle it down to just one for a stunt like this smacks of–well. Something that just isn’t done, in polite company.

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9. Charles Writes:
   January 23rd, 2004 at 7:56 pm

   Jake,

   Indeed, we do get a bunch of 3 digit sequences, and I do like them, but today is 4 digit sequence, which is much rarer.

   K,

   I disagree, 04=4. Also, if your going to complain about that, I think you can also complain that it is also 1 23 4, not 1 2 3 4. Basically, I think we should take our date based amusements where we can find them.

   Jimmy,

   I kind of guessed that you hadn’t caught it. What I find interesting about that is that, even though day/month/year isn’t one of your normal date writing systems, I suspect that you still translated 1/23/4 into January 23, 2004, but that you didn’t then see it as 1234, because that isn’t what it would be in your preferred system of representation. Does that sound correct? I find that sort of cognitive/perceptual thing fascinating, where the thing you perceive in your mind is a translation of the thing you visually perceive into some other system of representation, sort of related to how some people have a hard time with written representations of accents, because they don’t translate the letters into sounds, but instead translate tehm directly into some word-conceptual form.

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10. wildcat Writes:
    January 23rd, 2004 at 8:12 pm

    Silly Americans. Everyone knows that today is 23/1/4. Sorry, the m/d/y system simply doesn’t make sense and isn’t used by anyone outside of anglo-North America. Even in anglo Canada it isn’t used universally. y/m/d and d/m/y both make sense. m/d/y? Silly.

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11. bean Writes:
    January 24th, 2004 at 4:04 am

    Of course m/d/y makes sense — that’s how you say it. If you spell it out, you spell it out January 23, 2004; therefore, 1/23/04 makes more sense than 23/01/04. Silly Canadians. :p

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12. Chris Writes:
    January 24th, 2004 at 10:40 am

    Difficult to believe no-one mentioned 6/6/6 yet. ;)

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13. Aaron Writes:
    January 25th, 2004 at 9:47 pm

    Or, if you’re Chinese, 08/08/08 - Friday’s Trib had an article on the Chinese New Year, and how 82nd Avenue is considered lucky because both 8 and 2 are lucky.

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14. Raznor Writes:
    February 3rd, 2004 at 6:52 pm

    Hey, this is still an open thread so:

    [blogwhoring]Don’t forget to vote in the first official Raznor Awesome List.[\blogwhoring]

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15. Andrew Writes:
    November 6th, 2004 at 6:48 am

    bean, What if you say it “The 23rd of January”? I do, and I think it’s quite normal in dd/mm/yy-using Britain (and in French and German).

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