#*@X&$ !! daylight savings time got me again! (1 Viewer)

[Cees Alons]

The astronauts probably keep to the time zone of their ground station (NASA for the Americans).

So there must have been a 'problem' when the Russian and American astronauts visited each other's shuttle. Something tells me that wasn't a serious problem though.

(Note that the very word 'astronauts' is a big exaggeration: astroinauts would be more accurate!)


Cees

 

[drobbins]

Well I did a little research about time in space:

Also for those who think time zones neatly tell you what time it is in other places on earth:


Now if that doesn't look confusing! If you look at the legend, there are 11 zones that use 1/2 hours. Every zone uses political boundaries, not the location of the sun.

 

[MarkHastings]

But if that map showed universal time and the differences in each area, the lines would be so close together that the map would be completely black.

 

[Cees Alons]

Based on the location of the sun, of course.

Before WWII, we had Amsterdam Standard Time (the sun passing above a legally defined point in Amsterdam), which differed 43 minutes (or so, I didn't take the trouble to look it up exactly now) from Berlin Standard Time. Of course the whole country used that time, while the whole of Germany used Berlin Time.

Apart from the DST shifts (which also existed for some time before WWII), the time was already "simplified", by two additional measures later: (1) all of Europe (and other continents followed suit) was dived in as few time-zones as possible and as was felt handy (note that the UK currently uses GMT, while Portugal uses GMT+1, if I'm not mistaken), and (2) all over the world the count of the minutes (and seconds, of course ) was synchronized.

Thus, indeed the sun isn't exactly in the southern position at 12.00pm in my country and many others.
In the US, you have the same situation for whole states (adjusting to 1 zone), while the most Western or Eastern states in a certain zone may not have 12.00 at exactly midnight or midday.

That's as far as the world wanted to go in the direction of your proposal, Guy!


Cees

 

[MarkHastings]

Yeah, Time Zones aren't perfect, but they're not meant to be. They are merely the basis for synchronizing time in a particular region (i.e. set of political boundaries).

As was mentioned (by myself) and others, time zones aren't straight lines because it's best not to divide states and countries up. In the US, it may seem confusing that a time zone zig-zags its way from north to south, but that's still less confusing than splitting a state into two separate time zones.

Laws and businesses often operate per state and it's best to make sure that each and every state be in synch with each other. It's no more simple, and nor more complicated than that.

 

[MarkHastings]

I really don't mean to get things heated up again, but this whole issue about keeping states in one time zone, reminded me of an incident that could be an indication of bad things, if time zones were different (or eliminated).

I forget the exact details of the situation, but the point is more important than the actual data:

Many years ago, CT has a law that lottery tickets couldn't be sold after 8pm. This was great for package stores. Package stores close at 9pm in CT and they benefited from this law because people would come in last minute to buy lottery tickets. When the state changed the lottery ticket law to allow tickets to be sold until 10pm, the package store owners got ENRAGED because now people weren't flooding into their stores at 8pm, they were buying them from convenience stores and grocery store, since they were the only places, that you could buy lottery tickets, after 9pm. And since people always wait until the last minute to do things, the package store owners filed a law suit, stating that they were going to lose out on a lot of business.

I've already seen the UPROAR that package stores went through when they changed the lottery ticket law by a few hours. I can only begin to imagine the outrage and fights that would occur if one side of the state operated on one time and the other side of the state operated on another time. That would just cause a lot of issues when you consider that there are state laws that deal with time specific events.

Laws are confusing enough without having to write two variations on a law because your state has two separate time areas.

 

[drobbins]

With the billions of people across the world and all their different cultures and priorities, I agree, it would be a nightmare to get everyone to agree on anything. - So we should implement it NOW because the population is only going to get bigger

 

[Mike Frezon]

What's a package store?

 

[MarkHastings]

 

[Mike Frezon]

Nope. From NY. Red Sox fan...but from NY.

I've never heard that expression before! Which is weird seeing as how NY borders MA and CT!

 

[MarkHastings]

That's funny because I never knew it was a local thing until recently. After I posted my reply, I remembered you were in NY (Duh, it says it under your name

) but I figured the term was used there as well.

 

[Mike Frezon]

From our good friends at Wikipedia:

/htf/images/misc/wikipedia.gif http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_store

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Don't forget to set your clocks back tonight, everybody in the U.S.!

 

[Citizen87645]

That would be ahead.

 

[Parker Clack]

Adam:

If you set your clock back an hour tonight you are going to be behind 2 hours. Better make sure your clocks are set correctly when you get up today or you are going to get there late.

 

[Bryan X]

Apparently that "Universal Time" thing never caught on.

 

[drobbins]

 

[RobertR]

I'd rather not have dawn come at "noon".

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Yes, I meant ahead. #*@X&$ !! daylight savings time got me again!

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Time to buy some new clocks that adjust for DST automatically, Adam.