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Time to Dump Time Zones

nytimes.com

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Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#541

Post by Houshalter »

wan23 wrote: post #322
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…

Your radical time standard reform undoes your first change - it's already based on the number 12, remember? 24 is two 12-hour periods - A.M. and P.M. and 60 minutes/seconds is 12 five-minute/second periods (the numbers on a clock).

It's based on 24, which is divisible by 12. But that's not quite the same as having a clock that is based on the base you use. A base 12 clock would work just like a decimal clock, just with 2 extra symbols. It would not look like the base 24 clock with base 60 minutes and base 60 seconds.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#542

Post by Houshalter »

mark-r wrote: post #470
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…

When I was a kid, I toyed with the idea of metric time. I realized it wouldn't work when I thought about TV shows - a 30 minute show would need to be condensed into 2 14.4 minute centi-days. That would require losing 1.2 minutes of commercials, never gonna happen.

A half hour in decimal time (half a deciday), would be 72 minutes normal time. A quarter decimal hour/deciday would be 36 normal minutes, which is pretty close and gives even more time for ads.

You could also split time further into thirds, which would work even better with a base 12 system.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#543

Post by Houshalter »

m_eiman wrote: post #357
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…

Every 1rst is a Sunday. Except the week starts with Monday. At least in the civilized world…

It's really not important at all... The point is this calendar would line up the week cycle with the month cycle, which has a ton of advantages. You can't throw that away just because you can't agree what day of the week should come first.

Hell, while we are at it we can just rename the days firstday, secondday, etc, and not have to deal with that issue.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#544

Post by lmm »

the_watcher wrote: post #524
lmm wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It's the same amount of effort either way - either you look up the timezone for Italy or you look up the business hours for Italy. The difference is there are fewer opportun…

No, if someone tells me it is 10 am in Italy, I know what time it is there. If you tell me it's 17:00 UTC, I have no idea what that is without looking it up.

> if someone tells me it is 10 am in Italy, I know what time it is there.

Right, but they've still had to look it up. And if they looked it up last week, they'll be wrong this week.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#545

Post by grkvlt »

jwhitlark wrote: post #270
maxerickson wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wouldn't they strike zero, for 00h00 since there's no 24h00 after 23h59.59? Which, admittedly, would be rediculous ;)

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#546

Post by mark-r »

Houshalter wrote: post #542
mark-r wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a kid, I toyed with the idea of metric time. I realized it wouldn't work when I thought about TV shows - a 30 minute show would need to be condensed into 2 14.4 minute centi-days. That would require losing 1.2 minutes of commercials, never gonna happen.

A half hour in decimal time (half a deciday), would be 72 minutes normal time. A quarter decimal hour/deciday would be 36 normal minutes, which is pretty close and gives even more time for ads. You could also split time further into thirds, which would work even better with a base 12 system.

I assumed you'd be breaking the units into tenths all the way down, not quarters as you advocate here. Would certainly solve the problem though, maybe even too well.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#547

Post by Kurimo »

minznerjosh wrote: post #61
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…

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…

Except the economy is becoming more globalized and many people's jobs have them working at odd times anyway. I used to work 4pm-1am EST and so my schedule aligned more closely with people in hawaii and australia so I ended up befriending people in those locations on the internet since they were awake when I was.

I think this will be a more and more common thing as more of our lives ends up online. It won't matter when the sun shines so much as what is normal to the individual.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#548

Post by DocTomoe »

lorenzhs wrote: post #417
iagooar wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like that everywhere in Europe. Nobody says 'see you at fifteen'. And, as always, trying to generalize over a whole continent doesn't work out. It's perfectly fine in German or Polish to say "see you at fifteen".

It's uncommon in personal settings, though, at least in German. If you call your doctor to make an appointment, they might ask you if "fifteen thirty" suits you, but when fixing a time for meeting your friends at a café you'd say "halb vier" (half four, which is 15:30 in Germany, but 16:30 in the UK. Yay confusion!)

Actually, "Halb vier" (half four) can mean both in Germany, depending on which village you are in. It becomes even more confusing if you use something like "Viertel vier", which, depending on your village, can mean 15:15, 15:45 or 16:15.

This is why the less rural people over here use exact time.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#549

Post by lorenzhs »

DocTomoe wrote: post #548
lorenzhs wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's uncommon in personal settings, though, at least in German. If you call your doctor to make an appointment, they might ask you if "fifteen thirty" suits you, but when fixing a time for meeting your friends at a café you'd say "halb vier" (half four, which is 15:30 in Germany, but 16:30 in the UK. Yay confusion!)

Actually, "Halb vier" (half four) can mean both in Germany, depending on which village you are in. It becomes even more confusing if you use something like "Viertel vier", which, depending on your village, can mean 15:15, 15:45 or 16:15. This is why the less rural people over here use exact time.

Citation needed! I've never heard anyone use the "half past" meaning. The quarter thing is confusing, though. While I have never heard of anyone parsing "viertel vier" as 15:45 or 16:15, many people are confused as it's somewhat uncommon here.

Not sure why you feel the need to imply people using "half" are somehow impaired (as the attribute "rural" is often used to imply backwardness). The "half" notation is ubiquitous in the south.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uhrzeit#Sprechweise_im_Deutsch...

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#550

Post by Houshalter »

mark-r wrote: post #546
Houshalter wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A half hour in decimal time (half a deciday), would be 72 minutes normal time. A quarter decimal hour/deciday would be 36 normal minutes, which is pretty close and gives even more time for ads. You could also split time further into thirds, which would work even better with a base 12 system.

I assumed you'd be breaking the units into tenths all the way down, not quarters as you advocate here. Would certainly solve the problem though, maybe even too well.

The units are based on 10, but nothing stops people from dividing it further. Just as someone might use a unit of "half a kilometer" or "half a liter", which are other base 10 units.
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