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Time to Dump Time Zones

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Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#261

Post by reflexive »

jedberg wrote: post #145
raldi wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without Standard Time, it would have been dark out until 7:40am today here in SF. That's really tough on people (or children) who have to be at work/school by 9 or even 8. By mid-December, sunrise wouldn't be until almost 8:30. In Seattle, it would be dark outside until 9am. Losing an hour of sleep in the spring is rough, but I'd rather do that (and get an extra hour in the fall) than have to get ready in the dark al…

And yet even with DST, kids in Alaska manage to get to school despite the sun coming up at 10am. This whole "for the kids@ argument is the worst one. Most workers today would prefer going to work in the dark and having daylight after work. Even farmers will tell you DST doesn't make a diffence to them anymore (or ever). The animals get up with the sun regardless of what the clock says. I agree with OP -- in today's m…

> Most workers today would prefer going to work in the dark and having daylight after work.

Daylight in the morning suppresses the action of the pineal gland. This helps you wake up. Getting up in the dark may sound like fun but it's fighting against your own body.

http://www.more.com/lifestyle/exercise-health/finally-humans...

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#262

Post by mxfh »

upofadown wrote: post #147

If you have UTC and solar time available, you don't need zone time anymore. If you need to coordinate with other people you use UTC. If you want to do things at a particular time of day you use solar time. If you decide to go to work at, say, an hour after sunrise you get all the advantages of DST, anywhere in the world, without any of the disadvantages. The reason DST sucks is because of the way time zones force all…

My argument as well, keep local time in sync with solar events, mean solar time for practicality.

School should start relative to sunrise. Work depending on preference, relative to sunrise/noon/sunset/timezone or utc.

All other events that need cross metro region syncs, trains, planes and tv schedules should stick with time zones.

I kept a sunrise calendar sheet in the kitchen to be able to bike at sunlight home and to work, it's really all up to flexibility of your workplace and not about DST and "more" daylight.

In the Northern hemisphere this is mostly relevant for the months around winter solstice, since otherwise there is enough daylight. I just see no reason to send kids to school in the dark.

http://www.aasmnet.org/articles.aspx?id=5176

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#263

Post by cyberferret »

stephen_g wrote: post #253
cyberferret wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely fixes one of the biggest planning problems I come across all the time (as someone who follows international sporting fixtures a fair bit). If I hear "The US Formula 1 GP will be starting at 2pm local time", I have to then go through multiple steps as follows in order to ensure that I can watch it: 1. Ok, WHERE is the US F1GP being held? 2. I have to identify which timezone Austin, Texas is in 3. I have…

If you have a smartphone or computer, just type '2pm in Austin' into Google - I get '2:00 pm Sunday, in Austin, TX, USA is 6:00 am Monday, in Brisbane QLD'

True. But as I mentioned in my example, it relies on having a phone and internet connection ready and available to process the information, which is really the issue here.

On two occasions recently, someone mentioned an event to me when I wasn't connected up. Once at a bar late at night when my phone battery was dead, and once while a colleague and I were out literally in the outback driving around a remote area outside of internet coverage. Both times I had to wait until much later to figure out the event start time so I wouldn't miss it the next day.

If I am travelling home on a non-WiFi long haul flight and the guy in the seat next to me says "Oh, don't miss the qualifying for the Bahrain GP - I think they are running it at 11am their time", I don't want to go diving for my phone and ask the internet to resolve it.

Adding 9.5 hours to a UTC time datum though, is so extremely trivial.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#264

Post by roel_v »

wott wrote: post #211
roel_v wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, it might be a social construct. I'd never say 'treize heures' to set a time with my Parisian colleagues, and neither would they (to the best of my recollection). Sometimes people would say it, yes, but it'd sound strangely artificial, like read literally from a schedule - which in many cases it would be.

I have the feeling that it is fairly recent. When I was a kid, I think that nobody used it regularly, then it started to be used on the radio and TV, and then, when I came back home after having spent 8 years abroad, I was surprised to hear it used by the average citizen. I am not fond of it. It is heavy and in most use cases, doesn't bring more information than 1-12, because the context makes generally obvious to kn…

Okay okay I get it - you're all gently breaking it to me that I'm now officially old. I, too, used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me, and it'll happen to you, too.

(sorry about that ;) )

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#266

Post by acqq »

rtpg wrote: post #236
majewsky wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his error is in assuming that the zenith should correspond to the midway point of your workday. Which is entirely not true: Our society is organized around getting to work first thing in the morning, and having some sunlight left after work hours for social activities.

My point is that 9AM in Tokyo and 9AM in Madrid or Virginia are vastly different in terms of "position of the sun", despite being the same longitude. http://blog.poormansmath.net/images/SolarTimeVsStandardTimeV... So Tokyo is set to a 9-5, but if they want to follow the same strategy of getting to work first thing in the morning, then they should be doing 7-3, or even a bit earlier due to DST non-observance. Main poi…

Thanks for the picture, nice. I see it's from

http://blog.poormansmath.net/the-time-it-takes-to-change-the...

As the picture shows, Spain and the parts of France are the extremes in the Europe, in the rest of Europe the Sun is closer to being at 12:00 (not counting DST) not too different to Tokyo.

Yes, the map you link shows is that some parts of the world have wider time zones than it would allow all the people living there to have the Sun very close to 12:00. But your "Tokyo sunrise" argument is still not a good one. All the areas (and cities) in the map that are "relatively white" have Sun at the highest point around 12:00 noon. Tokyo is "relatively white." New York and LA are also "relatively white." So I still don't know what is your perspective for Tokyo being strange. Can you please explain? The dramatic example would in fact be Spain or even Argentina.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#267

Post by pasquinelli »

iamdave wrote: post #153
arcticfox wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct. We call the 24-hour clock "military time" and basically no one uses it casually.

I do. Granted, I was in the military-I passively hate it when people call it 'military time' (passively meaning I mentally roll my eyes when someone says it), but I've been using it since middle school when I first even learned it was a thing. Mostly because it made sense right away. There are 24 hours in the day. Why are we recycling numbers in our time system? No really, why?

maybe it has something to do with sundials.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#268

Post by parthdesai »

reflexive wrote: post #226

The advantage of daylight savings is I can set my schedule to wake up at the same time each day, while maximizing my daylight hours and never getting up before dawn. Without the shift for daylight savings, the sunrise time in San Francisco varies from 5:47a at the summer solstice, to 8:25a just after winter solstice. If I set my schedule to get up at 8:25a every day, I'd miss a significant amount of morning sunlight.…

And yet by the time i leave my work at 5:30-6 pm, it is pitch dark. I personally would prefer having some daylight after work.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#269

Post by barnacs »

emodendroket wrote: post #237
barnacs wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in the future the number of people commuting to their jobs will be decreasing. Anyway, let's keep to the present. You could optimize the location of the zones for traffic. For example, we know that everyone will sleep at some point, so the resting zone could be at the center of the city. Then throughout the day, people would commute in and out of the center in all directions at about a constant rate. That's a…

The reason why the clock became important in the industrial world was that it allows coordination of large, modern enterprises. I'm not sure how this system really solves this problem, nor do I understand why you need to start messing with time zones to have people live in an essentially pre-industrial way (you can just let them ignore the clock, after all).

Without time zones, we'd still have clocks and a universally consistent description of time, which allows for coordination. What specific problems are you thinking of that would harder/impossible to solve without time zones?

I guess you're right that the things I describe would be possible with or without timezones. It's just that the premise of abolishing time zones is what made me question whether the heavy dependence of our lifestyle on the 'local time of the day' is justified.

We could just "ignore" the local time, but some activites seem to be mutually exclusive in the same neighborhood, such as sleeping and operating loud heavy machinery. So if there's no widely accepted temporal separation, we must take spatial separation more seriously. Also, if everyone "ignored" local time globally, then time zones would become obviously meaningless :)

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#270

Post by jwhitlark »

maxerickson wrote: post #208
roel_v wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, as a novelty. Who here has ever seen one like that in the wild? And yes, I think 24 is much harder to read, and not necessary either - in those situations where you don't know (when looking at a clock) whether it's 3am or 3pm, you have much bigger issues to worry about :)

My point was more in the second para, that 12 hour clocks aren't a platonic ideal, they are likely a result of practical demands. We make 12 hour dials rather than having them thrust upon us.

James Burke said in one of his shows that the 12 hour clock came in because it was ridiculous to have clock tower bells strike 24.
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