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Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

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Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#111

Post by thaumasiotes »

kemiller wrote: post #38
austincheney wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better would be to go to a single Zulu timezone nationwide. You just go into work an hour later in the central area compared to the east coast.

Good God, no. The time isn’t just an arbitrary number to help coordinate meetings, it communicates what time of the day/night cycle you’re experiencing, to a reasonable approximation. Having separate time zones may be annoying, but it forces you to think about others’ experience. If I say I was up last night til 4 in the morning, that tells you something.

> If I say I was up last night til 4 in the morning, that tells you something.

No it doesn't.

If you say you got two hours of sleep, that tells me something. When you sleep is your own choice.

https://xkcd.com/361/

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#112

Post by rconti »

penagwin wrote: post #87
tzs wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If kids are a concern, what about the problem of DST in winter in northern areas meaning kids go to school in the dark? For example I see kids walking to school at around 7:15 AM (6th-8th grade and high school) and around 8:30 AM (K-5th grade). This is at latitude ~47.7° N (same latitude as the city that is part of your name, in fact). Here is what various DST options would do in terms of kids going to school before…

I'm not sure what you mean, here in Michigan a large chunk of the school year (maybe 50% ?) the highschool/middleschoolers go to school in the dark. It usually dark for another hour or more.

Well, Michigan is also insanely far west in an insanely large timezone, not to mention northerly.

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#113

Post by rconti »

KGIII wrote: post #16
Goronmon wrote: post #8

Maine is tentatively on-board: http://www.pressherald.com/2017/04/27/maine-may-switch-to-at... New Hampshire looks to be against it so far: http://www.concordmonitor.com/time-zone-change-atlantic-9808...

Yeah, it really screws with us up here. Once you get up above the meridian, days get pretty short in the winter. Moving those hours around helps exactly none. No farmer has their life improved. It's not saving energy. It's just a dumb setting on the clock.

The meridian? I assume you must mean some line of latitude, and after some searching, it looks like the 45th runs through Maine so it's my best guess.. I don't really remember there being a colloquial name for the 45th parallel though I remember seeing the sign every family roadtrip through OR to CA.

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#114

Post by photojosh »

grzm wrote: post #98
comicjk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could still have sunrise-based time zones the same way we have noon-based timezones now.

Would you elaborate on how this would work? I feel like I'm missing something obvious. The sun is roughly in the same position in the sky at noon each day—at least it's going to be midday for any human approximation of it. Sunrise (and sunset) vary throughout the year, and increasingly so with latitude along the same longitude. If the idea is to be sunrise-based, sunrise isn't going to be at roughly the same time alo…

Your sunrise wouldn't be exactly 6AM (or 7AM or whatever), it would be between 6-7 depending on where you are in the time zone.

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#115

Post by rconti »

santaclaus wrote: post #89
mikestew wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8:25 is the shortest day in Seattle (a tad north of the 47th), which is further north than anywhere else that isn't in WA (except for that little piece of MN). That's being nit-picky, though, as the practical outcome is that anything less than nine hours means you'll go to work in the dark and come home in the dark.

> which is further north than anywhere else that isn't in WA (except for that little piece of MN). Alaska?

The north pole? (I know, context matters)

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#116

Post by m0llusk »

Mz wrote: post #90
tzs wrote: post #81

One of the main purported benefits of DST is that it in effect moves some of the extra sunlight from the longer days of summer from the morning to the evening, where most of us are in a better position to use it. That's because without DST as the day lengthens the extra daylight is split evenly between morning and evening. But WHY does it split evenly? It's because we historically use noon as our reference. We think…

There is one flaw with your theory here: Historically, noon was defined locally by the sun being directly overhead. All time was local time. Then we invented trains and railroads and you couldn't schedule anything with such a system. Thus was born standardized time zones where it is the same time across large swaths of land. Noon is no longer strictly correlated to the sun being directly overhead. I think there are a…

My experience with the gig economy is that my schedule ends up being whatever is convenient for my clients.

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#117

Post by rconti »

mkempe wrote: post #103
_raoulcousins wrote: post #22

Over here in Seattle sunset is at 4:19 in winter. Maybe we need to switch to some other time zone.

Two things to say: a) come spend winter in Sweden... in Lapland the sun does not set at all in June and there is darkness around the clock in January; Stockholm is not that far up North, so we get a few hours of daylight in mid-December; and b) if lack of daylight in the winter is such an issue, maybe move to Southern California, or somewhere even closer to the equator. Three things, actually :-) c) consider spending…

I was actually surprised during a visit to Stockholm (granted, in May) that it was not light that much later than my native Seattle in the summer. I guess there's probably a reason major cities in Scandinavia are not all that far north in their respective countries :) I've been above the arctic circle in the summer, but thankfully never in the winter.

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#118

Post by grzm »

photojosh wrote: post #114
grzm wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you elaborate on how this would work? I feel like I'm missing something obvious. The sun is roughly in the same position in the sky at noon each day—at least it's going to be midday for any human approximation of it. Sunrise (and sunset) vary throughout the year, and increasingly so with latitude along the same longitude. If the idea is to be sunrise-based, sunrise isn't going to be at roughly the same time alo…

Your sunrise wouldn't be exactly 6AM (or 7AM or whatever), it would be between 6-7 depending on where you are in the time zone.

Sure. We have that now. But it also wouldn't be the same along the same longitude. Yes, 6AM would be the same, but now sunrise, midday, and sunset would all vary. At least with noon-based time zones, midday occurs at the same time along longitudes. People have an expectation that noon occurs midday, which is why the system is set up the way it is. This is how it was before we had time zones. It's a human-interface thing, more than anything else.

Am I missing something? Sure, we could have all sorts of different schemes. Most of them are not going to match human intuitions.

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#119

Post by jpatokal »

Koshkin wrote: post #83
shmerl wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing here. I use 24 hour system anywhere I can. Converting it isn't an effort for me. But I wish everyone around would use it.

Well, in English, you can't say "16 o'clock", can you? You can only say "sixteen hundred hours" (which sounds terrible, if you ask me).

You can if you're George Orwell writing 1984:

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#120

Post by Mz »

m0llusk wrote: post #116
Mz wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one flaw with your theory here: Historically, noon was defined locally by the sun being directly overhead. All time was local time. Then we invented trains and railroads and you couldn't schedule anything with such a system. Thus was born standardized time zones where it is the same time across large swaths of land. Noon is no longer strictly correlated to the sun being directly overhead. I think there are a…

My experience with the gig economy is that my schedule ends up being whatever is convenient for my clients.

That hasn't been my experience. I do what I can to try to promote the idea of gig work done well such that it is a net positive for the worker in metrics like quality of life and control over their schedule.

Granted, some things are inherently more flexible than others. An Uber driver can choose what hours to work, but is at the beck and call of people who need rides. If you want to make good money, you realistically need to work during busy times. But a lot of knowledge work can realistically be done whenever works best for the employee, so long as they get it done in time for the due date. You do need to arrange for such expectations though.

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