Why 12-Hour Time is Flawed

I today write to propose that the system that we use to keep time is flawed. Stay calm, for it is only a minor adjustment that needs to be made.

For people of a certain disposition that's not necessarily sweet, (and of course I'm referring to people like me) 24-hour time seems to be the only one worth following. Indeed, it would be fairly hazardous and confusing trying to follow both 12-hour and 24-hour time - not to mention a complete waste of time !¹
It's fortunate, then, that I've stepped into the vast breach that is this flawed system.

For those interested/bored, you may or may not be questioning why I use 24-hour time. Simply, it's simple, and unambiguous.

The opposite goes for 12-hour time. The problem is it seems to be doubling up on information. Let me expound on what I mean.

If we start at midnight - which is problematic in itself - or 0.00, then 12-hour time works fine until we get, funnily enough, to noon. Some scallywag, in trying to come up with a solution, just confused everybody bar themselves by decreeing that there would be an arbitrary line known as the meridiem, assumably referring to noon, the point of which is to signify the time at which the sun is highest in the day. Hence, morning is ante meridiem, or before this point and afternoon, evening and night are post meridiem, or after this point.

There are many problems with this setup.

Wikipedia, as is often the case, has much to say on this matter. The article delineates one part of the issue, viz., assuming am is midnight and pm noon, one runs the risk of the thing occurring to them when one assumes. And, contrary to popular belief, I don't like being made an ass of. (Just for the record of adding to the compendium of what style guides (or is that "styleguides") have to say on the issue, everybody's favourite fair and balanced news media company News Limited says to "use noon and midnight, not 12pm and 12am which do not exist".)

But there is another problem.

I hope we are all on the same page when I declare 11am is a later point in the day than 1am. But what is really being signified here? I pointed out above that am is "before the point of afternoon". So what's happening here is 11am, which we all (hopefully) agreed is a later point in the day than 1am is actually eleven hours before noon, while 1am is one hour before noon. How silly is that?

(Afternoon, evening and night is not a problem, again presupposing noon as the fixed point around which all other times are based, because the measurement of time (1pm, 3pm &c) concords with what is actually happening (one hour after, or post, noon; three hours after, &c).)

What should happen is we should modify the morning hours to concord with what is happening. So while 6am would remain constant, we should change the current measurement to its complementary number. Eg 11am would become 1am, 4am would become 8am &c.

Change is diificult, I appreciate, and I also appreciate that there other issues the thinking person could spend crucial hours on: climate change, not resting until Prime Minister Gillard is guillotined then hanged, drawn and quartered &c.

But the clock is ticking.

   

^{1. This joke was, in fact, not written by Jerry Seinfeld. Not that there's anything wrong with that↩}