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
happen when most people are asleep, or at least outside extended
business hours. So having everyone on UT is not very attractive for
those living more than +/-3 hours from the prime meridian. But since
most of us sleep at least 6 hours and are not (supposed to be ;-)
working for at least 15 hours each day, such a simple requirement could
still be achieved with just 3-5 timezones worldwide.
The crudest approach would probably be
a) N+S America: use local time of Cuba (~ UT - 5.5 h)
b) Europe/Africa/Middle east: use local time of Poland/Greece (~ UT + 1.5 h)
c) Asia + Australia: use local time of Thailand (~ UT + 6.5 h)
Sure, the hours of darkness would vary substantially within each of
these zones. But they do already *today* for much of the world, thanks
to summer/winder. China understood this a long time ago.
Markus
--
Markus Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ || CB3 0FD, Great Britain
Received on Sun Dec 18 2005 - 14:59:03 PST