Steve Hanke and Dick Henry want to decharter this tz project https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/12/the-radical-pla... -- Steve Allen <sla@ucolick.org> WGS-84 (GPS) UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB Natural Sciences II, Room 165 Lat +36.99855 1156 High Street Voice: +1 831 459 3046 Lng -122.06015 Santa Cruz, CA 95064 http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/ Hgt +250 m
On Feb 15, 2016, at 11:56 AM, Steve Allen <sla@ucolick.org> wrote:
Steve Hanke and Dick Henry want to decharter this tz project
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/12/the-radical-pla...
I guess April 1st came early this year. Interesting that the article mentioned the North Korea screwball timezone, but not the fact that Venezuela's late dictator did the same thing for the same reasons a couple of years earlier. paul
On 15 Feb 2016, at 18:06, Paul_Koning@Dell.com wrote:
On Feb 15, 2016, at 11:56 AM, Steve Allen <sla@ucolick.org> wrote:
Steve Hanke and Dick Henry want to decharter this tz project
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/12/the-radical-pla...
I guess April 1st came early this year.
Interesting that the article mentioned the North Korea screwball timezone, but not the fact that Venezuela's late dictator did the same thing for the same reasons a couple of years earlier.
One thing caught my eye -- "There would never be a Friday 13th". I was born on a Friday 13th and met my future wife on a Friday 13th. I think it's a Good Idea. It would need some tweaking. For example, we'll need a new way to calculate Easter that takes into account the leap week as well as the fixed year start. Alternatively, leave Easter on the Gregorian calendar as it moves around anyway. I'm sure that it won't matter if Good Friday is on, say, a Wednesday and Shrove Tuesday (pancake day) is Sunday. And no one knows what Maundy Thursday is for anyway so when it's Maundy Monday no one will notice. We'll also need a way of scheduling meetings across continents. "Is Monday at 1pm OK for you?" "No, I'll be asleep" We'll need a database of normal working/waking ours in different countries, this would be decided politically, of course, because you need to have shops and whatnot opening at consistent hours. We'll also need to account for the fact that working hours will probably shift an hour in the winter months to maximise daylight ("Don't forget that the shops open at 10am tomorrow!"). It'll be a bit confusing for a few years, I'm sure, while all the different countries switch to the same calendar so we'll need to maintain a list of who changed when so that we can still schedule meetings during that period. I'm sure that the future survivors will look back at the transition with a sense of wonder. jch
On 16/02/16 09:51, John Haxby wrote:
We'll also need a way of scheduling meetings across continents. "Is Monday at 1pm OK for you?" "No, I'll be asleep" We'll need a database of normal working/waking ours in different countries, this would be decided politically, of course, because you need to have shops and whatnot opening at consistent hours. We'll also need to account for the fact that working hours will probably shift an hour in the winter months to maximise daylight ("Don't forget that the shops open at 10am tomorrow!").
This piece is a double sided sword ... While currently '9am' local time is a useful shorthand for the start of the working/school day, many places simply don't follow what was once normal practice. Personally I know which sites will be ringing at 7:50, 8:20 or 8:50 but I need a database that flags up these different office opening hours. And YES the whole 'summer time' thing came out of the practice of having a different set of opening hours in the summer ... 'daylight saving' was just an attempt to standardise those changes. Is getting rid of the convenient shorthand for a locations rough daytime events cycle worth the effort, possibly, but it has to be replaced with a much more complex one that covers all the bases on event times round the world. We need the more complex one anyway as part of our calendering systems, so is the convenient 'CET', or 'EST' much of a problem really? It provides a fixed point against which other local events can be moved in unison? Otherwise we will be back to a free for all 'summer time/winter time' events transitions ... if you don't have tz you have to put something else in it's place :) -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk
John Haxby said:
I think it's a Good Idea. It would need some tweaking. For example, we'll need a new way to calculate Easter that takes into account the leap week as well as the fixed year start. Alternatively, leave Easter on the Gregorian calendar as it moves around anyway.
Or bring the Easter Act 1928 into force. (There are apparently discussions going on at present to do this or something very similar.) -- Clive D.W. Feather | If you lie to the compiler, Email: clive@davros.org | it will get its revenge. Web: http://www.davros.org | - Henry Spencer Mobile: +44 7973 377646
participants (5)
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Clive D.W. Feather -
John Haxby -
Lester Caine -
Paul_Koning＠dell.com -
Steve Allen