[LEAPSECS] [time-nuts] Leap Quirks

Rob Seaman seaman at noao.edu
Mon Jan 5 11:44:52 EST 2009


M. Warner Losh wrote:


> The reason that time zone boundaries are so crazy is that they were

> trying to keep groups of people that interact often on the same time

> zone. Otherwise we'd have nice, straight lines.

>

> [...]

>

> Time zones were the first step away from a local apparent solar time,

> which had been used prior to that (more or less) to having larger

> areas agree on what time it is. If anything, I take it as evidence

> that people care less about solar time now than they used to because

> the variance in the local solar time to standard time varies much

> more than it did prior to this shift.


Like I said, I interpret it as support for solar-based civil
timekeeping. Others interpret it as evidence of the opposite
position, and the reality is that the state boundaries are simply in
the wrong place :-)

Rob



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