Time-zones and World time..
Hi,
I've been under the radar for a while so have not been able to keep up
with the threads I was contributing to but that has been done to death
and I will drop them. I've been very interested in reading peoplels
thoughts on time-zones. Has there been any moves to adopt a common
time for all countries in the world so as to alleviate the
difficulties in dealing with time-zones?" I know there was the idea of
Internet-time going around some time ago but I think that seems to
have died a death. Thinking about it, what's the problem of adapting
to daily life which is shifted by some number of hours off the clock.
If we all used UTC everyone around the world would know when a certain
time was in their own day. In my case for New Zealand, +12 hours would
probably be adopted for the country, so AM becomes PM and I'd get up
at 7PM (still that's not much different from now :) instead of AM.
I guess the question is, what's the likely-hood of a world standard
time being adopted (sort of like Star Trek)?
73
Steve - ZL3TUV
Steve Rooke - ZL3TUV & G8KVD
Omnium finis imminet
Steve Rooke wrote:
I guess the question is, what's the likely-hood of a world standard
time being adopted (sort of like Star Trek)?
I would say it's very unlikely to happen. People tend to prefer the
time in their area to match up with the day. So, having the sun come up
at 7pm wouldn't suit a lot of people.
Recently the islanders on Jersey rejected a proposal to move to Central
European Time (CET) see
http://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/jersey-time-zone-referendum.html
Dave
2008/10/31 David Ackrill dave.g0dja@tiscali.co.uk:
I would say it's very unlikely to happen. People tend to prefer the
time in their area to match up with the day. So, having the sun come up
at 7pm wouldn't suit a lot of people.
But people would get used to it after a while, maybe a generation, and
whose to say that the sun should come up at 7am, it's really just an
arbitrary concept.
Recently the islanders on Jersey rejected a proposal to move to Central
European Time (CET) see
http://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/jersey-time-zone-referendum.html
I guess that is because we put the important decisions in the hands of voters :)
73
Steve - ZL3TUV
Steve Rooke - ZL3TUV & G8KVD
Omnium finis imminet
With the great ease of computers to make the transformations,
there really isn't any point in removing local timezones. It
is just a table after all... it is nothing like the old days when
every major town used Local Sidereal Time (eg. 12:00 is when the
sun is at its highest). That caused major problems for the
railroads.
The biggest problem with local timezones is all of the continuously
changing variations on Daylight Savings Time. That accounts for
the majority of the changes in the unix tz functions.
It was recently reported that the onset of DST coincides with an
increase in heart attacks, and the return to standard time coincides
with a decrease in heart attacks. Yet another reason to ditch
Daylight Savings Time.
-Chuck Harris
Steve Rooke wrote:
Hi,
I've been under the radar for a while so have not been able to keep up
with the threads I was contributing to but that has been done to death
and I will drop them. I've been very interested in reading peoplels
thoughts on time-zones. Has there been any moves to adopt a common
time for all countries in the world so as to alleviate the
difficulties in dealing with time-zones?" I know there was the idea of
Internet-time going around some time ago but I think that seems to
have died a death. Thinking about it, what's the problem of adapting
to daily life which is shifted by some number of hours off the clock.
If we all used UTC everyone around the world would know when a certain
time was in their own day. In my case for New Zealand, +12 hours would
probably be adopted for the country, so AM becomes PM and I'd get up
at 7PM (still that's not much different from now :) instead of AM.
I guess the question is, what's the likely-hood of a world standard
time being adopted (sort of like Star Trek)?
73
Steve - ZL3TUV
Chuck Harris wrote:
With the great ease of computers to make the transformations,
there really isn't any point in removing local timezones. It
is just a table after all... it is nothing like the old days when
every major town used Local Sidereal Time (eg. 12:00 is when the
sun is at its highest). That caused major problems for the
railroads.
The biggest problem with local timezones is all of the continuously
changing variations on Daylight Savings Time. That accounts for
the majority of the changes in the unix tz functions.
It was recently reported that the onset of DST coincides with an
increase in heart attacks, and the return to standard time coincides
with a decrease in heart attacks. Yet another reason to ditch
Daylight Savings Time.
-Chuck Harris
Such "effects" are somewhat suspect as there is unlikely to have been
any comparable control group not subject to DST.
Also disentangling seasonal effects from possible DST related effects is
somewhat problematic.
Bruce
Bruce Griffiths wrote:
Chuck Harris wrote:
...
It was recently reported that the onset of DST coincides with an
increase in heart attacks, and the return to standard time coincides
with a decrease in heart attacks. Yet another reason to ditch
Daylight Savings Time.
-Chuck Harris
Such "effects" are somewhat suspect as there is unlikely to have been
any comparable control group not subject to DST.
Also disentangling seasonal effects from possible DST related effects is
somewhat problematic.
Correlation not being equal to causation always causes some lay folk
problems. Though no one said that the DST shift caused the increase;
it would be interesting to know if when the US changed its DST dates,
the effect followed the change.
-Chuck Harris
Hi Chuck:
Not all of the U.S. uses DST, so there's a control group.
Have Fun,
Brooke Clarke
http://www.prc68.com/P/Prod.html Products I make and sell
http://www.prc68.com/Alpha.shtml All my web pages listed based on html name
http://www.PRC68.com
http://www.precisionclock.com
http://www.prc68.com/I/WebCam2.shtml 24/7 Sky-Weather-Astronomy Web Cam
Chuck Harris wrote:
Bruce Griffiths wrote:
Chuck Harris wrote:
...
It was recently reported that the onset of DST coincides with an
increase in heart attacks, and the return to standard time coincides
with a decrease in heart attacks. Yet another reason to ditch
Daylight Savings Time.
-Chuck Harris
Such "effects" are somewhat suspect as there is unlikely to have been
any comparable control group not subject to DST.
Also disentangling seasonal effects from possible DST related effects is
somewhat problematic.
Correlation not being equal to causation always causes some lay folk
problems. Though no one said that the DST shift caused the increase;
it would be interesting to know if when the US changed its DST dates,
the effect followed the change.
-Chuck Harris
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.
Brooke Clarke wrote:
Hi Chuck:
Not all of the U.S. uses DST, so there's a control group.
That's true, but it cannot be said that the areas that don't
use DST are equivalent to those that do in all respects that
might cause heart problems.
It is thought the change in sleep/wake patterns is what causes
the stress to the heart, so I would be most interested in what
happened to identical populations when the DST date changed.
Unfortunately, he study period was from 1987 through 2006, so
I believe it missed the shift in DST dates.
The Swedish researchers that did the study said the number of
heart attacks drops 5% for the 7 days after the US changes from
DST to standard time, and spikes on the Monday we go back to DST.
I expect that the daily risk will be found to shift with the
change in the DST date.
-Chuck Harris
Never mind it happens right before the holidays. I'm stressed either way.
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Chuck Harris cfharris@erols.com wrote:
Brooke Clarke wrote:
Hi Chuck:
Not all of the U.S. uses DST, so there's a control group.
That's true, but it cannot be said that the areas that don't
use DST are equivalent to those that do in all respects that
might cause heart problems.
It is thought the change in sleep/wake patterns is what causes
the stress to the heart, so I would be most interested in what
happened to identical populations when the DST date changed.
Unfortunately, he study period was from 1987 through 2006, so
I believe it missed the shift in DST dates.
The Swedish researchers that did the study said the number of
heart attacks drops 5% for the 7 days after the US changes from
DST to standard time, and spikes on the Monday we go back to DST.
I expect that the daily risk will be found to shift with the
change in the DST date.
-Chuck Harris
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to
https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.
At 9:42 AM -0400 10/30/08, Chuck Harris wrote:
With the great ease of computers to make the transformations,
there really isn't any point in removing local timezones. It
is just a table after all... it is nothing like the old days when
every major town used Local Sidereal Time (eg. 12:00 is when the
sun is at its highest). That caused major problems for the
railroads.
-Chuck Harris
Chuck,
I don't think you meant to say sidereal time, which is based the
stars, not the sun. There are 366.25 or so days in a sidereal year!
--
--David Forbes, Tucson, AZ
http://www.cathodecorner.com/
David Forbes wrote:
At 9:42 AM -0400 10/30/08, Chuck Harris wrote:
With the great ease of computers to make the transformations,
there really isn't any point in removing local timezones. It
is just a table after all... it is nothing like the old days when
every major town used Local Sidereal Time (eg. 12:00 is when the
sun is at its highest). That caused major problems for the
railroads.
-Chuck Harris
Chuck,
I don't think you meant to say sidereal time, which is based the
stars, not the sun. There are 366.25 or so days in a sidereal year!
Yes, you are right. The term stuck in my head from an astronomy course
I took in the distant past. About the only point in my life where I
studied all of the major time systems and how they inter-related...
Apparently without any great retention... sigh!
Local Solar Time is the LST I was thinking of... only, I guess 00:00:00
is high noon in LST.... Maybe Local Sundial Time?
-Chuck Harris
Local Solar Time noon would still be 12:00:00.
If I remember correctly, the one that has noon as 00:00:00 is Astronomical
time (e.g. GMAT).
Cheers
Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: time-nuts-bounces@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces@febo.com] On
Behalf Of Chuck Harris
Sent: 30 October 2008 18:49
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Time-zones and World time..
Local Solar Time is the LST I was thinking of... only, I guess 00:00:00 is
high noon in LST.... Maybe Local Sundial Time?
-Chuck Harris
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to
https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.
2008/10/31 Chuck Harris cfharris@erols.com:
With the great ease of computers to make the transformations,
there really isn't any point in removing local timezones. It
is just a table after all... it is nothing like the old days when
every major town used Local Sidereal Time (eg. 12:00 is when the
sun is at its highest). That caused major problems for the
railroads.
This assumes we are talking about electronic systems and means of
communications, what I was really thinking about was how this affects
people's ability to easily understand communication between countries.
This is not only affected by the plethora of local time-zones but with
ever changing daylight savings times. I communicate with the UK daily
and we have just gone through a period from being 11 hours ahead, then
12 and now 13 hours ahead as the DST changes are different in each
country. When I communicate with the US, I have to work out which
time-zone the place I'm talking to is in and correct for that. It's
probably not so much of a problem for someone in America as you get
used to the time-zone differences but this adds complexity for an
outsider. I just wondered if it would add global communications and
buisiness to have a single World standard.
The biggest problem with local timezones is all of the continuously
changing variations on Daylight Savings Time. That accounts for
the majority of the changes in the unix tz functions.
Not so hard under Unix as the tz updates are easy to pick up but
Windows can be a problem if updates are not turned on, IE. some
service packs can break an application but you still need things like
the tz updates.
It was recently reported that the onset of DST coincides with an
increase in heart attacks, and the return to standard time coincides
with a decrease in heart attacks. Yet another reason to ditch
Daylight Savings Time.
Hmmm... death by DST, how would that go down in an inquest. So is the
Government responsible for these deaths or the population for voting
for it...
73, Steve
Steve Rooke - ZL3TUV & G8KVD
Omnium finis imminet
As I recall, Local Solar Time is also known as Apparent Solar Time, and
is defined as when the sun reaches its highest point over some local
meridian of interest (town hall?).
That point in time is called 00:00:00... Which sort of makes sense because
you can directly observe high-noon, but midnight can only be estimated.
-Chuck Harris
David C. Partridge wrote:
Local Solar Time noon would still be 12:00:00.
If I remember correctly, the one that has noon as 00:00:00 is Astronomical
time (e.g. GMAT).
Cheers
Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: time-nuts-bounces@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces@febo.com] On
Behalf Of Chuck Harris
Sent: 30 October 2008 18:49
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Time-zones and World time..
Local Solar Time is the LST I was thinking of... only, I guess 00:00:00 is
high noon in LST.... Maybe Local Sundial Time?
-Chuck Harris
-----Original Message-----
From: time-nuts-bounces@febo.com
[mailto:time-nuts-bounces@febo.com] On Behalf Of Chuck Harris
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 12:09 PM
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Time-zones and World time..
As I recall, Local Solar Time is also known as Apparent Solar
Time, and is defined as when the sun reaches its highest
point over some local meridian of interest (town hall?).
That point in time is called 00:00:00... Which sort of makes
sense because you can directly observe high-noon, but
midnight can only be estimated.
-Chuck Harris
One can, of course, observe meridian passage for a variety of stars at night, and from that determine the time (given a calendar and the appropriate almanac data), so you could directly observe midnight.
Don't forget too, that solar noon varies quite a bit (minutes) from "mean solar time" over the year. If you're navigating your ship with noon sun sights, this is pretty important.
Steve Rooke wrote:
Hi,
I've been under the radar for a while so have not been able to keep up
with the threads I was contributing to but that has been done to death
and I will drop them. I've been very interested in reading peoplels
thoughts on time-zones. Has there been any moves to adopt a common
time for all countries in the world so as to alleviate the
difficulties in dealing with time-zones?" I know there was the idea of
Internet-time going around some time ago but I think that seems to
have died a death. Thinking about it, what's the problem of adapting
to daily life which is shifted by some number of hours off the clock.
If we all used UTC everyone around the world would know when a certain
time was in their own day. In my case for New Zealand, +12 hours would
probably be adopted for the country, so AM becomes PM and I'd get up
at 7PM (still that's not much different from now :) instead of AM.
What's this AM and PM stuff got to do with it. You mean you would go up
at 19 rather than 7?
I guess the question is, what's the likely-hood of a world standard
time being adopted (sort of like Star Trek)?
About zilch.
Cheers,
Magnus
Chuck Harris wrote:
With the great ease of computers to make the transformations,
there really isn't any point in removing local timezones. It
is just a table after all... it is nothing like the old days when
every major town used Local Sidereal Time (eg. 12:00 is when the
sun is at its highest). That caused major problems for the
railroads.
Which is the reason to coordinate it. Slightly off, but not too much for
it to be a major obsticle.
The biggest problem with local timezones is all of the continuously
changing variations on Daylight Savings Time. That accounts for
the majority of the changes in the unix tz functions.
Having Daylight Saving Time as such is not as big issue as not having it
coordinated between countries.
It was recently reported that the onset of DST coincides with an
increase in heart attacks, and the return to standard time coincides
with a decrease in heart attacks. Yet another reason to ditch
Daylight Savings Time.
Interestingly enought, the decrease does not fully compensate the
increase... so the net effect is an increase in heart attacks.
Cheers,
Magnus
2008/10/31 Magnus Danielson magnus@rubidium.dyndns.org:
What's this AM and PM stuff got to do with it. You mean you would go up
at 19 rather than 7?
Indeed it does mean that, and the 12 hour shift in time works for NZ
as compared to UTC because we are pretty close to 180 deg longitude
away from Greenwich. Sorry, if it was a clumsy piece of writing.
I guess the question is, what's the likely-hood of a world standard
time being adopted (sort of like Star Trek)?
About zilch.
In the foreseeable future.
73, Steve
Steve Rooke - ZL3TUV & G8KVD
Omnium finis imminet
I would say it's very unlikely to happen. People tend to prefer the
time in their area to match up with the day. So, having the sun
come up
at 7pm wouldn't suit a lot of people.
But people would get used to it after a while, maybe a generation, and
whose to say that the sun should come up at 7am, it's really just an
arbitrary concept.
In his book "100 Days" (about the 1982 war in the Falklands), Admiral
Woodward points out that the British forces kept their clocks set to
Greenwich Time, and shifted their days to match.
Which is to say that they still had breakfast right before dawn, but
the clock might have said 1000 hours, and dinner might have been
right after sunset (the Argentine Air Force being limited to daylight
operations), when the clock might have indicted 2200 hours.
So the numbers on the clock were indeed considered arbitrary; they
still sync'd life to the sun (for obvious reasons).
It was also helpful, in as much as the higher-ups back in the UK were
on Greenwich time, so Woodward could stay in sync with their comings
and goings.
Interesting book, by the way.
Tom Frank
2008/11/2 Thomas A. Frank ka2cdk@cox.net:
But people would get used to it after a while, maybe a generation, and
whose to say that the sun should come up at 7am, it's really just an
arbitrary concept.
In his book "100 Days" (about the 1982 war in the Falklands), Admiral
Woodward points out that the British forces kept their clocks set to
Greenwich Time, and shifted their days to match.
Which is to say that they still had breakfast right before dawn, but
the clock might have said 1000 hours, and dinner might have been
right after sunset (the Argentine Air Force being limited to daylight
operations), when the clock might have indicted 2200 hours.
So the numbers on the clock were indeed considered arbitrary; they
still sync'd life to the sun (for obvious reasons).
It was also helpful, in as much as the higher-ups back in the UK were
on Greenwich time, so Woodward could stay in sync with their comings
and goings.
Interesting book, by the way.
My point exactly.
73, Steve
Steve Rooke - ZL3TUV & G8KVD
Omnium finis imminet