From NYT:
"But what if there’s a trend under way here? The list of countries who use the
half-hour system does not inspire much confidence. There’s Burma. And
Afghanistan. And then there’s Nepal. When the countries around it are at 3
p.m., Nepal believes it to be 3:45. This may have something to do with the
altitude."
It has less to do with altitude and more to do with differentiating themselves
from other countries. Remember India is also half an hour plus from whatever
the GMT+ time, possibly distinguishing itself from Pakistan, and Nepal from
India (which is just north above India, along the Himalayan foothills and
beyond). And true India isn't inspiring but then the western press is falling
head over heels over India so they ignore it or else the author is not quite
well-informed either:)
Anthony
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Anthony P. D'Costa, Professor Currently
Comparative International Development Senior Visiting Research Fellow
University of Washington Asia Research Institute
1900 Commerce Street National University of Singapore
Tacoma, WA 98402, USA 469 A Tower Block
Phone: (253) 692-4462 Bukit Timah Road #10-01
Fax : (253) 692-5718 Singapore 259770
http://tinyurl.com/yhjzrm Ph: (65) 6516 8785
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On Thu, 23 Aug 2007, Louis Proyect wrote:
Eugene Coyle wrote:
The Financial Times, I;m told (haven't been able to find it) reports
that Venezuela is going to the six hour day of work.
Can someone tell us about that?
Gene Coyle
For what it's worth:
NY Times, August 23, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
The Great Clock Plot
By GAIL COLLINS
This week, The Times reported that President Hugo Chávez is planning to move
Venezuela’s clocks ahead by half an hour. The story created one of those
wonderful moments of newspaper community, as readers around the nation suddenly
shared an identical thought:
Say what?
Chávez unveiled his plans on his regular Sunday television show, in what
several other news reports referred to as a “rambling” address. Reaction
was swift, with many people recalling the scene in Woody Allen’s “Bananas”
when a revolutionary hero becomes president of a Latin American country and
announces that from now on, “underwear will be worn on the outside.”
The other popular comment was that Americans are in no position to make fun of
countries whose leaders make incoherent speeches.
Chávez has always been strong on the grand leftist gesture. (Remember the day
that he called George W. Bush “the devil” at the United Nations?) But
it’s hard to quite grasp the populist appeal of having to use a calculator to
figure out when the next plane arrives from Bogotá.
In his speech, Chávez connected the time change to his plan to reduce the
Venezuelan work day in 2008. His administration believes that:
1) Cutting everyone’s work day to six hours will increase national
productivity; and 2) That if you change 7 a.m. to 6:30, it will create a
“metabolic effect, where the human brain is conditioned by sunlight.”
Now I know all this sounds extremely silly, but in the name of fairness,
remember that:
1) You live in a country where the administration believes that cutting taxes
for the heirs to billion-dollar estates will lead to increased prosperity for
unemployed steel workers.
2) Every year, most Americans spring forward and fall back so that the Sun God
will send extra rays to we who honor him with the ceremony of the changing of
the clocks.
3) So far, Hugo Chávez hasn’t invaded anybody.
Inquiring minds still want to know about that half-hour. The Venezuelan science
minister says the government wants to return the country to the system it used
before 1965.
When it was changed. For convenience.
Perhaps President Chávez just isn’t a clock-watching kind of guy. His weekly
TV program is six hours of him talking, which is an extremely long time to
ramble on unless you’re Fidel Castro or an American sports commentator.
But what if there’s a trend under way here? The list of countries who use the
half-hour system does not inspire much confidence. There’s Burma. And
Afghanistan. And then there’s Nepal. When the countries around it are at 3
p.m., Nepal believes it to be 3:45. This may have something to do with the
altitude.
Newfoundland is on the half-hour system, defying the rest of Canada to do
anything about it. The reason, as Premier Danny Williams once explained, is
that Newfoundlanders “like to be different.” Their country is mainly about
cod — very important, historically speaking, but not frequently in the
headlines these days.
So people there like a little attention. They like having a Newfoundland Time
Zone. They like the fact that the national broadcasters always have to say:
“Stay tuned for the news on the hour. On the half-hour in Newfoundland.”
We may be on to something here. How many countries do you think would feel
better about the world if they just got mentioned once in a while? Probably
won’t work for Afghanistan at this point, but we could try getting the
networks to say things like: “News is up next, and let’s hope it’s a nice
day in Surinam.”
Sooner or later, somebody in the White House will notice that the one other
country whose clocks are running to the tune of a different drummer is Iran.
Chávez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are extremely cozy, always
pinning medals on one another and sending anti-Bush jokes back and forth. At
this very minute, Vice President Dick Cheney is somewhere in his basement,
working up a new theory about the Evil Axis of Half Hours.
Let’s just not go there. Riordan Roett, the director of the Western
Hemisphere studies program at Johns Hopkins University, says that the fact that
the president of Venezuela announces something does not necessarily mean it’s
a done deal. “See if Chávez repeats it,” he advised. “If it’s just a
one-time thing, the rational people who are still in the government will just
ignore it.”
If only we had a similar system in the United States, imagine all the things we
might have avoided over the last six years.
