Clock changing

[sobrique]

OK, so which sadist came up with the idea of sneakily stealing an hour?
First sunday after equinox, we put the clocks forward. Meaning it's now an hour earlier than it was last week.

It's very Orwellian don't you think? I mean, in as much as time is an arbitrary division of the day anyway. But rather than just going "we'll we're going to alter working hours the week after each equinox" instead we tell ourselves (in a deep and sonorous voice) that "It is now 7am. Anyone who thinks it is 6am is misguided and wrong, and should be reported to the Ministry of Day".

Oh well, I'll feel better once I've sorted out that coffee.

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I've long thought that changing the clocks twice a year is ridiculous. Apparently the USSR spent quite a while with completely wrong clocks, Stalin forgot to issue a decree setting them back in the autumn and nobody dared to remind him.

I'm a bit sceptical about the concept of timezones too. Use UTC everywhere, use the 24-hour clock (since the 12-hour clock would no longer make sense without being closely tied to morning/afternoon).

...clearly UTC everywhere won't happen, but it might be possible to kill DST.

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

In one sense, using UTC as a universal time works. Everyone is on the 'same' time. Which would of course require dropping AM and PM because they're just irrelevant.

I rather like having timezones though - it's fairly easy if you know what time it is in germany to make a good guess if someone will be available to talk to you on the phone for example. (OK, germany isn't that amazing an example, but the difference between east and west coast of the US can be interesting...)