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Are the Americans Awake?

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Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#81

Post by Sankozi »

justrealist wrote: post #69
zokier wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm perplexed at the implication that we "decided" to have the number of time zones that we do, rather than just acknowledging the reality that the US is a fairly big country. Timezones are still a social construct, and decision made. Mainland China is wider than contiguous US, and yet it runs on single TZ.

Think about the concrete thing you're suggesting — making people 4 timezones away wake up early just to be aligned with bureaucrats! Eliminating timezones on its own does not make people wake up before dawn. Consolidating timezones while not forcing people into unnatural wake/sleep cycles accomplishes nothing. You still would have to figure out when people in SF wake up!

Why do you think it accomplishes nothing? Benefits just from communication perspective are enough to consider single timezone.

> You still would have to figure out when people in SF wake up!

Exactly! It is argument against multiple TZs not for it.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#82

Post by petesergeant »

zokier wrote: post #56
delecti wrote: post #43

I'm perplexed at the implication that we "decided" to have the number of time zones that we do, rather than just acknowledging the reality that the US is a fairly big country. It's cheating a bit with Alaska in the picture, but the US spans about twice the degrees of longitude as Europe, and it would still be solidly "wider" even if you limit to the lower 48 states.

> I'm perplexed at the implication that we "decided" to have the number of time zones that we do, rather than just acknowledging the reality that the US is a fairly big country. Timezones are still a social construct, and decision made. Mainland China is wider than contiguous US, and yet it runs on single TZ.

> Mainland China is wider than contiguous US, and yet it runs on single TZ

That's because a vast majority of the country (and certainly all the politically empowered citizens) live in a much smaller span for which the single timezone is pretty accurate. It works in China by not caring about people to the West.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#83

Post by ghostpepper »

yuck39 wrote: post #71
izzydata wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more perplexed that China decided it should only have 1 timezone. It also decided that timezone should be from the perspective of the eastern coast. When does the sun rise and fall for the western most people?

I actually liked the one time zone system in China when I lived there. It made scheduling work across different cities a little more convenient, and I didn't mind that the sunrise/sunset didn't always exactly line up to what I am accustomed to.

It must lead to some interesting language quirks around times of day. For example in the US/Canada if you say "Nobody wants to get a phone a call at 1AM" that means the same thing to anyone no matter where they're from. "I want you at your desk at 9 o'clock sharp". etc.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#84

Post by izzydata »

yuck39 wrote: post #71
izzydata wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more perplexed that China decided it should only have 1 timezone. It also decided that timezone should be from the perspective of the eastern coast. When does the sun rise and fall for the western most people?

I actually liked the one time zone system in China when I lived there. It made scheduling work across different cities a little more convenient, and I didn't mind that the sunrise/sunset didn't always exactly line up to what I am accustomed to.

I can understand not exactly lining up, but considering how large the country is and how Beijing is so far east it seems like people in the west would have the sun rise at 2:00 or the sunsetting at 14:00. I don't know this for certain I'm just curious how not lined up it can get at the most extremes.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#85

Post by leetcrew »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #72
izzydata wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more perplexed that China decided it should only have 1 timezone. It also decided that timezone should be from the perspective of the eastern coast. When does the sun rise and fall for the western most people?

Why shouldn't we have one timezone? Why not have one worldwide timezone? The sun rises and sets at different times according to both latitude and longitude. Timezones only handle longitudinal daylight adjustments. We already deal with plenty of incongruity around daylight. Why not embrace the variability and let go of the idea that we can predict daylight based on the hour alone? Let people localize the time to disco…

timezones don't need to perfectly predict whether the sun is up to be useful. when I set a meeting with a colleague in India, I don't really care whether the sun is up. it will almost surely be down for at least one of us. I am just trying to pick a reasonable time where they don't have to end work too late, and I don't have to start too early.

having everyone roughly align their work day to 9am-5pm in their local time works a lot better than asking every single person in my company for their working hours in UTC.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#87

Post by wpietri »

cvoss wrote: post #60
RegnisGnaw wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is "decided" which is correct. With 24 hours a day and 360 degrees of longitude, it should be simply 15 degrees per hour. The number of time zone that a country has is a political choice, perhaps based on geography somewhat. The size of each time zone is also variable depending on the choice the government makes. * Look at China for example, one time zone. * India is the same with one time zone. * Mountain Time Zo…

And there's also the decision to use hour-aligned timezones. Why not half hours? Why not two hours? It's very much a conscious decision.

Previous to the rise of the railroad, each place's time was based on solar noon. That is, when the sun was at the highest point. Which worked fine. It only became untenable when you needed to manually maintain and publish a railroad schedule. So time zones became a thing. Initially they were on a per-railroad basis, but eventually they got unified.

But now we have computers to do all the bookkeeping. So if we wanted, we could not only return to the previous approach, but take it further to infinite time zones. Your noon is whenever the sun is overhead for you. Our calendars always include locations for events, so the time difference is compensated for. Google Maps knows that if you're traveling east or west a significant distance to make it to an event, it needs to adjust the time. Etc, etc.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#88

Post by cph123 »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #28
pluijzer wrote: post #10

This site takes into account that Americans get there 8 hours of sleep though some quick googling revealed that the average American only gets 7 hours and 13 minutes of sleep. Just want to preach to those not getting there 8 hours, getting enough sleep really gives an enormous boost to mood, creativity, productivity and health. Give it a try :-)

Sleeping 7 hours instead of 8 gives you ~30 extra waking hours a month. I always get caught up on that, for better or worse.

On average I sleep around 10 hours. I've never felt like I'm missing out, until now perhaps.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#89

Post by zokier »

justrealist wrote: post #69
zokier wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm perplexed at the implication that we "decided" to have the number of time zones that we do, rather than just acknowledging the reality that the US is a fairly big country. Timezones are still a social construct, and decision made. Mainland China is wider than contiguous US, and yet it runs on single TZ.

Think about the concrete thing you're suggesting — making people 4 timezones away wake up early just to be aligned with bureaucrats! Eliminating timezones on its own does not make people wake up before dawn. Consolidating timezones while not forcing people into unnatural wake/sleep cycles accomplishes nothing. You still would have to figure out when people in SF wake up!

> Think about the concrete thing you're suggesting

I'm not suggesting anything. I'm just informing that different countries make different decisions on their TZ arrangement based on their priorities, and the arrangement that US has currently is not just some inevitably from geography.

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