[color=#000000
ost_uid0]>> I'm not sure how 12:01am makes the time unambiguous though. Isn't saying 2 in the morning just as
ambiguous? If someone says to me that there will be a party starting on the 25th at 2am, do they mean the 2am on the actual morning of
the 25th or the actual morning of the 26th? Doesn't the ambiguity come from the fact that people still consider early morning to be the
night of the previous day? <<
It's not ambiguous if you think of "dates" as opposed to "days". People often think of "days" as starting and stopping at unofficial points -- like when they get up and when they go to sleep, or in nighttime-versus-daytime terms. People who stay up past midnight are still in the same *day* as far as they're concerned (since their day ends when they go to sleep), but they've actually straddled two different *dates*.
For official purposes (and as far as the little clock at the bottom right corner of your computer's screen is concerned), a particular *date* (like December 25th, for instance) begins at midnight and ends the following midnight. So officially, 2 a.m. on the 25th can't be anything other than 2 a.m. on the 25th. It's vague time designations like "party starting on the morning of the 25th" (with no time given) that are open to misinterpretation and which could conceivably mean the 26th -- especially if you're already sloshed on eggnog at the time of the invitation.[/color
ost_uid0]