Stardate, anyone?
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Time is the fire in which we all derp.
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âTime is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.â
Ford Prefect
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If time is an illusion, and lunchtime doubly so, will the the USA two timezone proposal mean that the USA is permanently out to lunch?
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Coke and Pepsi
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Exactly this. Imagine going on holiday, arriving all jet lagged and working out things like âwhat time can I get breakfastâ âwhen do shops open and close?â. Much, much easier to adjust a clock, or let your technology automatically do it for you.
No time zones would be much harder to manage. As to whether there should be slightly more or less time zones⌠Well thatâs a different argument.
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And like many simple answers, totally impractical 
Say you are in the US and you need to call your Australian customer/supplier/branch office. How do you know that youâll be able to reach them during business hours? Every country/province/region/business(?) would need to establish their own schedules (which would be the same thing as time zones, just less useful). Heck, if you tried to call somebody on a Monday or Friday you wouldnât even know when their âweekendâ is without a lot of research.
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when iâm in a snarky mood, iâd say the US should be on two time zones: modern times and medieval times
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Typical of a coastal dweller in the USA: That which is not near the ocean doesnât matter. Those of us in the flyover time zones will keep our clocks where they are, thanks.
After disparaging another group of people (coastal dwellers) you might want to reserve for a later post evidence of your lack of comprehension and/or ability to read.
Putting both together in one post serves to increase the very elitism you seem to decry (and decry correctly, I might add!) by offering an anecdotal example of a âflyover stateâ resident being a clueless buffoon.
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Also, this idea completely ignores he substantial energy costs involved with making everybody not on the east coast start their business day 3 hours earlier.
Iâll grant that jet lag is a royal pita when your work involved a lot of travel. However - many peopleâs work also entails plenty of international travel, and they manage just fine.
Still - what an intensely American-ish mode of thought! Corporate needs really are more important than anything else, right? (Thatâs moderately well-humored snark, rather than hardcore, since I canât take any of it seriously.)
Canada tried this in Nunavut and it was a disaster. We had little enough light as it was and some idiot in the south decided it would make their lives easier if everyone got up out of bed when they did. We had little enough light as it was to keep us happy in the winter and then some one comes along and tells everyone in the east of the territory, nope, have your lunch two hours later than your body wants to. Also, doing away with daylight saving is not the same as doing away with time zones. And messing around with peopleâs daily schedule is more of an inconvenience than you think it is. Someone in government figured it wouldnât matter because we barely had any light. WRONG. People were miserable and cranky and eventually the territory switched back to having three time zones.
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But whoâs going to tell the animals & the plants about our wonderful, ânewâ idea?
I remember hearing my grandparents & great uncles complaining about DST when I was a kid. Being farmers meant their daily activities where modeled around the natural rhythms of the animals. They hated the time changes because it never made sense to their daily life.
And by the way has anyone ever worked in Indiana where some towns observe DST while other towns do not? It can be a logistical nightmare for a service company to finish up at one location, travel 1-1/2 hrs to the next town to discover that theyâre and hour ahead or behind what you thought they were. If the country ever did go to a two time zone system youâd have thousands of small towns stamping their feet and keeping to their own time.
But this discussion is a moot point. It wonât happen. Itâs stupid & needless.
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I suggest that we instruct them on the use of streaming their programming and to just leave our time zones alone.
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What we need is ONE world time zone. ONE world language. ONE world clothing/uniform.
Time Zone: because the world financial capital is either London or New York (depending on the various surveys). We could use GMT half the year, and EST the other half.
Language: Easy one⌠Standard Chinese. AKA Mandarin. But I guess Iâd settle for bilingual - English and Mandarin.
Clothing: Jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers. Natch.
/Actually, I look forward to and welcome the DST time shift. I live more north than economists living in NYC do, and also near the edge of a time zone. The variation in daytime light is much larger and affects my sleep patterns. The DST shift bring the work day more in line with my no-alarm-clock waking patterns (read: fewer heart attacks).
//Really, people canât handle a little change in their lives? Jeepers, sorry!
///Taking time-of-day advice from an economist that probably never worked as a slave to a punch time clock? Princess, meet pea.
////In case youâall havenât figured it out, the first part was sarcasm. I love the fact that, depending on where you are in the world, time, money, food, eating habits, and so many other things are different and surprising. I love the fact that Newfoundland & Labradorâs time zone is half an hour ahead. Thereâs somewhere that has a time zone fifteen minutes off. Yay for them!
Computer programming around all these time zones, if you ask me, is doable and not the end of the frigginâ world, FFS. Think of it all the exceptions that have to be built-in to any TCP/IP stack. Welcome to the real world.
If the whole planet was WEIRD ( Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic), Iâd probably kill myself (aside from the fact that the environment would only have months to liveâŚ).
Itâd be like living in a Soviet Hell, all of us dwelling in gray, concrete apartment blocks, eating the exact same thing every day, all wearing the same clothes. No matter where you were in the world, it would all be the same.
Worf, son of Mogh, wore a metallic sash when on the Enterpriseâs Bridge. He was asked once (by Ryker, I think), whether it was as uncomfortable to wear as it looked. He replied that it was, and that was the point.
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When Alaska switched to AK time, it sucked for most everyone in Alaska except those in the central zone. For those of us in K-town which was aligned with Seattle for business purposes (and as my college heathen friends would say, âKetchikan, isnât that part of Washington?â), we got the news at a decent hour and could deal with businesses at normal times. Of course getting the Chicago stations and watching scary stuff at 8pm was cool.
And there was light at normal times as well, the sun wasnât up at 3:30 am in the summer even if it meant the sun didnât set until after 11pm. That was the biggest set back of all, we used the light in the summer because most of the work was daylight based. I donât think we can afford to disengage with the natural world and normal daylight hours more then we already do without suffering. Yes get rid of daylight savings, that is stupid and doesnât benefit us physically but two time zones is⌠Ugh.
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[quote=âFrancis, post:33, topic:13340â]
I spent a few months traveling in China where there is(was? it was a decade ago) one official timezone, Beijing time. Everything else is on an ultra-local time which was oftentimes a very arbitrary choice.
[/quote]In my experience pretty much all of China other than parts of Xinjiang and Tibet use Beijing Time. In Xinjiang and Tibet most use the local time, which is two hours earlierâbut official schedules for buses, trains, and government offices tend to use Beijing time. So you often have to ask if a time is Beijing time. Note that although the government uses Beijing time, they offer modified hours to appeal to how the locals actually act, often by having a siesta in the middle of the day so that office hours start at, for example, 9:00 AM Beijing time (7:00 Xinjiang) but end at 5:00 Xinjiang time (7:00 Beijing time).
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Clearly youâre not a software developer with real experience of handling timezones, one of the bitchiest problems in the field.
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The entire state of Indiana has observed DST since 2006, though Lord knows itâs pissed some people off. Which I donât get. I mean, in years past it was a pain to reset every clock twice a year, but in 2013 the only thing I have that doesnât update DST automatically is the clock on my car stereo.
So, for the convenience of Americans, all the rest of the world would have to make adjustments to accommodate this. International travel, mail, financial markets, all of it would have to adjust.
The time zone system isnât perfect, but it works.
Time zones change all the time all over the world. Countries, states and even counties introduce or abolish DST all the time. DST start and end times are also far from set in stone. Also, in the US DST doesnât start or end at the same time it does in Europe (1-3 weeks apart) and, presumably, other places so this already has to be taken into account.
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