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Time to Dump Time Zones

nytimes.com

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Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#531

Post by detaro »

wst_ wrote: post #529

Could anyone, please, explain to me why 12:00 the noon is 12PM? Why PM? I come from Europe so it may be not so obvious to me. My reasoning is, assuming 12h clock, we have 12:00 twice a day. Once in the morning and once at night. So it would be only natural to say 12PM at midnight, not at noon. Since we already are dividing day for two halves, why not use exactly the same division for AM/PM? And yet, in the morning we…

I think the best explanation is that AM means "before noon" and PM means "after noon" (ante meridiem/post meridiem), and it works better this way for all minutes after the hour: 12:01 PM is after noon, 12:01 AM is before noon (of the day it occurs on). Exactly noon and exactly midnight then are edge cases that don't make much sense, but they probably would be either way. Language probably used noon/midnight for a long time, only in newer times people started to write numbers for those as well.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#532

Post by atomicUpdate »

wst_ wrote: post #529

Could anyone, please, explain to me why 12:00 the noon is 12PM? Why PM? I come from Europe so it may be not so obvious to me. My reasoning is, assuming 12h clock, we have 12:00 twice a day. Once in the morning and once at night. So it would be only natural to say 12PM at midnight, not at noon. Since we already are dividing day for two halves, why not use exactly the same division for AM/PM? And yet, in the morning we…

The AM/PM lines are drawn at midnight and noon exactly. So from 00:00 to 11:59 it's AM, then from 12:00 to 23:59 it's PM.

With your logic, The AM/PM lines would be drawn at 01:00 and 13:00. I think most people would find that counterintuitive, since each day draws the line at 00:00, but it would still be PM for another hour after that.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#533

Post by sdm »

lucideer wrote: post #260
ProxCoques wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the impression Americans don't use 24-hour clock much. In Europe it's pretty much standard if you want to communicate time reliably. Or am I mistaken about the American love of am/pm?

I find this comment unexpected, being Irish, as I would've associated the attachment to 12 hour intervals much more with here than with the US. But I guess it's a British colonial throwback thing; I'd be curious to hear of au/nz/ca/za/in/etc. habits.

For Canada:

In Quebec, the 24 hour clock is the norm.

Outside of Quebec, the 12 hour clock is the majority but a significant minority use the 24 hour clock. Everyone understands the 24 hour clock in my experience though.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#534

Post by kleigenfreude »

serge2k wrote: post #528
knz wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet nearly every other major developed country has managed to make the switch... The issue of cost is not unique to America.

The issue of some weirdos making it about freedom is probably pretty unique to america.

That's new to me. I work for a company that doesn't work in metric, and the reasons we haven't switched are:

1. The customers use inches.

2. The expensive machines we use are configured in inches.

3. The code we use uses inches.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#535

Post by sdm »

imron wrote: post #258
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…

Let's look at the single data point we have where this sort of system is in place - China. It's approximately as wide as the U.S. and it has a single timezone - Beijing time. As you can imagine, if you are living in Beijing, Beijing time works pretty well. It also works pretty well for everywhere else on the east coast. It's not so bad in the middle either. For the people living in Urumqi, or even further west such a…

China isn't really an example of what the article is talking about. In China, everything runs on Beijing time. Everyone in Western China is expected to shift their day to meet up with Beijing time. If they followed the FA the people in Urumqi would not shift their day, instead would use the appropriate local hours. I.e., right now they operate say 9-17, if they followed the article they would operate say 13-21.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#536

Post by astrodust »

kleigenfreude wrote: post #534
serge2k wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue of some weirdos making it about freedom is probably pretty unique to america.

That's new to me. I work for a company that doesn't work in metric, and the reasons we haven't switched are: 1. The customers use inches. 2. The expensive machines we use are configured in inches. 3. The code we use uses inches.

1. Tradition.

2. Tradition.

3. Tradition.

The same could be said for a fractional stock market back before decimalization.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#537

Post by macspoofing »

raldi wrote: post #339
macspoofing wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's really tough on people (or children) who have to be at work/school by 9 or even 8 In what way? People (and kids) survive wars and famines I'm sure we can handle a little bit of darkness. But if you really really can't, there's no reason why in winter, school couldn't start an hour later. Probably a good idea regardless.

> People (and kids) survive wars and famines I'm sure we can handle a little bit of darkness. I never claimed otherwise. To use your own rhetoric: People, including kids, survive wars and famines; I'm sure we can handle changing the clocks twice a year. But to clarify my position, it's that when asked to choose between two hardships: * Gain an hour of sleep every fall, lose an hour of sleep every spring * Have an ext…

>I never claimed otherwise.

"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"

>To use your own rhetoric: People, including kids, survive wars and famines; I'm sure we can handle changing the clocks twice a year.

I agree. However, I didn't suggest that DST imposed any hardships.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#538

Post by danso »

leppr wrote: post #440
danso wrote: post #50

Dumping time zones might be painful, but in the long run it'd probably be the right thing to do. First, it'd make learning about time as a programmer much easier because you'd inherently know that it's a bit complicated and why epoch time and UTC is a thing instead of storing values like "Sunday 4PM". But more future facing...what are we going to do when we have colonies on the moon and Mars? Things are going to spir…

>First, it'd make learning about time as a programmer much easier Ok let's change how everybody thinks about time so that programmers have an easier time! >But more future facing...what are we going to do when we have colonies on the moon and Mars? IMO this is probably only until then that it'll start to make sense, since we may be living in buried/heavily radiation shielded habitats without any sunlight, there would…

I don't see programmers being a special profession. Time affects us all, and it's a complex thing that's worth spending time contemplating, and I really don't think the math is hard, if there is even much math.

Though admittedly, I do enjoy such clusterfucks as this: http://www.salon.com/2013/06/28/alec_baldwin_deletes_twitter...

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#539

Post by bbcbasic »

irascible wrote: post #231
bluejekyll wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I vote a 256 day year, of 8 , 16 day months. Each month is 4, 4 day weeks, with odd weeks being mandatory global time off. New years is a one bMonth long global celebration, also time off. This has a beneficial side effect of making date handling easier for 8 bit microcontrollers, so when the singularity happens, the superAI will take pity on us because we showed mercy to its ancestors.

That's a hell of a lot of Earth angular momentum you need to destroy!

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#540

Post by Houshalter »

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.

I want to switch time to whatever base people use. If we switch to superior base 12, we should also switch to superior base 12 clocks.
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