Re: [LEAPSECS] Lighter Evenings (Experiment) Bill [HL]

From: Randy Kaelber <randy_at_mars.asu.edu>
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 14:02:03 -0700

On Sun, Dec 18, 2005 at 10:58:11PM +0000, Markus Kuhn wrote:
> Poul-Henning Kamp wrote on 2005-12-16 22:44 UTC:
> > Now that EU got extended way east I think everybody expected the
> > silly notion of "one timezone for all of EU" to die a rapid death
> > but that might just wishfull thinking.
>
> Mankind could go even further, abandon the entire notion of time zones
> being separated by 15? meridians and move on to generous continental
> time zones.
>
> This brings us even back closer to the topic of this list: Why is it
> important that our clocks give a +/- 30 minutes approximation of local
> astronomical time? Sure, there seem clear advantages in having midnight

Since it's not even that important, why even base it on an Earth day? We
could all just switch to Martian time and get an extra 30-odd minutes a
day every day. So some days you may be getting up at sunrise, and others
at sunset. The MER operations people generally found the experience to be
positive, with the only negatives being that the world around them wasn't
on the same schedule. I propose we fix it!

This has the advantages of everyone being on the same time all over the
world, and nobody having a permanaent "advantage" of having the timezone
match their geography. Everybody should be happy, or at least equally
miserable.

--
Randy Kaelber                                        randy_at_mars.asu.edu
Scientific Software Engineer
Mars Space Flight Facility, Department of Geological Sciences
Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA
Received on Mon Dec 19 2005 - 13:03:01 PST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Sat Sep 04 2010 - 09:44:54 PDT