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Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

edition.cnn.com

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Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#21

Post by Xixi »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #9

Interesting but it won't happen. It would have to be adopted throughout the world (especially where religious days are affected) and there would never be agreement on which holidays fall on which day (NYE on Friday or Saturday?). I don't fully understand the other point in the article about ridding the world of time zones to improve business and trade. How would that work? Do they expect certain countries to agree to…

I think you understood the point about timezones backwards. The point is for everybody to use, for instance, UTC time. So instead of working the proverbial 9am to 5pm, if you are in Japan you would work from 0am to 8am (UTC).

It makes sense to me, but I can see how lots of people would have a very hard time understanding and accepting this.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#23

Post by zhyder »

Agreed with the general proposal: the only time periods that are important to preserve are the day (coz of morning/night), the week (coz of work-week and religious days), and the year (coz of seasons). The month is pretty arbitrary.

They propose a 364-day year with 8x 30-day months and 4x 31-day months. If they're okay with a 364-day year, wouldn't it be better to have 8x 28-day months and 4x 35-day months. Or you could have 13x 28-day months. That way the day-of-week would be even more predictable.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#25

Post by deerpig »

Wow, after reading the comments it's amazing how difficult it is for most people to understand that eliminating time zones doesn't mean that anyone will change when they work. You will just have a different number for the time you do things than in than other parts of the world. In England you might start at 09:00, but on the other side of the world they would start at 20:00 which would be morning for them.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#26

Post by Swizec »

deerpig wrote: post #25

Wow, after reading the comments it's amazing how difficult it is for most people to understand that eliminating time zones doesn't mean that anyone will change when they work. You will just have a different number for the time you do things than in than other parts of the world. In England you might start at 09:00, but on the other side of the world they would start at 20:00 which would be morning for them.

The problem is that these are still timezones. It's actually a very trivial change. Instead of saying you're in a different timezone, I say you wake up at 20:00 instead of 8:00 like I do.

That's not a very significant change ...

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#29

Post by rahulnair23 »

maratd wrote: post #8
shirro wrote: post #3

Brought to you from a country that has not adopted SI units.

That depends on what you mean by adopted. The federal government/education establishment/etc. all use SI units. It's the general populace which couldn't care less. Which means this proposal has the same probability of adoption as me winning the lottery. And I don't buy lottery tickets.

The US Department of Transportation, for example, does not use SI units. They did try to pass a mandate to change to SI by 2000 by tying federal funds to states that make the change, but that was rejected.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#30

Post by Figs »

vineel wrote: post #16
k-mcgrady wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK there have been discussions about stopping DST. The main problem is that in places Scotland it would be darker for longer in the morning which could lead to more traffic accidents. The affects on crime and traffic accidents would be huge. And it would never be possible to get half of the planet to agree that they will forever work while it's dark and sleep while it is light.

I don't think the suggestion is that the working day everywhere should start at X:00. The idea is that 4:00 in California is 4:00 in Britain and 4:00 in China. When the day starts would vary from place to place; perhaps 1:00 somewhere and 12:00 somewhere else. The point is to eliminate the confusion caused by timezones, especially those like Nepal's which are 15 minutes off other time zones for no good reason.

That's just substituting one sort of confusion for another, I think.
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