I've driven through Peoria, but I don't remember when.
And getting rid of time zones is nuts.
I saw that headline and figured the accompanying article was probably stupid, so I didn't read it. Glad to hear I was right!
I liked the example contrasting Chicago and Fort Wayne given that Indiana has only had time changes for the last decade or so.
Indiana used to confuse me when my brother was at Notre Dame.
I think if people wanted to simplify time zones, the easiest thing to do would be to make Arizona use DST and to have Europe, America, and Australia all switch to and from DST on the same dates.
In one of Arthur C. Clarke's later novels ("Imperial Earth") the whole Solar System was on UTC except Earth, which still (fuddy-duddies!) had FOUR time zones. Of course, everyone off Earth either lived underground and had no natural light or in space and had light pretty much all the time.
I am actually related to a Peorian family, albeit they are not NATIVE Peorians and hence may not have been taken in to the deep secrets of Peorian Time.
Since the dawn of time, man has yearned to set noon according to the sun.
Since about five to seven hours after the dawn of time, that is.
Implicit in Gleick's recommendation is probably the thought that all of humanity should just move to the west coast of North America. Why not finish what's been started.
I hear it's very nice there, but that sometimes people have to pay upwards of $2,000/month for housing.
There's a certain developmental stage of mathematicians where you get big boring conversations about what it would be like if you had continuous time zones.
There's a certain developmental stage of mathematicians where you get big boring conversations about what it would be like if you had continuous time zones.
Party at the math grad student house!
Get everyone on UTC so we don't have to remember the time in Peoria, we just have to remember what time Peorians are awake. Honestly that's more than I want to know about the citizens of Peoria. Petropavlovsk, though, I'd be on board with that, given that awesome Kamchatka explorers thread a few years ago.
Personally, I'd rather have noon be local solar noon, or within half a time zone of it, and instead have the working hours shift with the seasons. Why not an eight-to-four instead of a nine-to-five? I get confused when I look at the sun and it's not in the right place in the sky relative to my sense of time, and I'm a cubicle drone* and probably more isolated from the natural world than most.
* Initially wrote this as "cubical drone."
My reaction to that article was that it sounded tailor-made to help a handful of journalists and various other professionals who are constantly coordinating things across time zones, and very few else.
You'd think that email would mean that everyone needs to coordinate much less than they used to. I never worry about what time people go to bed anymore and if it's too early or late to call, because I never call anyone anymore. It's great.
There's a certain developmental stage of mathematicians where you get big boring conversations about what it would be like if you had continuous time zones.
They should replace that stage with something useful, like how to split a restaurant tab.
I see what you did there, Motech.
Honestly that's more than I want to know about the citizens of Peoria. Petropavlovsk, though, I'd be on board with that, given that awesome Kamchatka explorers thread a few years ago.
For me the main difference between them is that I can't take a direct flight to Peoria. Not that I have any particular desire to do so.
I think you meant to say that you can't see Peoria from your window.
22 - in checking 22 (it's true!) I learned about Yakutia Airlines, whose motto is "the extremely cold gulag if the air."
17: I don't think that it would help those people much. They have apps and such.
18: Science requires conference calls.
We should totally have the next big meetup in Kamchatka.
I don't think there could be a single reason somebody could be for the elimination of time zones that doesn't boil down to "asshole" at heart.
Okay, so yeah, we could quibble on the details - like maybe North Dakota doesn't need two - but time zones are generally a sound and desirable concept, for those of us still living on a spinning space sphere.
But DST... I mean, if you want to set your local time zone to center on something other than solar noon, fine. But do it once and forget it.
Because it's that yearly sudden adjustment that's literally deadly. "Hey everybody, why not let's have an annual week of torture where we go one hour deeper into our usual collective sleep deficit!"
That sounds like a wonderful idea that should be adopted immediately, right? What could possibly go wrong?
Answer: Lots.
And no, it probably doesn't save any energy.
Okay, so yeah, we could quibble on the details - like maybe North Dakota doesn't need two - but time zones are generally a sound and desirable concept, for those of us still living on a spinning space sphere.
But DST... I mean, if you want to set your local time zone to center on something other than solar noon, fine. But do it once and forget it.
Because it's that yearly sudden adjustment that's literally deadly. "Hey everybody, why not let's have an annual week of torture where we go one hour deeper into our usual collective sleep deficit!"
That sounds like a wonderful idea that should be adopted immediately, right? What could possibly go wrong?
Answer: Lots.
And no, it probably doesn't save any energy.
I saw the headline on the referenced article and decided cleaning the dust between the keys on my keyboard was a better use of my time. Thanks for confirming that I made a wise choice.
Note to self: check back to see if Gleick turns into a nazi, as whining about daylight saving is one of my personal clinical signs of Cranky Old Bastard Disease setting in.
I would go for the system Gleick proposes if it we also added another (free time!) hour to the day.
I was just able to use the MeFi commenter's Chicago example to very efficiently explain DST to Iris.
Suck it, Gleick.
33: You need to confirm it's new DST complaining. I've disliked it for a long time, but maybe I just get worse seasonal unhappiness than others.
I like DST. I'd like to get rid of standard time. I don't care if it's dark in the morning, but I do care if it's dark before I get to work.
36: we're back on standard time now. Do you get your seasonal unhappiness in the summer?
39: I know. I get a big hit of it at both transitions.
I dunno if it's aging or the relentless insistence on ever more DST, but the transitions have been driving me crazy for the past few years. Like noticeable jet lag.
So, if you drove to Phoenix, you'd get "jet lag"?
I got bad "car lag" while driving from Dunedin to Invercargill near the summer solstice on my honeymoon, exacerbated by it having a sunset time later than I'd ever experienced.
I have yet to get car lag driving across Pennsylvania either way, although my father has stated that he often does even though it's at most a ~10 minute difference.
No, but for some reason this does it. I feel like the spring one is worse but both are bad.
Eliminating time zones was a stupid suggestion. Eliminating DST is a smart suggestion.
If you live in Chicago, and would like to maximize your exposure to daylight in summer, you can sleep for 8 hours starting at 8pm. The exact same plan would maximize your exposure to light in winter. Presumably people are complaining that 8pm is way too early to go to bad. Solution 1: make everything schedule everything earlier all the time, so you can go to bed at 8. Solution 2: change the clocks so that 8pm local time actually corresponds to 9 or 10 pm. I mean, I guess solution 2 is actually much easier, but the very fact that solution 1 is hard suggests that people don't actually want to maximize their exposure to daylight.
The Soviet Union eliminated time zones, right? I don't think the citizenry appreciated it.
Even worse, they centered their single time zone on Beijing. If you're in Xinjiang or Tibet you can be almost three hours off. Uighur Muslim in Urumqi keep a local, solar-oriented time to better coordinate prayers and Ramadan. Of course, this is seen as subversive and cracked down upon.
I think Russia cut down slightly on the number of time zones because Moscow and Vladivostok had almost no overlap in their business day, but there's still a bunch of them.
When I was in grad school, my roommate hippily proposed that we get rid of all of the daylight savings shenanigans, and instead, as a society, decide to live more in tune with the seasons, by doing things like changing the time that school started to coincide with the change in daylight. So in the late spring school might start at 7AM, but in the winter it would start at 8AM. The rest of the conversation is left as an exercise to the reader.
Thanks for this. Now can you do the other op-ed I was ranting about on Sunday?
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/opinion/sunday/consider-a-monarchy-america.html
The blog is unbroken; sorry everyone.
I assume it was as a result of Russian hackers attempting to undermine our Election Day threads?
52: The results thread is still broken.
Well, keep on trying. It'll work eventually.
Could you just kill the thread and use the Ladypants one?
60: Ladies wearing pants is obviously immoral.
I'm sorry I doubted your ability to fix it.
Everything that was broken has been fixed.
66: Mine too, but I see an orthopedist this afternoon and the city is at some point this week going to fill in the horrible gutter where I tripped and hurt it in the first place. Hope! Change!
I rather like changing the clocks twice a year because the change to summer time normally happens when I'm in the US anyway, so my sleep cycle is pretty disrupted as it is and I don't notice, and the change to winter time is part of the Hallowe'en/Guy Fawkes period that reminds me that it'll be winter soon, and therefore Christmas, plus it means I get an extra hour in bed.
During the war they had British Double Summer Time - two hours forward in spring. That must have been nice.
The days were absurdly long when I was in Lancaster on or about the last week of June.
That's what 59 degrees North will do for you.
I should have gone to see Morecombe when I was there. It's not like I'll ever want to see it enough to go back even if I do go the U.K. again.
On that subject, one advantage of changing the US to UTC (or rather to the UT0/+1 time zone; the US is already on UTC, specifically UT-5) would be that there wouldn't be any more embarrassing cockups where the US Air Force plans a sneaky mission to launch six helicopters on a raid under cover of night but forgets that the island they're invading is in a different time zone and so the helicopters actually turn up in broad daylight.
Don't let's underestimate the Air Force.
They're really impressive, those intercontinental helicopters.
75: Florida to Grenada. Only an hour difference.
During the war they had British Double Summer Time - two hours forward in spring. That must have been nice.
Oh, hell yeah. Sign me up for that.
Florida to Grenada. Only an hour difference.
Except during daylight savings time, when its the same. I just moved an hour ahead of the East Coast by not doing anything.
I imagine that DST makes less and less sense the closer to the equator you are.
And time zones become a bit useless at the poles.
Also, capri pants without high socks.
the city is at some point this week going to fill in the horrible gutter where I tripped and hurt it in the first place. Hope! Change!
I must have misunderstood Obama' promise to work more on local issues upon leaving the WH.
I hope the Guild is winging your ballot statesward.
84: Oh, are you back in the land where the juice of the rotten vine flows freely?
The rotten juice of the vine, I think. Pre-rotted vines might make for a novel bouquet.
I just realized that 84 is an plan available to me, so I will now put it in motion.
Hrm. This may explain why my vineyard didn't really take off.
Anyway, I'm downtown and probably going to be working late and have a half dozen bars within a few blocks, so yes, definitely going to take advantage of it. Or go home and have whisky. Hrmmm. Difficult choices.
88: well ahead of you. Don't cock this up, Americans. We're all counting on you.
88: well ahead of you.
Well sure, but that's just because of time zones. If we all started drinking at 1700 UTC-0, then we'd all be btocked this time of day.
Be the change you want to see in the world.