I agree with Nigel -- following 11:59 p.m (post meridiem) with 12:00 a.m. (ante meridiem) is silly. Sillier is the fact that 12:00 through 12:59 ante meridiem immediately precede 1:00 ante meridiem. It's all the fault of the analog clock, I suppose.

But even on an analog clock, when the minute hand points straight up we don't call it minute #60 of an hour; we call it the starting point (:00) of a new hour. Therefore midnight, by rights, should be 0:00 a.m.(the start of a new minute in a new day), the minute after it should be 0:01 a.m., and so forth. Following this logic, noon should be 0:00 m. (meridiem) and the very second after it would be 0:00:01 p.m. So all analog clocks should have a zero in place of the 12 on the dial... but that'll never happen. Makes me wonder whether clocks were invented (or perhaps derived from the sundial?) before the zero was used as a starting point for time periods. Military time is, of course, the most logical system: just count up to 24 hours.

Speaking of starting points and counting up, I've taken a few minutes to explore the strange sequence of the first few Mudcat threads (listed by date of first post per thread). Not only does threadID1 come after threadID4, it comes after threadID20! You'll see that threads ID3 and ID11 are missing from view entirely...

threadid4    1 Oct 96   12:00 a.m.
threadid5    1 Oct 96   12:07 a.m.
threadid6    1 Oct 96    9:47 a.m.
threadid2    2 Oct 96    8:35 a.m.
threadid7    2 Oct 96    3:38 p.m.
threadid8    2 Oct 96    8:59 p.m.
threadid9    3 Oct 96    7:46 a.m.
threadid10   3 Oct 96   12:28 p.m.
threadid12   3 Oct 96    8:14 p.m.
threadid13   4 Oct 96   12:41 a.m.
threadid14   4 Oct 96    4:13 p.m.
threadid15   6 Oct 96    8:56 a.m.
threadid16   6 Oct 96    8:59 a.m.
threadid17   6 Oct 96    9:01 a.m.
threadid18   6 Oct 96    4:36 p.m.
threadid19   6 Oct 96   11:55 p.m.
threadid20   7 Oct 96   12:18 a.m.
threadid1    7 Oct 96    7:33 a.m.
threadid21   7 Oct 96    7:45 a.m.
threadid22   7 Oct 96    2:32 p.m.