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Time to Dump Time Zones

nytimes.com

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Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#361

Post by grzm »

scottmf wrote: post #359
Houshalter wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

28 is perfect because it's divisible by 7. So every day lands on the same day of every month and every year. Every 1rst is a Sunday. But really, while we are on the topic of reform, is there any particular reason the week should be 7 days? Or that there should be a week at all? Time keeping is also weird. Base 24 and 60 is so arbitrary. Make it base ten, and you can express date and time easily. Right now is 6.976. T…

You want to switch time to base 10 and everything else to base 12 even though you consider it to be arbitrary? We use 12, 60 (and 360deg) because our fingers are divided into 12 sections on the palm side. You can use your thumb to point to each section on your right hand, counting to 12, while using the number of fingers on your left hand to keep track of how many 12s (up to 5) hence base 60.

This sounds interesting, but I'm skeptical. 12, 60, and 360 have nice mathematical properties independent of human morphology. Do you have references to cite this?

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#362

Post by [deleted] »

the_watcher wrote: post #239
apaprocki wrote: post #220

Maybe I'm the contrarian. I don't mind timezones at all. The thing that throws us for a loop is changing the timezone either temporarily due to some custom (Daylight Savings, Ramadan, elections, etc.) or permanently with little notice (populist tendencies in governments). I maintain timezone infrastructure and what I'd rather see is an international treaty that all changes to country timezones require some standard p…

No, you aren't contrarian. Remove timezones, and it still doesn't help me sort out if it's morning in Italy yet, or if business hours have started. In fact, it's more difficult, since I'd then have to figure out what Italian business hours are.

[deleted]

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#363

Post by pjmlp »

roel_v wrote: post #176
ci5er wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your impression is pretty much spot on. We have "military-time" and "24-hour time" available to us in all of our application configurations, but no-one seems to use it. I do because it helps me do time-zone translating transforms to/from UTC in my head more easily, but also because I keep failing to see that little "PM dot" or set the "PM Flag" whenever dealing with times in various applications or alarms. Verbally,…

"Verbally, speaking with USians, 15.00 is always pronounced "3pm"." It's like that everywhere in Europe. Nobody says 'see you at fifteen'. 24 hour clock is merely for writing things down. I mean it would already be an improvement if the US would catch up with that, just saying that a 24 hour clock isn't said out loud as such. (not disagreeing or anything with you I guess, just adding some information).

> It's like that everywhere in Europe. Nobody says 'see you at fifteen'.

Sorry but that is not how it works in Portugal.

We usually say 15.00 unless it is clear from context that 3 is 15.00.

For example if I am scheduling to meet for a coffee at 3, it surely isn't 3 AM.

Now if I am talking about meeting for something else at 10, and it isn't clear from context, usually I will be asked if I mean 10 or 22.

Besides AM / PM is something that we have to deal with in English based devices, that is it.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#364

Post by guilt »

I think the first thing to dump is the daylight savings time concept.

Then rebase the timezones based on UTC.

It won't help when you have a polar winter or a midnight summer - but at least it will remove unnecessary conversions.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#365

Post by hvidgaard »

darawk wrote: post #17

Hmm...this is an interesting idea. However, the core of the argument seems to be this: > “The economy — that’s all of us — would receive a permanent ‘harmonization dividend’ ”— the efficiency benefits that come from a unified time zone. But this editorial is pretty light on actually supporting that. The basic argument seems to be that it reduces 'translation costs'. But..does it? What about the benefits of being able…

What would happen if we did this, is that all the different timezones will now have an unofficial "sunrise" time, that is the time where you get into work/school.

Sure planning is "easier", except now you have to check that it does not interfer with every participants "sunrise" time. And if planning seems to be that hard, we can keep the current system and plan after UTC.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#366

Post by [deleted] »

bluejekyll wrote: post #274
eutropia wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.mithrandir.com/Tranquility/tranquility.html I think you're proposing this, 13 months named for scientists, one day outside the year.

Yes. Perfect. I've never seen that before. Thanks for sharing. It will never sell in the US though, the mere inclusion of Darwin will make it a political nightmare as people would be convinced we're atheists trying to kill their god.

[deleted]

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#369

Post by fsiefken »

reflexive wrote: post #332
Houshalter wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

28 is perfect because it's divisible by 7. So every day lands on the same day of every month and every year. Every 1rst is a Sunday. But really, while we are on the topic of reform, is there any particular reason the week should be 7 days? Or that there should be a week at all? Time keeping is also weird. Base 24 and 60 is so arbitrary. Make it base ten, and you can express date and time easily. Right now is 6.976. T…

> let's do away with base 10 entirely and go to 12 Why not hexadecimal, to help accelerate the singularity?

12 is the most optimal and usable base for humans - James Grime explains it at Numberphile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6xJfP7-HCc

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#370

Post by mahyarm »

bluejekyll wrote: post #160
minznerjosh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hits the nail on the head. Abandoning time zones would only make sense if there were no more need for time translation. But you'd still need to translate for the sake of biological clocks, and without time zones it would become more challenging to communicate that translation. I would be in favor of doing away with DST and also eschewing AM/PM in favor of a 24-hour clock. I'm surprised this article didn't mentio…

Yeah agree completely. And keeping zones is important to understand workdays. I wouldn't mind dropping named time zones completely in favor of UTC+Offset, I always end up looking that up, annoyingly. Or just name the zones based on the offset. So NY would be -5. We could for humans write time with the ecoding, similar to ISO-8601, but it would just be 15:30-5 for 3:30pm EST. While we're at it. Can we make all the mon…

You can do 19 months with 19 days with a 4 or 5 day holiday time in between. That way the number of months are equal to the number of days.
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