Ack! It's the devil's day! 6/6/6!

Except...in the Philippines, this awful date actually started at 3 PM Pacific time...the day before. And there's nothing in the news about the Filipinos disappearing off the face of the earth or having some major catastrophe happen...Not to mention all the other countries in various time zones. If something huge is supposed to happen to the world on this date, it should be the same date everywhere in the world.

Unfortunately, the date already passed for Australia. It's either 12:20 or 1:20 there, on Wednesday. And it's 8:20 AM here.

Well, you know which culture is even more superstitious about numbers than we are? The Chinese. You know, they're the ones that pay millions of dollars for "lucky" telephone numbers. Let's see if they're hiding in their houses and covering their heads. Oh, look! According to this, they're actually all celebrating today! Today's a perfect day to get married, because 666 signifies holy matrimony in their culture!

And, here's a surprise - different cultures/religions have different calendars, so it's not the same for everybody. Who's going to be the first to say "The American Protestants count the days correctly and everybody else is wrong?" (To go back to an earlier point, who's going to say "The Pacific time zone is the correct one, so too bad Australia"?) If you say either of these things, you will quickly be labeled an intolerant, anti-everyoneelse pig.

If you are Baha'i, today is not Wednesday, the third day of the week, but Glory, the first day of the week. The date is "the tenth day (Might) of the sixth month (Mercy)". http://www.bcca.org/bahaivision/docs/today.html

If, somehow all cultures of the world discovered that 666 was a ominous sign in their societies, signifying the coming of the Antichrist, I might be more interested in this. If somehow all the time zones came together so we could accurately measure the beginning and end of the day together, I would have even more cause to believe that something would, indeed, happen.

I've read several articles making a big deal of this date because "it happens once a millenium". Actually, it happens once a century. On June 6, 1906, the date was 6/6/06. Same for 1806, etc. In fact, almost everyone who has ever lived under this calendar system has experienced, or will experience, this particular date.

If you're going to be picky and say that the second digit of the year must be a zero, there is no reason that the first digit shouldn't be a zero. The date is not 6/6/6; that's just an abbreviation for 06/06/2006. The true date 06/06/0006 has only happened once, but unfortunately it already happened, so we can't speculate about it.

And now, all you superstitious people, die in the face of my impeccable logic! Thanks to typing this out, I now have to warm up my tea again.