

America needs to have just two time zones and the world should follow suit - galfarragem
http://qz.com/357823/america-needs-to-have-just-two-time-zones-and-the-world-should-follow-suit/

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cnst
You mean, America should follow Russia?

I'm glad Vladimir Putin is, in fact, mentioned, although the amount of outcry
depicted in the media for the time-zone changes in Russia is not adequately
represented in the article. Especially if you look into the western media
coverage of the time zone changes in Russia, which don't even seem to bother
to point out the benefits of not having to change the time twice per year,
merely taking another opportunity at bashing the leader of the country.

But, most importantly, it also omits the lessons learned in Russia with the
elimination of the time-zones -- they ended up having to reverse some of the
changes of eliminating several time zones, and reinstating them back.

However, it still appears to be a unanimous decision to not have winter/summer
time distinction. But having a one-hour difference between Pacific and Eastern
makes no sense.

------
dalke
Quoting from Clarke's "Imperial Earth" (1976) (to show how old this topic is):

"And I've run into something that complicates business on Earth to an
incredible extent. I _knew_ about it, but hadn't realized its full
implications. It's the problem of Time Zones.

"There are some advantages in belonging to a corridor culture. We're not
slaves of the sun, and can set all our clocks to the same time, all over
Titan. But on Earth!

"There are four time zones -- America, Africa, Asia, Oceania -- six hours
apart. So when you want to speak to anyone, or make an appointment, you have
to know what zone he's in. And when you move from one zone to another, you
have to put your watch ahead -- or back -- six hours.

"It's very awkward and confusing, but it was even worse a couple of centuries
ago; then there were _twenty-four_ zones, one for every hour of the day! The
development of global telecommunications made that situation impossible -- not
that it's very satisfactory even now. There's talk of going over to a single
World Time -- probably Absolute Ephemeris Time -- and ignoring the day-night
cycle, just as we do. But the arguments on both sides are nicely balance, and
no one expects a decision in a hurry. After all, it took several hundred years
to get the World Calendar adopted, and _that_ was because the Martian and
Lunar administrations simply wouldn't put up with Earth's ridiculous months
any longer ..."

I hadn't remember the "slaves of the sun" part. Upon rereading that, it looks
like Clarke is suggesting that it is better to slaves of international
business instead of the sun. This essay, which says "And so starts weeks of
international business chaos", also emphasizes the needs of international
business over local solar conditions.

------
grover_hartmann
More like: The world doesn't give a shit about what "America" does.

Also, America is a continent and not a country.

~~~
mikerichards
Who's the world? North Korea, Mozambique, Cuba...Brazil?

~~~
dalke
The OP was commenting on the US tendency to use "American" as shorthand for
mean people in the US and/or US citizens. This is annoying to some, such as
Spanish-speaking people of South America, where "America" refers to what
Angolophones call North and South America. This is the six continent model
instead of the seven continent model.

The author of the piece treated "America" as short-hand for "continental
United States", so the title is doubly-wrong in that case, as it doesn't
propose that American should have just two time zones.

Your objection seems pointlessly argumentative. The author explains what
"world" means:

> My original plan was just for the United States, but there is no reason we
> can’t take this global, and have only 10 to 12 time zones worldwide.

The OP's response is compatible with this use, which seems to be "all of the
people on the world", including those living in the countries you mentioned.

~~~
mikerichards
The OP was referring to the US when he said "The world doesn't give a shit
what America does".

The OP also is obviously incapable of knowing what "the world" gives a shit
about.

I guess he's bitter because he can't get a job doing remote RoR work, but
obviously nobody in the US would hire him with that attitude.

~~~
dalke
You left out the quote marks in the first line. The OP likely used them to
indicate that "America" is used as given in the original article, to refer to
the US, even though the OP has issue with that use. The second line clarifies
the problem.

In reviewing the OP's history now, as it appears that you did, the OP comes
from Brazil. Citizens of Brazil, in common with the rest of South America,
consider "America" to be both North America and South America.

This is as I suspected earlier.

The result is a pretty standard response for people from South America, enough
that guide books for South America will warn "Americans" about the testy
response they might get from using that term as a demonym;
[http://www.usaisnotamerica.com/](http://www.usaisnotamerica.com/) chastises
people for using that word that way, and going the other way,
[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/a_fine_whine...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/a_fine_whine/2013/08/america_the_continent_vs_america_the_country.html)
defends the use.

As the Slate article points out, many South Americans consider the term
"American", when used as a synonym for people from the US, is "unfair,
imperialistic, and U.S.-centric".

Viewed with that in mind, a proposal by a US citizen for the rest of the world
to switch to use fewer time zones, well, that's just rubbing the cultural
imperialism right in.

This is a pretty standard culture conflict, where the OP is commenting on a
US-centric site, and where you have little knowledge of the broader situation.
It doesn't have to have anything to do with remote Ruby on Rails work.

Just like the OP is incapable of knowing what "the world" cares about, you are
incapable of knowing that no one in the US is willing to accept that attitude.
At the very least, Brazilian ex-pats living in the US likely won't have a
problem.

~~~
cnst
You didn't even mention that the term North America, when used within North
America, includes only US and Canada, but not Mexico! Just in case a
clarification was needed.

