On Aug 23, 2007, at 10:02 AM, Jim Devine wrote:
I think we should all go back to the system that used to prevail in Saudi Arabia: skip all this time-zone stuff and go for solar time!
I have been trying to convince a sophisticated programmer friend of mine since childhood that there is major change to be effected and money to be made by creating a watch that knows where you are, how long ago the sun rose and when it will set. In a moment in history when GPS can tell us exactly where we are and linkage to atomic calendars can tell us WHEN we are, and logarithms can tell where we are relative to sunrise and sunset, why do we still use timekeepers that are based on monks' burning knots on a rope to force other monks to work, sleep and pray? I have for years considered "daylight saving time" a fraud. What it really does is squander our sense of nature, i.e., the sun's impact on us. A simple bit of coding can translate "local moment" into "universal time". Local Moment equals here and now (longitude and latitude plus percentage of day since sunrise). Universal Time equals this moment in the Earth's revolution around the Sun since 00:00:00 New Years Day. Such a timepiece would bring mankind back to the natural tick-tock of the world and, in time, shed the handcuffs of corporate (priestly) time. Dan Scanlan
