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The Time Zone Rebels of the World

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Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#11

Post by cariaso »

peawee wrote: post #8
melvinmt wrote: post #5

"Urumqi simply adjusted their operation schedules to reflect natural waking hours, therefore, a store may be open from noon to 10 PM." This is exactly why I would propose a single timezone for the entire world. Time notation is just numbers, after all. Why we still attach importance to having 12pm appear at the middle of the day boggles my mind. Why can't we just have different parts of the world start at different s…

For global communication, it helps to form a mental model of the other side. When you pick up the phone to call someone else, knowing it's 1am there would typically indicate you should likely think twice before calling. It's a crutch to enable a more convenient mental model for most people to relate to what time of day it is 'over there'. Otherwise, sure, there's no real point.

right, but I never know what time it is there. I only know what time it is here. And maybe I have a relative sense that there is 6 hours east of here. Often I don't even know where it is I'm talking to. I called the help desk, I have no idea what continent picked up the phone.

"office hours are 22-6 UTC" would be much simpler than "office hours are 9-5 EST. hmm ...is that european standard time, or east coast of the usa?"

death to timezones and daylight savings!

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#12

Post by js2 »

melvinmt wrote: post #5

"Urumqi simply adjusted their operation schedules to reflect natural waking hours, therefore, a store may be open from noon to 10 PM." This is exactly why I would propose a single timezone for the entire world. Time notation is just numbers, after all. Why we still attach importance to having 12pm appear at the middle of the day boggles my mind. Why can't we just have different parts of the world start at different s…

"So you want to abolish time zones": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902765 -> http://qntm.org/abolish

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#13

Post by rmason »

Indiana is a very strange case. I had a business meeting there once where we met at the guys house. Coming down from Michigan I looked up the city hall just to make certain the time zone.

Well it turns out this particular guys subdivision was on a different time zone. He explained that the subdivision, being technically outside the city, voted to adopt the another time zone because the majority worked in a county with a differing time zone.

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#14

Post by melvinmt »

js2 wrote: post #12
melvinmt wrote: post #5

"Urumqi simply adjusted their operation schedules to reflect natural waking hours, therefore, a store may be open from noon to 10 PM." This is exactly why I would propose a single timezone for the entire world. Time notation is just numbers, after all. Why we still attach importance to having 12pm appear at the middle of the day boggles my mind. Why can't we just have different parts of the world start at different s…

"So you want to abolish time zones": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902765 -> http://qntm.org/abolish

Thanks for the good read, although most of the objections seem to be based on an unwillingness to change.

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#15

Post by someguy488fu348 »

peawee wrote: post #8
melvinmt wrote: post #5

"Urumqi simply adjusted their operation schedules to reflect natural waking hours, therefore, a store may be open from noon to 10 PM." This is exactly why I would propose a single timezone for the entire world. Time notation is just numbers, after all. Why we still attach importance to having 12pm appear at the middle of the day boggles my mind. Why can't we just have different parts of the world start at different s…

For global communication, it helps to form a mental model of the other side. When you pick up the phone to call someone else, knowing it's 1am there would typically indicate you should likely think twice before calling. It's a crutch to enable a more convenient mental model for most people to relate to what time of day it is 'over there'. Otherwise, sure, there's no real point.

That's a good argument in favor of keeping time zones, but it's not why we have them.

The reason we have time zones is because people started keeping time long before fast travel and communication made it necessary to consider what time it was on the other side of the mountain, let alone the world. The reason we keep them is because the status quo is hard to change.

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#16

Post by BurningFrog »

peawee wrote: post #8
melvinmt wrote: post #5

"Urumqi simply adjusted their operation schedules to reflect natural waking hours, therefore, a store may be open from noon to 10 PM." This is exactly why I would propose a single timezone for the entire world. Time notation is just numbers, after all. Why we still attach importance to having 12pm appear at the middle of the day boggles my mind. Why can't we just have different parts of the world start at different s…

For global communication, it helps to form a mental model of the other side. When you pick up the phone to call someone else, knowing it's 1am there would typically indicate you should likely think twice before calling. It's a crutch to enable a more convenient mental model for most people to relate to what time of day it is 'over there'. Otherwise, sure, there's no real point.

Without time zones I'll still know that it's somewhere between 12 and 2am. Good enough for that purpose.

Missing a phone call, WoW raid or whatever else I plan on the net by an hour is less forgiving.

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#17

Post by tvon »

js2 wrote: post #12
melvinmt wrote: post #5

"Urumqi simply adjusted their operation schedules to reflect natural waking hours, therefore, a store may be open from noon to 10 PM." This is exactly why I would propose a single timezone for the entire world. Time notation is just numbers, after all. Why we still attach importance to having 12pm appear at the middle of the day boggles my mind. Why can't we just have different parts of the world start at different s…

"So you want to abolish time zones": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902765 -> http://qntm.org/abolish

I think that is over-complication of informercial proportions.

edit: Though the days of the week point I don't have an answer for. Religious holidays are easy, they would follow the old calendar, but I'm not sure how the days would work otherwise.

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#18

Post by bombtrack »

rmason wrote: post #13

Indiana is a very strange case. I had a business meeting there once where we met at the guys house. Coming down from Michigan I looked up the city hall just to make certain the time zone. Well it turns out this particular guys subdivision was on a different time zone. He explained that the subdivision, being technically outside the city, voted to adopt the another time zone because the majority worked in a county wit…

I grew up in a northern, rural part of the US along the MST/CST divide. Our county was MST, so everyone's homes, schools, events, etc. were all MST.

A significant portion of the area was employed by one of a few large mining/synfuel operations, which were headquartered an hour east in the capital, so they ran according to CST. Most employees wake up in one time zone, drive 5 minutes to work, spend the day in a different time zone, then switch back in the evening.

All the "stuff" you wanted or needed to do was also likely going to be in the capital city an hour east, so the constant math was bound to cause issues and consusion.

In 2010 the county voted to switch to CST [0]. I think it was a good change, and it really made life easier for people who live there. I was certainly in favor of it. But at least that was at a _county_ level. A change at the subdivision level seems like it would cause more problems than it fixes.

[0] http://bismarcktribune.com/news/local/it-s-official-mercer-l...

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#19

Post by jlangenauer »

It is here I can get to quote the famous justification why Queensland does not observe daylight saving like the sensible rest of Australia: Because it would fade the curtains.

(Interestingly, I'm not sure if this is apocryphal or not: I thought it was Flo Bjelke-Peterson who said it, but I can't find a source.)

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#20

Post by hudibras »

When I was in the Navy, my ship visited Petropavlovsk during the summer and they were on UTC+13. That was weird to begin with, what with the theoretical limit on only twelve time zones each direction from Greenwich. But then after the visit, we headed due south and then crossed directly over into the UTC+10 time zone for Guam. So one night we set the clocks back three hours.

Nice if you were asleep, not so nice if you were on watch...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC%2B13:00

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