a timely non-techie intervention?

[jeffj at berkeley.edu]

Hello fluid folks,
Appreciate the work going on to create time and date storycards that will
produce universally-usable templates, forms, etc...and especially the
understanding that recent noon and midnight time representations of the
inherited British imperial system have become a bit illogical.
As you may know, the notion of "12 p.m." ("twelve after noon") and its
inverse "12 a.m." ("twelve before noon") came about because of a
money-saving shortcut by mid-20th century clockmakers, which became a
worldwide weirdness once MicroSoft-type outfits uncritically adopted the
error.

Besides permitting the "BBC option" of using international (24 hour) time,
the Time Picker Storycard
http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Time+Picker+Storycards
workers have decided to "define" 12 a.m. as midnight and 12 p.m. as noon,
and then overlay a notation that these respective times are actually
midnight and noon.
I'm wondering why it's necessary to jump through these hoops. Is it
absolutely impractical to write code that would simply permit the use and
registration of an "n" or "m" where that proved rational?

As has been said about México: "So far from God, and so close to the
Monster". Thanks for your patience with my linguistic logic! JJ