Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin
Can water expire? Hmm…
Many places are having sales on bottled water. I can get a similarn24 half-Litter pack for $3.49 ($3.99?) at Target. I don’t know why this is.
NYC tap water.
I cannot drink tap water from my house because of mold spores that contaminate the line (or that’s my explanation for why I have allergic reactions when I drink it). I can drink public tap water just fine. I drink nothing but bottled water. I really wish they would bring back glass bottles, however.
The Chicken
Ah, 12/31/69. That tells me the sign was most probably done up on a Linux system by someone who didn’t quite know what they were doing. I suspect they used a template with a date field already on it, and forgot to fill in an actual date.
(The first one to tell the class why a blank date field reads as 12/31/69 wins a virtual banana. *silly grin*)
It’s the sale that is marked as ending on Dec. 31; that’s not the expiration date of the water. It is possible that they have a template that pulls the values from a database, and this one’s date got left at 0 = 1/1/1970, adjusted for local time = 12/31/1969.
I can get that for you @ $3.99…
water are getting expensive now a days. in Dubai water are more expensive than Gasoline.
My Mac also defaults to 12/31/69 when the battery goes dead and I have to recharge it. It is also a Unix-based OS (based on the open source BSD variant). This is the infamous Unix Epoch bug. Unix was created in 1969 and they started the kernel clock from January 1, 1970, expressed in hexadecimal with an update each second and new hexadecimal number. Now, if the counter resets, it sets to zero in hexadecimal, which should be 1/1/70, but allowing for time zones, the date can get pushed back to 12/31/69. Unfortunately, the largest hexadecimal number the epoch counter can store is equivalent to 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038. After that, the system will wrap around. This is sometimes called the Unix Millienium Bug or Y2K38 in geek-speak. This is much more serious than Y2K. Since Mac and Linux are both based on Unix, they have inherited this bug.
The Chicken
Use by dates on water also puzzled me.
According to the US Food and Drug Administration FAQ about Bottled Water
What is the shelf life for bottled water?
Bottled water is considered to have an indefinite safety shelf life if it is produced in accordance with CGMP and quality standard regulations and is stored in an unopened, properly sealed container. Therefore, FDA does not require an expiration date for bottled water. However, long-term storage of bottled water may result in aesthetic defects, such as off-odor and taste. Bottlers may voluntarily put expiration dates on their labels.
Are plastic containers for bottled water regulated?
The materials used to produce plastic containers for bottled water are regulated by the FDA as food contact substances. Food contact substances must be approved under FDA’s food additive regulations.
According to the British Soft Drinks Association
Why is there a sell by date on bottled water when it’s often comes from a source that’s potentially thousands of years old?
To prevent any taints or odours passing through the material and affecting the product. Also, the CO2 in carbonated water will slowly leak away.
Is there a difference in ‘life’ between different types of water?
No.
Is there a difference in ‘life’ between water packaged differently?
Water packaged in glass will tend to have a longer shelf-life than that packaged in PET; larger bottles will tend to have a longer shelf-life than smaller ones; still water will tend to have a longer shelf-life than carbonated.
How should water be stored?
Away from sunlight, strong odours, chemicals
Does storage affect the quality of the water?
It can do, which is why it is important to store it properly.
How long after opening bottled water can you drink it?
The recommended period is three days after opening to reduce the risk of contamination by microbes carried in the air.
end quotes.
I suppose there has to be a limit because of possible slow leaching of chemicals from plastic bottles and also because small amounts of bacteria are permitted in water and some spores are extremely resilient – even chickens are vulnerable!
I’ve seen algae and stuff growing in bottles of water kept in sunlight for long periods.
This is the infamous Unix Epoch bug.
Quite right, Mr. Chicken; you win the virtual banana.
This is sometimes called the Unix Millienium Bug or Y2K38 in geek-speak. This is much more serious than Y2K. Since Mac and Linux are both based on Unix, they have inherited this bug.
This, however, goes a bit far. A general solution is already in place on pretty much all modern Unix variants, which is simply to use a 64-bit signed integer for the time_t counter. This will delay the 2K38 bug until 15:30:08 on Sunday, 4 December, 292,277,026,596 A.D.
There really is no excuse (other than incompetence) for code written in recent years to go on using the old 32-bit time_t variable. Meanwhile, we have nearly 27 years to patch legacy code.
If my memory serves me correctly, you shouldn’t store bottled water on a cement floor (such as in the basement or a garage). Something about chemicals leaking into the water.
Has anyone else heard about this?
Yeah, I’ve been bitten by the Unix Epoch problem in some of my programming adventures.
The picture, however, took me more than one look to get. I didn’t notice the date at first and thought the joke was on “BETTER BUY” as in “YOU BETTER BUY IT SOON.”
Oblivious Linebyline is oblivious. What else is new?