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RE: International date line
by Law, Gwil Jr. Jan. 3, 2000

Jan. 3, 2000

John Cowan wrote: >> The straight-line boundaries between Pacific >> island nations that are shown on many maps are based on an international >> convention, but are not legally binding national borders. > > I'm confused. Does this mean that there are overlapping claims to sovereignty, > or what? What is a "legally binding national border" anyway? As I understand the situation, sovereignty extends to the land area of each island, plus its territorial waters (the twelve-mile limit, or whatever the individual country claims). The "straight-line boundaries" I was talking about divide a large part of the Pacific into contiguous zones, extending well beyond the limits of sovereignty. Niue, to take a simple example, is shown in my Rand McNally International Atlas surrounded by a rectangle extending from approximately 166.5 to 170.5 degrees West, and 17.5 to 23.5 degrees South. The actual extent of Niue, including its territorial waters, can be contained within a rectangle from about 169.5 to 170.2 degrees West, and 18.7 to 19.4 degrees South. It would take me some time and effort to define "legally binding national border". I would define a "not-legally-binding-national-border" as a line on a map with no particular significance. Does that help? Gwillim Law

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RE: International date line
by Law, Gwil Jr. Jan. 3, 2000

Jan. 3, 2000

> Does anybody know the exact geographical coordinates of the international > date line? The International Date Line is not defined by any international standard, convention, or treaty. Mapmakers are free to draw it as they please. Reputable mapmakers will simply ensure that every point of land appears on the correct side of the IDL, according to the date legally observed there. When Kiribati adopted a uniform date in 1995, thereby moving the Phoenix and Line Islands to the west side of the IDL (or, if you prefer, moving the IDL to the east side of the Phoenix and Line Islands), I suppose that most mapmakers redrew the IDL following the boundary of Kiribati. Even that line has a rather arbitrary nature. The straight-line boundaries between Pacific island nations that are shown on many maps are based on an international convention, but are not legally binding national borders. An Anglo-French Conference on Time-Keeping at Sea (June, 1917) agreed that legal time on the high seas would be zone time, i.e., the standard time at the nearest meridian that is a multiple of fifteen degrees. The date is governed by the IDL; therefore, even on the high seas, there may be some places as late as fourteen hours later than UTC. And, since the IDL is not an international standard, there are some places on the high seas where the correct date is ambiguous. This information is the best I could find when I was studying the question a few years ago. If any of the readers of this list have anything more authoritative, I would welcome corrections. Gwillim Law

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International date line
by Oscar van Vlijmen Jan. 3, 2000

Jan. 3, 2000

Wishing every reader the very best for this millennium, I would like to ask: Does anybody know the exact geographical coordinates of the international date line? I have compiled from some of the better maps a very speculative list of coordinates and I hope that somebody is able to correct this list. 90N 180W (North pole) 75N 180W 68N 168W 66N 168W 53N 170E 47N 180W and now the Kiribati swing 2.5N 180W 0N 177W 0N 166.5W 3.3S 166.5W 3.3S 160W 2N 160W and now diagonally to, or first via 2N 162W? 5N 162W 5N 154.5W 2.3N 152.25W 7S 149W 12S 149W 12S 157W 7S 157W 7S 178.5W and following again the original line: 15.5S 172.25W 45S 172.25W 51S 180W 90S 180W (South pole) Regards, Oscar van Vlijmen 2000-01-01

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Re: Could anyone help, corrected URL
by Oscar van Vlijmen Dec. 29, 1999

Dec. 29, 1999

To: "Dave's DHL Mail" <dkelly(a)lhr-sys.dhl.com> And copy to: tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov Dave wrote: >I'd like to produce a list of all the distict beginnings of the new >millenium - listing the zone and UTC time when they will first see the new >millenium, e.g.: > >Pacific/Chatham Island Dec 31 10:15 UTC >.... >Europe/Paris Dec 31 23:00 UTC >Europe/London Jan 1 00:00 UTC >... >etc.. > >Dave Kelly Hi! I have recently made a Macintosh HyperCard application, based upon the TZ database information. Can be found on my site. Furthermore, I have made a small list with the first zones and the last zones that will greet the new millennium. This list can be found at: http://www.tip.nl/users/o.van.vlijmen/firstlatestzones.html Without any notice my service provider changed something in the naming of URL's, resulting in an error if you try to follow the given URL. My page still exists, use the 'direct' address: http://www1.tip.nl/~t876506/firstlatestzones.html Regards, Oscar van Vlijmen 29-12-1999

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Could anyone help
by Dave's DHL Mail Dec. 29, 1999

Dec. 29, 1999

Hello Everyone, First, thanks to all on the list for the useful (and often amusing) information that's been passed round for the last couple of years. Next, I wonder if anyone can help with a little light hearted excercise - I'm afraid my coding isn't up to it and I don't have access to a compiler at home anyway... I'd like to produce a list of all the distict beginnings of the new millenium - listing the zone and UTC time when they will first see the new millenium, e.g.: Pacific/Chatham Island Dec 31 10:15 UTC .... Europe/Paris Dec 31 23:00 UTC Europe/London Jan 1 00:00 UTC ... etc.. I'd be really grateful if anyone can help with this, or alternatively point me to a list that already exists on the web somewhere. Thanks again, and best wishes for *your* new Millennium Dave Kelly

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Re: Could anyone help
by Bradley White Dec. 29, 1999

Dec. 29, 1999

> I'd like to produce a list of all the distict beginnings of the new > millenium - listing the zone and UTC time when they will first see the new > millenium, e.g.: > > Pacific/Chatham Island Dec 31 10:15 UTC > .... > Europe/Paris Dec 31 23:00 UTC > Europe/London Jan 1 00:00 UTC > ... > etc.. > > I'd be really grateful if anyone can help with this, or alternatively point > me to a list that already exists on the web somewhere. #!/usr/bin/env perl use integer; use strict; use POSIX qw(mktime strftime tzset); # set $tzdir and $bogon as you see fit my $tzdir = '/usr/share/zoneinfo'; my $bogon = '^(right|posix|Etc|SystemV)/|\.tab$' .'|^(Factory|UTC|localtime)$|^GMT.' .'|^(..T|.ST\d.DT)$'; my %mill = (); chdir $tzdir or die "$tzdir: $!\n"; foreach my $zone (`find * -type f -print`) { chomp $zone; next if $zone =~ m:$bogon:o; $ENV{'TZ'} = $zone; tzset; my $when = mktime(0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 2000-1900); $mill{$when} = [] unless exists $mill{$when}; push @{$mill{$when}}, $zone; } foreach my $when (sort { $a <=> $b } keys %mill) { my %zones = (); foreach my $zone (@{$mill{$when}}) { my ($dev, $ino) = stat $zone; next unless defined $ino; $zones{"$dev.$ino"} = [] unless exists $zones{"$dev.$ino"}; push @{$zones{"$dev.$ino"}}, $zone; } print strftime "%b %d %H:%M UTC\n", gmtime $when; foreach my $devino (keys %zones) { print ' 'x4, join('|', sort @{$zones{$devino}}), "\n"; } } exit 0;

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Re: Could anyone help
by Bradley White Dec. 29, 1999

Dec. 29, 1999

Oops ... I forgot to account for daylight savings in the call to mktime. Sorry about that. #!/usr/bin/env perl use integer; use strict; use POSIX qw(mktime strftime tzset); # set $tzdir and $bogon as you see fit my $tzdir = '/usr/share/zoneinfo'; my $bogon = '^(right|posix|Etc|SystemV)/|\.tab$' .'|^(Factory|UTC|localtime|posixrules)$' .'|^GMT.|^(..T|.ST\d.DT)$'; my %mill = (); chdir $tzdir or die "$tzdir: $!\n"; foreach my $zone (`find * -type f -print`) { chomp $zone; next if $zone =~ m:$bogon:o; $ENV{'TZ'} = $zone; tzset; my $when = mktime(0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 2000-1900, 0, 0, -1); $mill{$when} = [] unless exists $mill{$when}; push @{$mill{$when}}, $zone; } foreach my $when (sort { $a <=> $b } keys %mill) { my %zones = (); foreach my $zone (@{$mill{$when}}) { my ($dev, $ino) = stat $zone; next unless defined $ino; $zones{"$dev.$ino"} = [] unless exists $zones{"$dev.$ino"}; push @{$zones{"$dev.$ino"}}, $zone; } print strftime "%b %d %H:%M UTC\n", gmtime $when; foreach my $devino (keys %zones) { print ' 'x4, join('|', sort @{$zones{$devino}}), "\n"; } } exit 0;

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other Nunavut hamlets rebel and stay on Eastern time
by Paul Eggert Dec. 28, 1999

Dec. 28, 1999

We already knew about Pangnirtung, but Michaela Rodrigue, writing in the Nunatsiaq News (1999-11-19), reports: The Baffin communities of Clyde River, Pangnirtung and Sanikiluaq now operate with two time zones, central - or Nunavut time - for government offices, and eastern time for municipal offices and schools.... Igloolik [was similar but then] made the switch to central time on Saturday, Nov. 6 ... after Nunavut Premier Paul Okalik reassured them the unified time zone would be reviewed in one year. Reference: http://www.nunatsiaq.com/archives/nunavut991130/nvt91119_17.html

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data on DST changes all over the world
by Geelen, Paul Dec. 22, 1999

Dec. 22, 1999

Hi Elsie, How surprised I was to find this site.(http://sandbox.xerox.com/stewart/tzconvert.cgi). Since I am corresponding a lot with colleagues in different places all over the world, I would like to gain information on daylight saving changes that will occur in the next year. Could you please give me any data on these DST changes, for example in a spreadsheet or ascii file with the information as given below? country Netherlands timezone GMT + 1 from 1999, march 28, 02:00 AM until 1999, october 3, 02:00 AM shift + 1 hour country Brasil (east) timezone GMT - 3 from 1999, october 3, 02:00 AM until 2000, february 20, 02:00 AM shift + 1 hour I would be very pleased to hear from you. Thanks in advance. > Paul > __________________________________ > > room: VN 5.28 040 - 27 87 903 > E-mail: Paul.Geelen(a)nl.origin-it.com > __________________________________ > > >

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RE: Multiple time zones in Mongolia
by Law, Gwil Jr. Dec. 13, 1999

Dec. 13, 1999

> I think you should not use Dariv as the central place in the UTC+7 > time zone. Take the more obvious Hovd. There are two Hovd in > Mongolia, so you should add the alternative name Jargalant. > > Jargalant is problematic. Rand McNally spells it Jirgalanta. Shanks > spells it Dzargalant (with a hacek over the z), or as Chovd. The CIA > spells it something like Duno-Us [...] I have Dund-Us as the capital of Hovd province, with Hovd and Jirgalanta as older names which may still be in use for this city. Still older names include Khobdo and Kobdo. > We generally prefer the most populous location to represent a region, > so we should use the most populous location in Hovd, Uvs, and > Bayan-Olgiy. I suspect that the candidates are Jargalant (the capital > of Hovd), Ulaangom (the capital of Uvs), and Olgiy (the capital of > Bayan-Olgiy). Do you happen to know which is the most populous? Looking in a 1980 Hammond atlas that I have at hand, I find the following populations for cities in the three provinces in question. They're out-of-date, but they may indicate relative sizes. Bulgan, Hovd 3,100 Dund-Us, Hovd 12,400 * Hyargas, Uvs 1,600 Olgiy, Bayan-Olgiy 11,700 * Tsagaannuur, Bayan-Olgiy 2,000 Tsetseg, Hovd 700 Ulaangom, Uvs 14,000 * It looks as if the three provincial capitals (*) are the only good candidates. Since ambiguity is a criterion for rejecting a location name, I checked the NIMA place names website. It has 6,161 records of populated place names in Mongolia, including variants. The NIMA database agrees with me about the preferred names of the three provincial capitals, as listed above. In the NIMA database, the names Dund-Us and Ulaangom are both unique. Among the other proposed names, Jargalant is the least desirable: there are 13 cities whose preferred names are Jargalant. There are three places whose preferred names are Hovd. There are two places named Olgiy, but one of them is a variant name for Har-Us. Darvi, not Dariv, is shown as a variant for Bulgan. There is a city named Dariv, but it's not in the new time zone. Doing some more research, I found the home page of the Mongolian National Statistical Office, at <http://statis.pmis.gov.mn/home_engl.htm>. There, I found the populations of the three capitals according to the 1989 census and an estimate for year-end 1998. 1989 1998 Dund-Us 24,100 27,400 Olgiy 27,200 21,000 Ulaangom 22,900 26,500 Following the published criteria, Dund-Us is the top choice, with Ulaangom a close second. Dund-Us is more centrally located in the zone, which might give it more of an edge. Yours, Gwillim Law

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