Daylight Saving
This is not a profound post.
Daylight Saving has been debated by both high minded and low minded people. I reckon I’m somewhere in between. I see and gain some benefits, and I see and suffer some consequences. Some simple ones:
+ I’m a not-morning person, so more light after work means I can get some gardening done, or whatever else I fancy. I could just work 8-4 tho.
? I work a relatively fixed 9-5, so riding to work is darker, but riding home from work is lighter. This doesn’t matter much since it’s all in summer and there’s plenty of daylight to go around.
- At work, we deal with electronic instruments which have no way of recording which time zone they’re in. If they’re deployed (stuck out in the middle of the ocean) during a DST change over, the data gets corrupted unless we make careful, fiddly changes to it. There are other related technical issues, but I won’t bother explaining them.
I’m not sure which way I’ll vote in the referendum, or if the state government will listen to the result. I do reckon that we’d be better off without timezones. China seems to do just fine in that regard. Let the whole world run on UTC (GMT). That way I don’t work 9-5 at UTC+8, I work “1700-0100″. Never again will there be confusion about whether I add 8 or subtract 8 or is Sydney ahead or behind Perth etc. People who don’t fly very often won’t read “local time” in the itinerary and then wonder (and have to work out) what that translates to. International phone calls? “Call me at 2100″ will result in no confusion.
Yeah I know, it aint gonna happen. Nice to dream though.
I would vote ‘Yes’ for your referendum on World Time.
Haha I like the title. Lends itself to ‘New World Order’… now where did I put my copy of Assassins Creed? Oh that’s right, I’m still playing it.
I said it first!
http://releases.jhu.edu/2011/12/27/time-for-a-change-johns-hopkins-scholars-say-calendar-needs-serious-overhaul/
Okay maybe they’ve been researching it for a few years. Sounds cool.