On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:20:44 -0500, McKown, John wrote:
>
>I'd vote for it. And eliminated the stinking "daylight saving time" screw-up!
>
But let's dispel the specious theological argument. There
are opponents who contend that DST is contrary to God's will.
Actually, the current convention of Standard Time is contrary
to the best Scriptural reference I know: Matthew:20.
>Of course, at my first job, I had the print banner pages print the current
>date and time in GMT like: nn month yyy hh:mm:ss with a 24 hour clock. I like
>to have gotten lynched by everybody in that shop. They could not remember how
>to convert. Subtracting 6 (or 5) was too difficult. Oh, and then subtracting
>another 12 if the number was >12 was just obscene.
>
I once tried to place a phone call from Colorado to Benton Harbor, MI.
Administrative Assistant: He's out to lunch. When can he call you back?
[What time zone is Benton Harbor? UP or LP? Do they
observe DST? ... Too much uncertainty. Simplify!]
gil: I'm about to go to lunch myself. Can he call me back two
hours from now?
[Long pause; imagine neural gears grinding at other end.]
AA: Errr... What time zone are you in?
[Obvious poor choice of algorithm.]
>I don't like metric, personally. Too Earth-centric. I think we need to totally
>divorce all time and distance to more "universal" quantities. I nominate the
>21 cm hydrogen spectral line for a distance and 7E-10 seconds for time (time
>for light to travel 21 cm). 1 gigatick would be .7 seconds. Then, we can join
>the galactic societies! <grin>
>
How about the Planck time and the Planck length, suitably scaled.
But aren't powers of 10 enormously anthropocentric?
-- gil
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