The Time Twilight Zone

Interesting post by Sukumar on the zaniness of daylight savings and time zones.

Of course, he neglects to mention Europe changes over a week before the US. Or the difference between GMT and UTC. Or that India thought multiple time zones would be too confusing for its population and just split the time. India is 5 and a HALF hours ahead of UTC.  May be Indiana should adopt that too. China big as it is has only 1 time zone, though before the revolution in 1949 had 5. Russia has 11 time zones. Because the earliest and latest time zones are 26 hours apart, any given calendar date exists at some point on the globe for 50 hours. 

Like Sukumar says it keeps the software industry employed. Makes global monthly closes fun for accountants. Allows airlines to collect change fees as passengers show up late. And keeps politicians busy.

Comments

[rajagopal sukumar]

Vinnie,
Thanks for adding valuable additional knowledge on the topic. The fact that a given calendar day is in circulation for 50 hours gives you a whole another perspective on the term date.

[vinnie mirchandani]

actually, Sukumar it worsens my jet lag when I travel having to keep up with time zone changes!

[rajagopal sukumar]

Vinnie,
Having been in the travelling across time zones business for over 10 years, i empathize fully. Sometimes, I wish someone made the star trek transporter a reality so that we could all be "beamed" around by Scotty.

[Patrick Bennett]

Daylight savings is a waste of time and money, for industry, someone has to be employed to alter all the clocks, usually twice a year, for electroic systems this could be once a year.

GMT is the international reference for time, any major company that relies on time will always reference GMT, airlines run by GMT, radio communications run by GMT.
So why doesn't the human race run by GMT ?

Midday is when the sun is at it's highest, that will never change.