Should we have one time zone for the world ?

[urbandefault]

The problem isn't DST itself, it's the process of changing back and forth. Some of us have trouble adjusting -- it feels like having jet lag twice a year without going anyplace.

No. The problem is DST. It's pointless and totally antiquated.

My bar closes at 3am. DST means that one night out of the year I get off work an hour early when 2am magically becomes 3am. It's the best night ever. I vote we keep it.

Of course, the flip side of that is that one night out of the year I get stuck at work an hour longer when 2am magically reverts back to 1am. But that's an extra hour of Saturday night income, so I like that, too.

When I used to play in a band, the "spring forward" meant we got to play a short set before last call.

On the down side, it was "last call."

 

[RoJoHen]

Last Call is my favorite time of the day.

 

[Leviathan]

When the machines rise up, the new world order shall be metric time. Might as well get ahead on that one....

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Daylight Savings Time is a bad enough idea. This would be worse.

Indeed. This may actually be the only idea even more utterly stupid and pointless than so-called daylight "saving" time.

I personally think all year should be in DST (or, as I like to call it, "war time").

 

[Squiggy]

Time zones date back to the 19th Century and were created for the railroads.

Sorta...but places farther east have always been "later". If it wasn't a time zone, it was because "high noon", when the sun was directly overhead.

No. Each place needs to start and end the day at about the same local time. If people in LA woke up and 9pm and went to sleep at noon society would break down.

 

[Owain Taggart]

When I used to play in a band, the "spring forward" meant we got to play a short set before last call.

On the down side, it was "last call."

That gives perspective to these lyrics:

Wouldn't it be great, if the band just never ended
We could stay out late and we would never hear last call
We wouldn't need to worry about approval or permission,
we could - slip off the edge and never worry about the fall

One of my favourite songs from one of my favourite bands

 

[RJDiogenes]

I like the 26-hour system better than Metric time. I need more hours in the day, not less.

Changing to one time zone is a bad idea, but modifying DST would be a good idea. Since more and more clocks are now synchronized online, local time could be migrated fractionally every day and we could do away with the spring-ahead-fall-back nonsense.

But the best idea of all would be to switch to an eight-day week. That way we could have a four-day work week and a four-day weekend.

What's a weekend?

Exactly.

 

[scotpens]

Each place needs to start and end the day at about the same local time. If people in LA woke up and 9pm and went to sleep at noon society would break down.

All of mainland China, which stretches across almost as many degrees of longitude as the contiguous United States, is effectively a single time zone. Maybe we should ask the Chinese how they manage it.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

They don't do what this proposal calls for. If people normally get up at 7, people in the far west of China get up at the equivalent of 5. This proposal still calls for making things relative to noon (regardless of what time is locally noon). China is a political decision to make the country as singular as possible by eliminating local diversity. If we adopted China's policy on a global scale, you would be waking up in the middle of the night to go to work and going to bed in the middle of the day. This proposal at least isn't that stupid.

 

[Australis]

I like DST, I like long twilight evenings after work. As for 'jet lag', I dunno, it's only an hour, itshouldn't be hard to adjust. I'm not overly fond of the first week after change, but I see the benefits later.

 

[Timewalker]

...it feels like having jet lag twice a year without going anyplace.

Exactly.

I like DST, I like long twilight evenings after work. As for 'jet lag', I dunno, it's only an hour, itshouldn't be hard to adjust. I'm not overly fond of the first week after change, but I see the benefits later.

I always found it hard to adjust. And there are no benefits if you're a kid who enjoys stargazing, but still has a strict bedtime even in the summer holidays - by the time it's dark enough to see anything, you're being hollered at to go to bed.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I think time zones need to be gotten rid of, we ought to switch to metric time, everyone should learn to speak Lojban, and all sports should be replaced with curling.

 

[M'Sharak]

This will create a bigger problem than the one it solves.

What real problem would it solve exactly???

The only problem it solves is the problem of having more than one time zone... which a) isn't, in fact, a problem, and b) is infinitely preferable to the utter chaos which would be everyday communication, scheduling, and transportation if every little municipality on the planet operated on its own unique version of local time.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Instead of eliminating time zones, I think we should standardize pizza. And by that I don't mean one style of crust or one type of topping, but making pizza the standard meal on menus worldwide. Every restaurant would be a pizza restaurant. Everywhere around the world. Open 24/7, free delivery. With a 30 minute guarantee.

Now there's an idea I can get behind.

That, my friends, is what I call world peace.

Or, if you watch the chef work: Whirled pieces.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

I much prefer having time zones. I expect the sun to be in the cenith at noon.

Also, having one global time zone would still require you to make a calculation: if it's 23:00 in London, would my buddy in LA be in bed now or at work? It'd be early afternoon there, so he'd be at work, but it being afternoon at 23:00 would be utterly confusing.
The system that was originally used, namely "it's 12:00 when the sun is at the highest point" makes sense and is less confusing. Once I know the time difference between London and LA (8 hours) it's easy to find out that 23:00 GMT is 15:00 PST - a time where most people are at work.