Validate Your Life

I love Philleas Fogg, Meridians, Space Sciences, Concepts of Time (like Time’s Arrow the Time’s Arrow star trek episode wasn’t that bad either) and albeit somewhat pseudo-science philosophical concepts of physics such as reverse-causality, and all that time-based Dr. Who jazz.   Unfortunately, this article is very un-Dr.Whoesque and quite bland.  But nevertheless, the DST thign was something I wanted to scrutinize upon tinkering with some awesome desktop clock gadgets and wanted to make sure the nuances of time zones and how GMT is perpetually free from the daylight-savings insanity, was lucid.

It’s useful for me to frame things in temporal to London.  Chicago is always LondonTime -6 (because during this DST period, London is UTC+1)  In Spring to Fall, Chicago is London Time (BST) -6, only  because all clocks are moved forward.  And in Fall to Spring, London is GMT/UTC/Zulu And Chicago is that- 6 (because the London time goes “back” to normal), but of course so does every other timezone (Chicago goes back to GMT-6, Sydney to GMT+9, and so on.  During DST it’s a headache a +1 gets added to all those London GMT+1, Chicagy GMT-5, Sydney GMT+10).   Fall to Spring (non-daylight savings time) LondonTime (Chicago time being, now (BST) -6), and now London Time coincides with GMT.  I reckon it’s a good clarification and also headache that GMT timezone DST fluctuations never occur; zulu is always UTC.  In other words, right now, it’s BST 11:02am, CST 5:02am, and GMT 10:02am.  So it’s annoying that half the year all time zones deviate in their relationship to GMT.  London is GMT+1 or GMT, New York is GMT-4 or GMT-5, Chicago is GMT-5 or GMT-6 (in respective DaylightSavings and Non-DayLightSavings Months, respectively).

It’s interesting to note that time and time zones are mere derivatives of man-made sentience placed (or sort of dumped, rather) on longitudes.  And then again, longitudes are geographical trigonometric man-made units of measurement as well.

“Benjamin Franklin first suggested Daylight Saving Time in 1784, but it was not until World War I, in 1916, when it was adopted by several counties in Europe that initially rejected the idea.” — Timeanddate.com

I agree with Europe; DST should have bloody been initially rejected (and remained rejected haha).  The additional fact that some countries don’t even practice DST and that the exact date that countries shift their clocks deviates from country to country is indicative of an incredibly outdated and messy time-telling system that adds to this gear-grinding headache.  Take a look at this page to see what I mean about this lunacy.  (Also, is that really the situation?  It takes all countries literally 3 months to make the clock changes?  Am I misinterpreting this?? Jeepers! Dang.  That’s realy messed up, if that’s the case!)  From August 5, 2010 at 2100 in Egypt to November 7, 2010 at 1100 in the United States clocks jump forward or jump back an hour depending on their location in the hemisphere and on the globe.  The fact that of the DST activation of deactivations occurs over the span of OVER three months (EVERY YEAR!) is preposterous!  It’s amazing anything gets done on time!  It’s a massively confusing headahce really.  I understand the hemisphere thing.  Northern clocks jump back and Sothern hemisphere clocks jump forward in the Fall/Autumn.  Great and understandable because of the 23.5 degree tilt of the earth, but why in all bloody hell would their be non-synchronized clock changes, so that every country just “in their own time” over the span of 3 months (!) all the changes finally get made?  Why not just on a set day, say October 15, and March 15, make the corresponding hemisphere-based DST changes?  That would be so much simpler!  And maybe the reason for not doing that could be some country-based geosdesic trigonemetric reason, but frankly, that should be corrected for and people shouldn’t have to be literally astronomical rocket scientists and physicists (unless they want to be and I certainly dont’ have a problem with those fields at all!) to accurately no one DST commences and terminates.

In many ways, I would almost prefer to tell time by distance, like “it’s 10.2km before the sun’s horizon passes because that’s what ultimately time is, just a measurement based on the earth’s revolution. The fact there’s man-made “zones” based on longitudinal man-made geographical equally-spaced measurement, based on the sphere of the earth, isn’t helped by an additional hour adjustment annually each spring.  Anything that articulates the fact that we’re on a gigantic spinning sphere I am all for.  Anything that seems to detract from that fact, (and indeed I think the multi-layered usage of meridians and timezones does detract from the fact that we’re on an orbitting (and revolving) sphere) is detrimental to understanding proper scientific sentiency.  Good TIMES!!  (hahaha pun unquestionably intended, and something I would’ve said anyways).