John Oliver wrote: > On Tue, Mar 06, 2007 at 11:42:23AM -0800, John H. Robinson, IV wrote: > > Then again, I hate the whole idea of timezones to begin with. > > Until someone figures out how to stretch the Earth out like a Mercator > projection, we're stuck with 'em :-)
Uh. No. We just need a willingness to say that time is a human construct (oddly enough, it is) and that the number 12 (or noon) is just as arbitrary as any other number (do a small experiment: go outside on a sunny day with a ruler, and see when your shadow is the shortest. If it aligns precisely with 12:00 noon, consider yourself very lucky, otherwse conclude that 12 is arbitrary. Go east or west the following day, and try the experiment again! It'll be fun!) All we need to do is get rid of them all, and use one time world wide. Those that participate in cross continental meetings will lose the confusion of ``was that 11 o'clock east coast time, or west coast time?'' and be left with one absolute time. Travellers would also love it: the would know exactly how long their flight would last, no matter how many timezones they cross, without having to do math. It could be done in 6 to twelve years. Move each timezone closer to UTC once or twice a year. Local time (the only other true time) can be reduced to four specific times: sunrise, noon. sunset, and midnight. So local times could reference the (option a) closest or (option b) immediately past one of the four fixed points. Such as, my kids bedtime would be two hours after sunset, which could be spoken as two after set, or simply two set. Speak of o'clock, and it is absolute. Speak of rise/noon/set/mid and it is relative to a fixed local time. I believe it would work out rather well. -john -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
