[geeks] Now for something completely geek

[Joost van de Griek]

On 8/24/06 10:03 AM, der Mouse wrote:

>> Do you mean ONE timezone for the planet?
> 
> I certainly did.

Hurrah! Great idea.

>> That would never work - only one "region" would have normal times (similar to
>> "the olden days"), everyone else would have (seemingly) bizzare times for
>> things like "high noon", "sun rise", evening, etc...
> 
> ...so?  Local noon is 12:00 in only very thin strips these days anyway; it can
> be off by as much as half an hour, or more if the timezone boundaries have
> been fudged (which they have been in most places, based on the timezone maps
> I've seen).

I live in Amsterdam, which is at approximately 5 degrees east of the
Greenwich meridian. Since a time zone is 360/24 = 15 degrees, that means I
am actually 1/3rd closer to GMT than to my own time zone, CET. Add DST
("European Summertime") to that, and "noon" is off by one hour and forty
minutes. We have afternoon tea at the time we should be having lunch in
summer!

> I don't see what's so bizarre about having daylight hours being, say, 23:30 to
> 12:30 instead of 07:00 to 20:00.

Exactly. The real problem is that most people think that our representation
of time actually means anything.

,xtG
.tsooJ
-- 
Isildur: "You killed my father!"
Sauron: "No, Isildur... I am your father."
-- 
Joost van de Griek
<http://www.jvdg.net/>