What is the date?

The trouble with a global 24/7 interconnected world is that you quickly become unmoored from any sense of location, or even date and time. Just now I found myself wondering what the date was. Sure I can check my computer's clock, but that confirms the point.

I was reading a story on The New York Times web site entitled "For Clinton and Obama, Different Tests on Iraq" and wasn't sure if it was from today or yesterday. Parts seemed very familiar, but other parts of the article seemed new. So, I scrolled back to the top of the first page of the article and checked. It said "Published: February 12, 2007", which is neither today or yesterday, but tomorrow. Granted today is alread tomorrow on the west side of the international date line, but what exactly does it mean for an article to say "Published: February 12, 2007" when it is posted on a web site on February 11, 2007? I'm assuming it simply means "To be Published in the print edition that will be dated: February 12, 2007."

The "dateline" for the article is Feb 11, which is in fact today, but probably means that at least some of the reporting and possibly even some of the writing were done on Saturday, February 10.

For the record, I am posting this on Sunday, February 11, 2007 at 8:34 p.m. PT. Hopefully Blogger will properly record that date and time.

-- Jack Krupansky