Comments on: Modest Proposal Saving Time

By: Ryan

Ryan — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 16:10:23 +0000

KuliniTime!

By: Jamie

Jamie — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 01:00:12 +0000

All we need is a giant flywheel, and then Kuliniewicz Standard Time shall be implemented!

By: Paul Kuliniewicz

Paul Kuliniewicz — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 23:59:38 +0000

Exactly. It’s hard enough to assign the proper day when talking about something happening at, say, 2 am on Saturday — is that 2 am when the calendar says Saturday, or “Saturday night” at 2 am on Sunday? Now imagine that situation happening in the middle of the day.

I suppose we could then redefine our notion of “day” to not necessarily imply night-followed-by-light-followed-by-night, but there’s bound to be a lot of resistance to that idea, to say the least.

The solution, of course, is to tidally lock Earth to the Sun. With the Sun fixed in the sky, “day” no longer has any astronomical meaning, leaving us free to measure time however we please. The only trick is tidally locking Earth to the Sun, the first step of which is getting rid of that pesky moon of ours, since it’s currently working to slow Earth’s rotation until we’re tidally locked with it just like it is with us.

By: Jeff Moser

Jeff Moser — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 18:10:16 +0000

Having the date change during a normal workday would just be weird. Then, saying “Let’s have lunch tomorrow” makes it confusing because are they talking about the now noon that then might be 23:00? Or is it a late lunch that’s the next day 00:00 - 1:00?

I say we ask Air Traffic Controllers and GPS receivers how they like being on Zulu Time/GMT/UTC.

By: Paul Kuliniewicz

Paul Kuliniewicz — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 15:33:47 +0000

But it’s still no different than what we have now. If you’re on Eastern and you tell someone on Pacific you’re going to call them at 08:00 EDT, they’ll tell you that’s way too early. It’s exactly the same if you say you’ll call them at 12:00 UTC, but at least now you don’t have to tell them which time zone you’re talking about. The notion of what’s “early” and “late” changes from time zone to time zone, just as it does when we think in terms of our local time today.

Yes, you have to rethink time, but it’s no different than changing from the crazy system of measurements we use today to the metric system. Everything’s still the same size; you’re just talking about it differently.

…

Nobody’s yet pointed out the real source of confusion inherent in my proposal, though.

By: Jeff Moser

Jeff Moser — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 11:47:23 +0000

I get the idea, but like the previous comment, it’d get tricky. People might adjust to a solar noon for their locale. You’d have to rethink time: “you can’t get a haircut at 13:00?! what do you mean.. that’s crazy talk!”

By: fluffy

fluffy — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 09:04:05 +0000

you’ll still need to figure out what other peoples’ daily schedules are before calling them on the phone though.