Re: OT: Time zone question

On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 12:18 PM, Peter Collier
<petecollier@...> wrote:
> Except, commerce is generally the only reason local
> times are out of sync in the first place, which would
> eliminate the need for the change in the first place.
When I have a teleconference with someone in Los Angeles or the UK
(or, heaven forbid, Hong Kong or Tokyo), there's this extra verbiage
everywhere, required to ascertain the intended time of the darn thing.
 If everybody called the same time by the same number, there'd be that
much less detail to worry about.  Sure, I'd still have to know when
they're actually at work, but that's not a change from now.

> There is also a human element which is hard to
> overcome. Extending Benct's suggestion to its ultimate
> logical outcome, the entire world could just set their
> clocks to UTC and get on with it
Well, I could totally get behind that suggestion.

> but how would that go down with Joe Schmoe in Vancouver, who now finds
> the sun rises at 1 in the afternoon, sets at 3 in the
> morning, the date changes halfway through his
> afternoon at work (legal issues!) and despite all of
> that, he STILL has no idea if Bob in Melbourne or
> Chantelle in Paris are currently in work or not.
I say to Joe: get over it. :)   We already need almanacs and web sites
and radio shows to tell us what the clock is going to say when the sun
comes up tomorrow; what difference does it make if it's closer to
13:00 than 6:00?  (And yeah, I'd get rid of 12-hour time in favor of
24-hour everywhere, too.  If I were benevolent dictator. :))  And we
have all sorts of businesses that operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week (like my employer, or the other, lowercase cable news networks,
or grocery stores who stay open all the time, or . . .) who already
have to deal with date changes that occur while people are actively
working.  It's not that big a deal.

> Of course, what *would* work is to switch everywhere
> to the same time zone, AND have everyone keep doing
> the same things at the same time of day (e.g. office
> hours 9 to 5).
*Now* you're running smack up against that human element you
mentioned.  Orders of magnitude less likely to fly, IMO.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>