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Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

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Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#411

Post by kelnos »

quesera wrote: post #408
tharkun__ wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people believe a lot of things. I wonder why you don't believe that people believe this. Now whether you yourself believe he was born then, another time or ever existed at all etc is another story. I believe for example that everyone can believe whatever they want about those things as long as: They leave me alone when I tell them I don't believe that and I don't want to be convinced They don't try to kill m…

To restate more precisely: It is well-established that December 25 is a highly unlikely date for the birth of Jesus. Children and people who have only a superficial knowledge of Christianity might very well believe otherwise. But they are poorly-informed. Arguments against include: a) Calendar dates are generally fuzzy from that period, particularly for events that are not formally documented. So the likelihood of an…

I don't think anyone is arguing that December 25 is the birth date of Jesus (assuming he existed), the argument is just that there are people who believe it is. You seem to think only children and people who don't know much about Christianity would believe that, but I assure you there are lots of Christian adults who don't know the history you (correctly) laid out.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#413

Post by nerdponx »

kelnos wrote: post #411
quesera wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To restate more precisely: It is well-established that December 25 is a highly unlikely date for the birth of Jesus. Children and people who have only a superficial knowledge of Christianity might very well believe otherwise. But they are poorly-informed. Arguments against include: a) Calendar dates are generally fuzzy from that period, particularly for events that are not formally documented. So the likelihood of an…

I don't think anyone is arguing that December 25 is the birth date of Jesus (assuming he existed), the argument is just that there are people who believe it is. You seem to think only children and people who don't know much about Christianity would believe that, but I assure you there are lots of Christian adults who don't know the history you (correctly) laid out.

The point is that the "birth date of Jesus" being set on December 25 came 350 years after January 1 was chosen to start the new year.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#414

Post by schoen »

maxwell wrote: post #302
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...

UTC is problematic since it splits the day: when it's midnight in Greenwich, it's still yesterday for half the world. The Unix epoch occurred in 1969 in Hawaii. BIT (UTC-12) is better. Only positive offsets. Everyone on the same day.

Don't you get the "it's already tomorrow for half the world" problem in place of the "it's still yesterday for half the world"?

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#415

Post by growse »

poincaredisk wrote: post #407
troad wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Global time' is a perennial HN comment on articles to do with time handling, and a truly terrible idea. Try selling East Asia and Australia on the idea that they should wake up at 7pm, go to work on Friday, finish their workday on Saturday, and then go to bed at 11am -- for the benefit of people on the other side of the world who can't be bothered figuring out local time.[0] Will it fix software issues around time h…

>And how would Europeans react when the global majority vote to move the suddenly-meaningful Prime Meridian to much more populous and economically important regions than London, and it's now Europe that gets to experience that kind of day, for the benefit of Tokyo and Beijing? I'm honestly fine with it. I already often go to sleep 5am my time and wake up 13:00 (my sleep schedule is not typical), so I'm not that far f…

Quite a few billion people are not fine with it, and I'm not seeing any serious argument designed to convince them why they should be.

No-one cares if you set your watch to UTC regardless of your latlng. Meanwhile, the rest of us will just crack on with how we've always done it.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#416

Post by astrange »

yyyfb wrote: post #333
layer8 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mea…

If the continental US can do it (and it looks like it might soon, with California voting for it) I'm not sure I buy that argument. Heck if China can survive on one timezone...

I think it's the changing times that people don't like, rather than standard time.

I'd prefer California to stay on standard time instead of staying on DST, so noon will be aligned with solar noon. (It is, right? I never actually checked.)

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#417

Post by astrange »

ta1243 wrote: post #172
IggleSniggle wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like how Spider-Man actually belongs to Sony, not Marvel, and it gets loaned back to Marvel? Or more like how Blade isn't part of the MCU, but totally belongs to Marvel?

Except Blade is part of the MCu now since Deadpool 3 But I think the analogy may be being stretched

Which raises the question of why none of the other heroes ever help him with all those vampires.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#418

Post by poincaredisk »

growse wrote: post #415
poincaredisk wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And how would Europeans react when the global majority vote to move the suddenly-meaningful Prime Meridian to much more populous and economically important regions than London, and it's now Europe that gets to experience that kind of day, for the benefit of Tokyo and Beijing? I'm honestly fine with it. I already often go to sleep 5am my time and wake up 13:00 (my sleep schedule is not typical), so I'm not that far f…

Quite a few billion people are not fine with it, and I'm not seeing any serious argument designed to convince them why they should be. No-one cares if you set your watch to UTC regardless of your latlng. Meanwhile, the rest of us will just crack on with how we've always done it.

Yeah, to be honest I don't think this idea is realistic at all. Inertia is extremely strong, and we can't get rid of much easier things (like DST, that most of the world agrees is a bad idea). I also agree that nowadays the benefits would be minor.

So I don't seriously purpose we do it, but it's fun to speculate how it could be. I think in an alternate reality where the whole world has the same hour, people would shudder at the crazy idea that every country has a different time on their clocks.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#419

Post by astrange »

ta1243 wrote: post #309
IggleSniggle wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh, figures. As soon as I said it I thought it likely that Marvel had roped it in at some point. Nothing is safe! Just wait til we get Star-Lord (Guardians of the Galaxy) accidentally facing off against some Jedi just so a writer can make some "Hans shot first" "inside" joke in some "way overshot the time travel to long ago in a galaxy far far away" plot...basically a movie to set up the joke in a trailer.

I'm just so relieved that Disney didn't buy Star Trek. Was slightly concerned by an offhand remark from the Doctor in the most recent Doctor Who series who made an off-hand comment about dropping in on the Star Trek people.

Coincidentally, Doctor Who has an unusual system where individual writers own the copyright to some of the characters they introduce, which means there's a lot of not-very-good spinoff novels (and an Australian TV show) featuring only that authors' characters.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#420

Post by reisse »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #320
reisse wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not because most of the world do summer time Eh? Most of the world don't do summer time.

Is that also true by population?

Sure. The only country from the top ten by population that observes the DST is the US. From the top fifteen countries, it's US and Egypt.

I think the statement is true by any reasonable metric - population, land area, GDP size.

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