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Today is a Palindrome

By Miss Cellania in Everything Else on Jan 2, 2010 at 1:15 pm


January 2, 2010 is a palindrome, at least in countries that write the date in the mm/dd/yyyy form. Personally, I’ve been writing the date without initial zeros, like 12-3-9, but that’s just me. Who notices such things? Professor Aziz Inan of the University of Portland, who teaches electrical engineering but loves math puzzles.

A native of Istanbul, Inan creates math puzzles in his spare time. So it was a big day when he looked closely at his own name and saw a pattern. His first and last names are both vowel-consonant-vowel-same consonant — and, if you write the names in all caps, switch the vowels and turn one set of consonants 90 degrees, both names are the same.

“I jumped in my chair,” he said of the day two years ago when the connection hit him. “My parents had no idea.”

The next palindromic date will be November 2, 2011. Link -via J-Walk Blog


 
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  1. MadMolecule
    Jan 2nd, 2010 at 2:00 pm

    I noticed that yesterday was a binary day in mm/dd/yy format: 01/01/10.

  2. Skipweasel
    Jan 2nd, 2010 at 2:11 pm

    Why do Americans use such a perverse format for date? You don't put the seconds between the hours and the minutes, so why put the days between the months and the years?
    Anyway - YYY/MM/DD makes more sense - so us Brit don't get full marks either.

  3. SouDesuKa
    Jan 2nd, 2010 at 2:36 pm

    Actually, the next palindromic date depends on how you write it. If you leave off leading zeros, then XX/YY/10 can't have any, otherwise 1/1/11 works, and 1/10/11, as well. If you write YYYY/MM/DD then 2010/01/02 still works and maybe 2010/10/2, and 2011/10/2 in addition to 2011/11/02. Does anyone write DD/MM/YYYY? That could offer 01/02/2010 (feb 2nd)

  4. SouDesuKa
    Jan 2nd, 2010 at 2:36 pm

    ... err Feb 1st

  5. Moti The Wonder Dog
    Jan 2nd, 2010 at 5:35 pm

    Hurrah! That would be a palindrome in

    Belize
    Canada
    Federated States of Micronesia
    Palau
    Philippines
    United States

  6. gia
    Jan 2nd, 2010 at 6:39 pm

    The next palindrome day is still 01.02.2010 or 01/02/2010 aka 1st February as barely most of the world that actually uses a Gregorian calendar keeps it dd.mm.yyyy or dd/mm/yyyy and not mm/dd/yyyy.
    And then we have all the non-Gregorian systems...

  7. Kay
    Jan 2nd, 2010 at 7:18 pm

    On government forms they often specify MM/DD/YYYY, but if you're just writing the date on a letter (ha!) or something, what's the purpose of writing a zero before a single digit day or month? I really hate when people do that.

  8. Larfin Jackarse
    Jan 2nd, 2010 at 9:38 pm

    @Skipweasel I totally agree.
    However in the defence of yanq's you do say 'July the 12th' or 'Feb 1st' etc don't you? Thus 7/12/10 makes sense. Or so an North American elegantly explained to me once (even though she preferred dd/mm/yy).

  9. Pris
    Jan 3rd, 2010 at 11:03 am

    People....get a life.

  10. Mona Curtis
    Jan 3rd, 2010 at 7:39 pm

    Just thought I'd let you know that I featured you on my page for January 2, in 365 Holidays a Year, where every day is a reason to celebrate.

  11. niclet
    Jan 4th, 2010 at 12:42 am

    I personally use the yymmdd format (yes, without slash) for any of my documents. It is way more logic, more easier to sort and faster to retrieve. In this format, the next palindrome will be 101101.

  12. Beatitude Sputnik
    Jan 8th, 2010 at 5:06 am

    slightly more than a second after 8:10 pm on Jan 02 it was

    2010/01/02 - 20:10:01.02

    I don't really care how my country or America or Europe writes their dates or times. That's how I write dates. because it's the logical way. And when's the last time you saw a country write a date anyways. That's .. bizarre. A country doesn't have hands. It's made of rocks and dirt. You're weird, Neatorama. You, as a website, should stop saying things like that.

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