It doesn't neatly fit into the "rebels" headline, but I think it should've given a sentence or two to the fact that countries like the UK, Canada, and (parts of) the US are now on summer time for most of the year. It's as though their timezones are all wrong.
The Time Zone Rebels of the World
41–46 of 46 posts
Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World
#42In an Internet (read: global) article about Time Zones around the world, and local customs related to such things, we get this gem:
> South Australian Premier Jay Weatherhill reintroduced the time zone debate this spring
The linked article is from April 2015. Spring in Australia is September-November.
This concept of using weather seasons as terms of reference for periods of time, is ridiculous, and kind of reinforces the view that Americans can't think outside their own little world.
Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World
#43> Russia actually changed Crimea’s time, effectively moving the territory’s time two hours forward to Moscow Time. The peninsula of Crimea is completely unattached to Russia and the decision has no real geographical basis I am most definitely not defending Russia's actions, but Crimea is nearly due south from Moscow. [1]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Crimea/@50,34,5z
That is true, but also Moscow is not on its "own" geographical time zone. The middle line of UTC+3 is 45°E, east of Nizhniy Novgorod or eastern Caucasus.
Crimea (Sevastopol) is about 33.5°E. Naturally, this time zone change is part of the process employed by Russia to severe Crimea from Ukraine and attach it back to Russia.
St. Petersburg, or Leningrad as it seems to be going, is also on the same UTC+3 zone even though it is even further away to the west, with the "geographical" UTC+2 line (30°E) passing through the city.
Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World
#44When 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 yo…
Cross the border from China to Afghanistan, and you'll have a 3½ hour timezone change.
Cross the border from Finland to Karelian Republic in Russia, and "wind clock forward one hour, wind calendar back 50 years". In good and bad.
Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
To simplify the first chunk of that webpage, all you need to know is Uncle Steve's sunrise offset from you, same as now. If his sunrise is 6 hours after yours, don't call him until you've been awake for 6+ hours. Also, the lifestyle/local weirdness complaints towards the end are still relevant today. If Uncle Steve works the night shift I shouldn't call him at his solar noon whether there are timezones or not. I conc…
Is there any argument for the abolishment of time zones that doesn't boil down to them simply being annoying for programmers and server admins to set up initially? Right now if I travel anywhere in the world I'll have a basic idea of when the sun rises and sets, when stores are open, hottest time of the day, when people are usually working, sleeping, etc. Going with your argument, I would not only have to keep track…
Efficiency improvements (both in software and other areas) is the usual rationale. For example, this article[1] lays out some hypothetical economic benefits.
> I would not only have to keep track of the sun set and rise shift but as well as the working hours in that particular part of the world
The same issues exist currently when traveling. Instead of looking up the timezone offset, you would look up the sunrise offset. Any additional information (e.g. work schedule differences) are still a factor today; when visiting Spain you have to learn that dinners are late and siestas exist.
But this is not "my argument". While I think it would be an interesting experiment, I expect the transition costs of moving to a single global time to far outweigh any marginal efficiency gains for many, many years. What we have now is generally good enough (though if I had the power I would get rid of the sub-hour offsets and daylight savings time).
[1]: http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/archive/changing-times...
Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World
#46A lot of servers are just set to UTC even if they are in a different time zone. It simplifies a lot of headaches and translation bugs. It would be nice to get rid of time zones and daylight savings time. People are so slow to change. Who cares if the sun doesn't come up until 4 PM where you are at. Stores, schools, etc can just change what hours they are open.
Getting rid of timezones is not as good an idea as you might first imagine. http://qntm.org/abolish
Haha, that article's brilliant!