OoTS Publication Timeline

[Jasdoif]

Like I said, just convert everything using a second as the base, and just ignore those pesky days and seasons and such. We can call the new system Stellar Date or some such.

Epoch time isn't new....

[ijuinkun]

I think we should use the opportunity to rethink our entire system of time. WHy does a day start in the middle of the night? 1AM isn't the morning, it's still nighttime. "Midnight" should be renamed "Endnight" and should be moved to 7AM. 7:01AM becomes 12:01AM, the first minute of a new day, and set where the sunrise is around that time.

Also, we should have 10 hours in a day, each of which is composed of 100 minutes and each of those is composed of 100 seconds. A New Second will be 14% shorter than our current seconds, but who cares? You would work for 2 New Hours a day (equivalent to about 6.5 current hours, but the 8 hour work day is too long anyway)

Midnight was chosen mainly because, out of the four transitions of the day (sunrise, noon, sunset, midnight), it was the one where people are the least active--you can go to sleep on one day and wake up on the next, rather than having the day change over during your work hours.

On decimal time, divisibility by 3 and 4 has in practice shown to be more convenient than divisibility by 5 in timekeeping--we use 1/3 or 1/4 of a minute/hour/day much more often than we use 1/5.

Like I said, just convert everything using a second as the base, and just ignore those pesky days and seasons and such. We can call the new system Stellar Date or some such.

Captain's Log, Stardate 90210.5. We have encountered a community of unusually argumentative people who spend their time putatively critiquing a webcomic, but who mostly digress into unrelated topics.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Yay, somebody got the joke!

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Midnight was chosen mainly because, out of the four transitions of the day (sunrise, noon, sunset, midnight), it was the one where people are the least active--you can go to sleep on one day and wake up on the next, rather than having the day change over during your work hours.

Having worked at a place that had their accounting day change at 3 in the afternoon (for good reasons), I can confirm life is a lot simpler when day change happens while you are asleep.

On decimal time, divisibility by 3 and 4 has in practice shown to be more convenient than divisibility by 5 in timekeeping--we use 1/3 or 1/4 of a minute/hour/day much more often than we use 1/5.

Sure, but can you prove that is not because we have whole numbers for those points? Because I suspect that if we divided each hour into 10 segments, we'd use n/5th and n/10ths a lot more.

GW

[Sir_Norbert]

Last I checked, 60/5 was a whole number....

[C-Dude]

Last I checked, 60/5 was a whole number....

Greywolf means that base 12 has more natural factors which makes it easier to break the unit into refined measurements.

12 has factors 2, 3, 4, and 6.

10 only has factors 2 and 5.

So when working in base 12, we end up with easier divisions than when working in base 10.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Last I checked, 60/5 was a whole number....

"if we divided each hour into 10 segments". Currently we divide hours into 12 segments, and give them numbers. Which makes using n/10 difficult, since it corresponds to 6n minutes, which doesn't have a nice number in a clock face to reference. But if we did, we'd probably use them.

GW

[Werbaer]

I'd like to have noon at 12:00, for starters.

So back to the days where every other town had a different time?
Where, at some stations, trains heading west used a different clock from trains heading east?
(for example Bretten, Mühlacker, Pforzheim - although in Pforzheim, trains heading east and west used the same clock, but trains heading south a different one)

[Fyraltari]

So back to the days where every other town had a different time?
Where, at some stations, trains heading west used a different clock from trains heading east?
(for example Bretten, Mühlacker, Pforzheim - although in Pforzheim, trains heading east and west used the same clock, but trains heading south a different one)

No. Noon at 12h00in the center of the timezone and at 11h30 and 12h30 on the edges. I am aware you can’t have it exactly right, but noon at 14h00 is just plain wrong.

[Lord Torath]

I'm in favor of eliminating daylight savings time. Makes it easier to see things that require dark skies, like comets and meteors. Or fireworks. If you don't have daylight savings time, it gets dark an hour earlier, which means you can start the fireworks or star gazing an hour earlier, which means one more hour of sleep before you need to get up the next morning to head to the office.

It also means it will be cooler for your evening bicycle ride.

Captain's Log, Stardate 90210.5. We have encountered a community of unusually argumentative people who spend their time putatively critiquing a webcomic, but who mostly digress into unrelated topics.

Stardate? Or did you mean StarDate?

[Angrith]

As a programmer and atmospheric scientist whose every dataset relies on standard time keeping, please let us eliminate daylight savings time. Going from UTC-6 to UTC-5 and back plays absolute havoc with timing forecasts and trying to figure out which weather balloon was actually launched pre-dawn. Also, not having the sun's zenith at noon means that you have to estimate what time the hottest part of the afternoon is for every place separately. So please, for the sanity of meteorologists everywhere, let me have constant time zones where noon is roughly the sun's zenith. (Although the Roman system would be horrendously bad. Constant hours are a must.)

If it gives me pretty data, society can get over itself and adjust their business hours to match the sun year-round.

[137beth]

Get rid of DST so I don't have to pay attention to when it starts and stops. Lazyness must overrule tradition!

[Peelee]

So far, every argument in favor of getting rid of DST also holds for just making DST permanent, except for "12 should be when the rotation has centered on the sun", which isn't even a terribly good argument since it's very different for two people on opposite sides of the same time zone to begin with, so may as well just ignore for all the precision it has.

[Lord Torath]

So far, every argument in favor of getting rid of DST also holds for just making DST permanent, except for "12 should be when the rotation has centered on the sun", which isn't even a terribly good argument since it's very different for two people on opposite sides of the same time zone to begin with, so may as well just ignore for all the precision it has.

Not mine!

I'm in favor of eliminating daylight savings time. Makes it easier to see things that require dark skies, like comets and meteors. Or fireworks. If you don't have daylight savings time, it gets dark an hour earlier, which means you can start the fireworks or star gazing an hour earlier, which means one more hour of sleep before you need to get up the next morning to head to the office.

[LadyEowyn]

So far, every argument in favor of getting rid of DST also holds for just making DST permanent, except for "12 should be when the rotation has centered on the sun", which isn't even a terribly good argument since it's very different for two people on opposite sides of the same time zone to begin with, so may as well just ignore for all the precision it has.

Making it permanent would be my preference as well. Everyone benefits from an extra hour of light in the evening, when they’re awake. (Especially now, when outdoors is the best place for socializing.) Spend time in the garden, go for walk, go for a bike ride, hang out outdoors with friends.

Evenings are inherently warmer than mornings, as well, so an extra hour of light in the evenings is more enjoyable.

And most people do not enjoy being woken up by the sun at 5am, and would be equally (or much more) happy getting up at 6 instead. You don’t end up with any fewer hours of light in the winter - you just get them in evenings (when you are awake and off work, and can enjoy them) rather than mornings.

Lord Torath’s argument really only applies to a small minority of night-sky enthusiasts (and is irrelevant for urban residents without cars, who can’t see much in the night sky anyway). Having fireworks displays at 9 or at 10 works equally well.

[brian 333]

When communication required everyone to be at their desks at roughly the same time to avoid missed calls, what time you went to work mattered. At one time US Eastern Time Zone businesses worked from 9 to 5 while Central Time Zones worked from 8 to 4. You still see it in television programming: "at nine o'clock, eight Central time." We have not had to do that since taped programming became a thing.

Now that many people can work from home and can monitor multiple channels of communication from a cell phone the traditional work day is becomming increasingly irrelevant. For most of what people do it doesn't matter if it's submitted at 3 PM or 3 AM, or if it's submitted from a cubicle in an inner city skyscraper or a 4 wheel drive vehicle atop Pike's Peak.

For daily use a standard time is necessary, but it really does not matter if solar zenith ir at 1200, 0600, or whatever.

I vote UTC for everyone, and let employers and employees decide how much sun they get after work. Just stop the spring forward, fall back nonsense. It never really accomplished what it was intended to, which was to save electricity.

[KorvinStarmast]

Having worked at a place that had their accounting day change at 3 in the afternoon (for good reasons), I can confirm life is a lot simpler when day change happens while you are asleep.

Having worked the mid shift (late night till about dawn) for a few years, I agree. My son is on that time table now and we have worked on resetting his circadian rhythm. Not easy but doable.

So far, every argument in favor of getting rid of DST also holds for just making DST permanent

Works for me: i'd have more days where I could get in nine holes of golf after work, and during the summer 18.

[lost_my_NHL]

So far, every argument in favor of getting rid of DST also holds for just making DST permanent, except for "12 should be when the rotation has centered on the sun", which isn't even a terribly good argument since it's very different for two people on opposite sides of the same time zone to begin with, so may as well just ignore for all the precision it has.

But likewise every argument in favor of permanent DST also holds for getting rid of DST and just scheduling things later in the day. But for people whose work refers to time zones as "UTC+/-X, life is a lot simpler getting rid of DST. And those people build a lot of the infrastructure that we live on. Weather forecasts were mentioned earlier, as was the Excel/Lotus compatibility. As a former sailor, I ran into two issues: Converting from time zone to longitude, and arranging port logistics in a different time zone than the water right outside the port.

Well, scientific evidence does suggest that it makes people sad and dysfunctional (and empirical evidence suggests that this scientific evidence may very well be sound).

As a counterpoint, there's also been studies about how kids perform worse in school and accidents occur on commutes more often when the day starts in darkness.

Everyone benefits from an extra hour of light in the evening, when they’re awake.

As for whether you prefer an extra hour in the morning or evening - that entirely depends on whether you're a morning or evening person.

[JonahFalcon]

The Order of the Stick 2: Order Stickier is due sometime in 2022, right?

[Peelee]

But likewise every argument in favor of permanent DST also holds for getting rid of DST and just scheduling things later in the day.

Which I would be entirely in favor of. However, I have yet to hear anyone en masse argue that we should move everything an hour back, so I shoot for the argument I have heard at least some solid support for.

[Emanick]

As a counterpoint, there's also been studies about how kids perform worse in school and accidents occur on commutes more often when the day starts in darkness.

This, to me, has long been the most compelling point. Not only does the research strongly suggest just that, but on a personal note, getting up in the dark and plodding down to school in the darkness is one of my least favorite (recurrent) memories from childhood, and I have a hard time believing that it didn't negatively affect my schoolwork or the amount I learned. It's deeply healthy to be exposed to sunlight before you begin your work for the day. I am very lucky that, as an adult, I have not yet worked a job that required me to get up at a similarly ungodly hour.

If I had confidence that society would push back the start time for both schools and businesses, I would support making Daylight Savings Time permanent, but I don't. When in doubt, bet against any given specific change taking place. So as it is, I'd much rather just get rid of DST altogether. Everyone deserves to get a bit of sun before they start their work for the day.

[Metastachydium]

As a counterpoint, there's also been studies about how kids perform worse in school and accidents occur on commutes more often when the day starts in darkness.

Well, we could always pick a better fixed time for 8 o'clock.

[Lord Torath]

I'd say it makes the most sense to set the clocks so that 12 noon occurs when the sun is within 30 minutes of being directly overhead.

[Fyraltari]

I'd say it makes the most sense to set the clocks so that 12 noon occurs when the sun is within 30 minutes of being directly overhead.

Exactly this.