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Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

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Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#271

Post by Y_Y »

nine_k wrote: post #202
wakahiu wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is common across East Africa, including Kenya where I’m from. The night ends at 6:00AM, with 7:00AM being saa moja (first hour) of the day. Similarly, the day ends at 6:00PM (thenashara). Intuitively, this clock makes much more sense than the English clock. There’s rarely confusion between times because it’s embedded in the language.

This is indeed a more logical clock, as it follows the natural cycle of activity. Equally, calendars that put the end of the year at the time after harvest ("autumn"), or at the start of agricultural work ("spring") are also more logical. Positioning the beginning of a new day at noon, and a new year t a solstice, is just a technical convenience, because these are easy to detect with very simple astronomy tools.

Only if everyone is a peasant farmer with the same crops in the same place. My activities are barely related to the height of the sun in the sky, and like the other residents of my city I don't take a ton of notice of harvest time. Bus timetables and cultural festivals are a much bigger deal (of which one in particular is indeed historically related to a harvest).

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#272

Post by layer8 »

rob74 wrote: post #76
azernik wrote: post #73

The "Asia/Jerusalem" weirdness is because Daylight Savings Time is a big church-and-state issue. Religious people want the workday to be convenient for holidays that start at sunset. This led to decades (up to the mid-'00s) where Daylight Savings was the result of annual negotiations between religious and secular parties. It often caused problems when the decision wasn't made until juuuust before the transition date.…

Reading this, and considering the limited advantages of DST (especially for a country that is relatively far to the south), I wonder why they didn't decide to scrap DST completely? Maybe they will if the EU eventually manages to do it?

The EU likely won’t scrap it, because the CET countries want to stay in a common time zone (no new time zone borders) for economic reasons, but either the very Eastern or very Western ones in that range would object to permanent DST or permanent non-DST, because it would move them too far from the solar day either in winter or summer. It can’t be fixed without one country or another getting the short stick, which means it won’t be fixed.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#273

Post by Lance_ET_Compte »

A thousand years ago, every village had their own timekeeping and it worked. Our village is now earth. What if we just abandoned daylight-savings time and timezones and just went with GMT (or anything else) for everywhere on earth?

There would be cultural effects as people in California now start work at 16:00, for example...

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#275

Post by bcherry »

ak217 wrote: post #264

At some point the correct solution is for engineers to collectively agree to refuse to model government-prescribed deviations from convention. Or, put more obliquely, provide more feedback to make it more obvious who is bearing the cost of the complexity of these requirements. It's a social problem and it calls for a social solution. I know, there's a lot of disagreement around where the point in question is, but it…

disagree - good products meet their users where they are and bury complexity under the hood. i can't imagine trying to use a calendar app (or any app really) that refuses to operate in any mode other than UTC.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#276

Post by fermuch »

Lance_ET_Compte wrote: post #273

A thousand years ago, every village had their own timekeeping and it worked. Our village is now earth. What if we just abandoned daylight-savings time and timezones and just went with GMT (or anything else) for everywhere on earth? There would be cultural effects as people in California now start work at 16:00, for example...

Isn't that how china works? One timezone for everyone

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#278

Post by chanandler_bong »

Lance_ET_Compte wrote: post #273

A thousand years ago, every village had their own timekeeping and it worked. Our village is now earth. What if we just abandoned daylight-savings time and timezones and just went with GMT (or anything else) for everywhere on earth? There would be cultural effects as people in California now start work at 16:00, for example...

This. 100%.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#279

Post by layer8 »

ochrist wrote: post #127

The article says that "Nuuk is in Greenland, and is part of the greater EU cinematic universe." It is correct that Greenland is part of Denmark, and Denmark is a member of EU. But Greenland voted several years ago to stay out of the EU.

EU stands for Extended Universe here, probably. ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_universe

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#280

Post by cle »

Lance_ET_Compte wrote: post #273

A thousand years ago, every village had their own timekeeping and it worked. Our village is now earth. What if we just abandoned daylight-savings time and timezones and just went with GMT (or anything else) for everywhere on earth? There would be cultural effects as people in California now start work at 16:00, for example...

The hard part is not doing it, it's getting people to agree. I highly doubt people will agree to do that, because a large portion of people don't agree with "our village is now Earth".
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