h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You know, that's not a bad idea, TC!

To avoid choosing a zero and then messing around with BC and AD (or equivalent), it's surely better to count all the years in one direction. Therefore, we should just look to see when the world is going to end, and count back from then. What's more, since there's always an apocalypse prediction coming up in the next 5 years, we will only ever be in years -1 to -5, which will make writing the date so much simpler.

Microsoft Office uses 01 January 1900 (type "1" into an Excel sheet and change the format to Date)

Interestingly, "0" gives the date 00 January 1900, and "-1" is undefined.

No wonder people panicked about the Millennium Bug.

TC the military do that - they work on either Zulu time (GMT) or local time. Where I worked we had 2 clocks, one clearly marked with a Z so that we could communicate effectively.

And to whoever suggested it: I would contend that 1 Jan 1970 is not arbitrary - see all the previous posts.

Time, as we well know here, is an illusion. Being able to specify a time that has meaning to someone else is only a requirement when you can actually communicate and know how long the communication has taken. Hence, before the advent of the railways, there were many local times scattered across the breadth of England.

Here on Earth, we can pick any point we choose, with very little cost. As grown up intelligent creatures a few negative numbers or labels really shouldn't upset us. Maybe if we contact some other civilisation, outside our solar system, then things will change. Perhaps we could all agree on the timing of a particular celestial event - a supernova maybe.

The Big Bang sounds like a better event, but I guess the timing of that one's open to some interpretation.

Well, that's the idea behind the Holocene Calendar, but it makes a compromise to make it easier to adjust by adding a nice round 10000 years which is close enough to the beginnings of civilization yet lets us easily convert our current years by adding a 1 to their start. It gets rid of the problem of negative year order for all human historical events.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar



As for one world time, UTC is fine. Space Shuttle missions used two clocks. They used UTC and MET. MET is Mission Elapsed Time.

I think that calling the middle ages "The Middle Ages" was probably a bit short sighted.

"These days it would surely make more sense for the whole world to be just one time zone using a 24-hour system" [TC]

But the sun is overhead at different times in different places. Why can't people's local conditions govern the time?

Obviously, it can and it did for most of the history of time until the advent of railroad schedules necessitated time zones.

"These days it would surely make more sense for the whole world to be just one time zone using a 24-hour system" [TC]

>>But the sun is overhead at different times in different places. Why can't people's local conditions govern the time?<< [PaulH]

Time is a social construct - so if people in Germany are doing something at 3pm, it's 2pm in London and (guess) 10am in New York and 11pm in Korea. The time is the same, but it doesn't mean that people in Korea have to get up in the middle of the night to work a normal day.

The time isn't the same, even if the amount of elapsed time is the same. Also as mentioned, time zones are already a compromise.

"The time is the same, but it doesn't mean that people in Korea have to get up in the middle of the night to work a normal day." [Sho]

If they work the night shift they do, but that wasn't my point. Most of us are diurnal, not nocturnal. If two people live in different time zones, they experience the cycles of light and darkness differently. Yes, time is a social construct. If you grow up in one time zone and then go to live in another, once you get over the jet lag, chances are you'll want to live by the phases of light and darkness that you were used to in your previous time zone. It's a convenience to call the time when the sun is overhead "Noon." Not everyone needs that convenience, but is it so terrible to have it?

Noon can still be "noon" or even "midday", but it might just happen to be at 0700 hrs or 1700 hrs - we just have to get used to the idea that the numbers are arbitrary. People are online and chatting at four in the morning their time anyway - with people on the other side of the world who are just having their afternoon tea.

With a son having just moved to the West Coast of the US, I just find it a nuisance having to say two different times every time we want to skype. And confusion still arises when I try and explain it to other people.

Poor solution to problem:

Dreadful Dyson. Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful Dyson. The hand dryers. Are they meant to dry my hands or test how steady I can keep my hands so I don't touch the sides and get someone else's germs all over my hands?

If the hand dryers aren't Dyson they'll be dreadful anyway. Either too weak or cold. Why haven't we solved this simple problem yet?

We managed to get to the moon 50 years ago

You can wash and dry your hands as well as you like, but you still have to use the door handle on your way out.

Ugh... one bar I've been to has non-Dyson , high volume/velocity hand dryers. The filth on the wall below them tells me all I need to know about hand dryers. I prefer paper towels but as in this video I use just one sheet.

http://youtu.be/2g4fWaegoDk

>>You can wash and dry your hands as well as you like, but you still have to use the door handle on your way out.

I use my elbow instead.

Toe.