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Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union

timeuse.barcelona

191–200 of 264 posts

Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union

#191
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Summer time makes plenty of sense as-is, especially at fairly extreme latitudes like the Netherlands. Pithily stated, it is about keeping the wall-clock time (meaning the clock everyone looks at, the Schelling point in a society-wide coördination game) approximately aligned with sunrise/dawn. That way you always have sunlight in the morning, but the sun never rises too early making you lose sunlight in the evening. >…

Morning darkness is unavoidable during winter unless you start working at 10 or so.

Unless you do what the Greeks did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hour#History:

“Instead of dividing the time between one midnight and the next into 24 equal hours, they divided the time from sunrise to sunset into 12 "seasonal hours" (their actual duration depending on season), and the time from sunset to the next sunrise again in 12 "seasonal hours".”

I think that can work reasonably well close to the equator, but in Athens, the ‘hour’ already would vary from about 47 minutes to about 73 minutes. Feels too large for me for such a system to work, but that may be because I’m too accustomed to the current system.

And of course, going further North, the difference becomes very large.

Because of that, I think it wouldn’t work in large parts of the world in a society that has artificial light.

There also ‘may’ be some complications to making that change, though (would hourly wages still work, for example?)

Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union

#192

This almost feels like a false flag of proposing the most disruptive plan possible such that it couldn't possibly be approved, haha. Splitting & re-groupings are almost arbitrary and have no consideration for politics, business and culture. Ireland & N. Ireland in different TZ? France & Corsica in different TZ? Pushing Ireland & Portugal into their own TZ and calling it Azores time? Bringing UK into alignment with Sp…

The page does explicitly call out Ireland and Northern Ireland as an issue with the first draft of the map. This feels to me like the part of the process where you stand up a proposal to get refinement, since large deliberative bodies are rarely able to create such a proposal from scratch.

Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union

#193
The debate here shows why we'll be stuck forever with the status quo: It's a topic that can be endlessly bikeshedded, everyone has an opinion, and there are a million incompatible proposals (each with drawbacks that will make some groups strongly oppose them).

Meanwhile, I bet most even don't understand the effect of DST (minimizing how much the clock-time of sunrise varies, at the cost of increasing how much the clock-time of sunset varies, https://coolinfographics.com/blog/2012/11/6/daylight-savings...)

Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union

#194
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Morning darkness is unavoidable during winter unless you start working at 10 or so.

Unless you do what the Greeks did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hour#History : “Instead of dividing the time between one midnight and the next into 24 equal hours, they divided the time from sunrise to sunset into 12 "seasonal hours" (their actual duration depending on season), and the time from sunset to the next sunrise again in 12 "seasonal hours".” I think that can work reasonably well close to the equator, but…

> “Instead of dividing the time between one midnight and the next into 24 equal hours, they divided the time from sunrise to sunset into 12 "seasonal hours" (their actual duration depending on season), and the time from sunset to the next sunrise again in 12 "seasonal hours".”

It would be interesting to try this in the modern era. Though to do this really well you should probably vary the duration of the hour smoothly throughout the day (with no overly jarring shift at sunrise or sunset), so the difference would be felt quite extremely around noon and midnight whereas the hours around sunrise and sunset (6AM and 6PM with perhaps half an hour of dawn and twilight respectively in non-polar latitudes) would be close to normal.

Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union

#195

This almost feels like a false flag of proposing the most disruptive plan possible such that it couldn't possibly be approved, haha. Splitting & re-groupings are almost arbitrary and have no consideration for politics, business and culture. Ireland & N. Ireland in different TZ? France & Corsica in different TZ? Pushing Ireland & Portugal into their own TZ and calling it Azores time? Bringing UK into alignment with Sp…

On Ireland, our biggest business partner in Europe is still the UK.

I don’t think we’ll be clambering to add friction to business with Northern Ireland and Britain so we can hang out with Portugal and Iceland.

Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union

#196

Serious question, why not adopt one timezone globally? For some of us sunrise would happen at 10pm, for others on 4pm. So what? Wouldn't we just get used to it? Is there any rationale for anchoring start of the day between 4am-8am?

Then you just need to implement a global system of determining how people's activities are aligned locally. What you end up with is timezones by another name. Timezones are a lot less of a problem now that we are using calendar apps to book events. Better integration of tools to negotiate availability would make that even easier. The problem that people largely govern their activities by the rotation of the earth and…

But why I need to come up with system similar to timezones? You translate all hours once and that's it, no? It might be weird at first have business hours from 9pm to 3am, but those are just numbers. I don't find it any more weird than starting a day at 6am.

Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union

#197

Serious question, why not adopt one timezone globally? For some of us sunrise would happen at 10pm, for others on 4pm. So what? Wouldn't we just get used to it? Is there any rationale for anchoring start of the day between 4am-8am?

I think a lot it comes down to pride. Nobody wants to be the country that works 23-7. We all want the "nice" numbers the UK picked for itself.

Well, I might be weird but I have zero problem with it. I also would happily learn a new language if the world would agree on universal one.

Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union

#198
post #144

Serious question, why not adopt one timezone globally? For some of us sunrise would happen at 10pm, for others on 4pm. So what? Wouldn't we just get used to it? Is there any rationale for anchoring start of the day between 4am-8am?

You would still need to remember to not call your buddy in LA at your "8am" when in NYC. Now you need to take into account what a 9-to-5 translates to for all parts of the world. Solves nothing.

It actually solves a lot, and I contact people on all continents multiple times per day. Currently when you want to schedule a meeting with a person in another timezone you need to do a bit of very confusing math (it's simple addition and subtraction, but one-off errors are rampant) and translate their time to yours. Most of the time both parties try to do it and it gets confusing. Lots of "your time or my time" questions. With universal time you both work with the same clock.

Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union

#199
post #175
post #168

All attempts to optimize society by changing time zones and adjusting for daylight savings time time should be abandoned. Let society set the schedule after a static time. With this I mean ordinary time zones and the same time throughout the year. Which approximately should correspond with the sun at its highest at noon. If someone prefers brighter mornings and darker afternoons, and someone else the opposite, the so…

Honestly I would prefer to go even further - UTC for the entire planet, no offsets. Unfortunately I know most people won't go for that...

My ideal world would have no timezones and be entirely Anglophone (English is not my first language, so I'm not even biased in that regard). This is probably an extremely controversial take, considering how much interesting culture and history would be wiped out, but the thought makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spain in particular is almost 3 hours off of solar time. I suppose if you squint right at the western edge in summer time you could get there. But the prime meridian runs straight through the country. I think a sensible reckoning would say that it's 1 hour off as a baseline and 1 extra hour during summer.

Despite the prime meridian crossing the country, Spain is the same timezone as Berlin. One hour more than London. If you are interested, look for the historical reasons for that. Edit: OK, a good source. > On March 16th 1940, the clocks jumped from 23:00h to 00:00h to display the same time as Nazi Germany and other Nazi-occupied countries such as France and the Netherlands. This was an entirely politically motivated…

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