21–30 of 164 posts
metric. all hail the kiloday.
(Beyond being great novels, the above and its prequel, A Deepness in the Sky, have points of interest to Unix and Usenet users.)
A time scheme in which sunrise is always at same time (skewing the clock by a few seconds or minutes every day at three a.m.) is likely a boon to human health. Smart watches and Alexa/Siri take care of time zone calculations. The fact that two dimensional time zones skew a bit more at the poles is a silly reason to dismiss the idea. The poles are weird for a bunch of other reasons and no time works there.
> coordinating geographically dispersed events would become nearly impossible > I shouldn't need to adjust my wristwatch every few miles > many clocks do not have line-of-sight to GPS satellites > you can't put a GPS chip in a mechanical clock > clocks on planes would literally run backwards There is a reason most timezone offset by hours. It is very convinient for everyone to agree on the time when ignoring the most…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate to scapegoat, but there are a bunch of odd things the US does because boomers like things the way they've always been. Why were a bunch of new Christmas songs written 60 years ago and barely a song a decade has been added to the repertoire since? George Michael is dead, and Mariah Carey seemed touch and go for a while, and those are pretty much the last two people to create a successful Christmas song (and the…
US copyright terms: 1978+: Author's life + 70 years. 95 years if work-for-hire 1967-1977: 95 years 1924 - 1963: 28 years if never renewed. Maximum 95 years. Pre-1924 - All copywrights have expired
GenX has the song rotation handed down from the Boomers, and then they barely got anything new to hand down, if you exclude satires. I kinda have my fingers crossed for a holiday music Renaissance over the next twenty years. Probably started by a 54 year old Lin Manuel Miranda, trying to rekindle youthful moments.
ETA: and a switch to metric
A time scheme in which sunrise is always at same time (skewing the clock by a few seconds or minutes every day at three a.m.) is likely a boon to human health. Smart watches and Alexa/Siri take care of time zone calculations. The fact that two dimensional time zones skew a bit more at the poles is a silly reason to dismiss the idea. The poles are weird for a bunch of other reasons and no time works there.
Newcomers to qntm.org are advised to browse around a bit. There's some great stuff here. Here's one: https://qntm.org/responsibility
Newcomers to qntm.org are advised to browse around a bit. There's some great stuff here. Here's one: https://qntm.org/responsibility
And then there's https://qntm.org/hatetris
A time scheme in which sunrise is always at same time (skewing the clock by a few seconds or minutes every day at three a.m.) is likely a boon to human health. Smart watches and Alexa/Siri take care of time zone calculations. The fact that two dimensional time zones skew a bit more at the poles is a silly reason to dismiss the idea. The poles are weird for a bunch of other reasons and no time works there.
Tomorrow morning, sunrise in Boston is 5:29; NYC 5:46; Dayton OH 6:29; Miami, FL 6:43, all EDT.
If the USA can’t convert to metric, despite passing laws to that affect, my belief that the world will adopt a new calendar system is less than non-existent.
I hate to scapegoat, but there are a bunch of odd things the US does because boomers like things the way they've always been. Why were a bunch of new Christmas songs written 60 years ago and barely a song a decade has been added to the repertoire since? George Michael is dead, and Mariah Carey seemed touch and go for a while, and those are pretty much the last two people to create a successful Christmas song (and the…
Must a calendar only represent the physical positions of heavenly bodies? What happens after we propagate to other planets? Why should there be only one calendar? Why can’t we have, say, a Social Calendar alongside a Astronomical Calendar? We could have a sane, logical calendar with even and regular divisions for determining working days, holidays, financial calculations and political durations etc. And there could b…
Perhaps 'Christmas is always in the third winter time-block', or something to that effect.