Re: CHAT: Timezones was The English/French counting system

Mark J. Reed scripsit:

> > If we did away with time zones, wouldn't that mean there wouldn't be any
> > IDL? Then we could move it anywhere and no part of the world would be
> > split between two days.
>
> True enough.  But it'd probably be best not to bring that up. :)
Well, no, not really.  The IDL exists only because we recognize local
time at all.  If the whole world ran on UTC, a given calendar day would
stretch from one UTC midnight to another.  That would mean, for example,
that in California, for instance, most people would start work at 1700
on September 1 (say) and leave work at 0100 on September 2.  That would
be most inconvenient.

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
Promises become binding when there is a meeting of the minds and consideration
is exchanged. So it was at King's Bench in common law England; so it was
under the common law in the American colonies; so it was through more than
two centuries of jurisprudence in this country; and so it is today.
       --_Specht v. Netscape_