Solution to the Birthday Paradox

Sorry for the long time no post; I've been busy trying to make the internet a better place. Actually, no - that's a lie; I've been sitting here drinking segfaults and wading through Odwalla juice... err, other way around. Anyways, I promised you guys a solution to the birthday paradox, so without further ado, here it is:

Timezones.

That's right folks, I was born at 12:35 am EST on June 13, 2009 - which is equivalent to 9:35 pm PST on June 12, 2009. However, by no definition is June 12 my birthday - yet I clearly turned 20 years old (it was exactly 20 years from the moment of my birth, excepting error correction for planetary alignment things that I know nothing about) at that moment. Congratulations to those of you who guessed it correctly!

This whole situation got me thinking about the arbitrary nature of birthdays. For had I been born here in California at the exact moment that I was actually born in New York, my birthday would have been forever recorded as June 12, and I in turn would have gone through life celebrating my birthday one day earlier - writing down a 12 instead of 13 on the myriad papers I've filled out over the years, and more importantly, earning such privileges as the ability to drink or drive a car one day earlier than my east coast-born counterpart.

And its not just hypothetical - given the rate at which children are produced these days and the 2.5 hour window between 9:35 PM PST and midnight PST, there are probably several 20 year old Californians alive today who were born after me and get to celebrate their birthday first. And it gets worse... this works with every time zone!

Fortunately, I was able to easily resolve this problem by celebrating my birthday on both days. ^_^