[LEAPSECS] Tripping over the International Date Line

[Daniel R. Tobias]

On 7 Mar 2007 at 18:11, Zefram wrote:


> Passepartout had the right idea.  If only his watch had displayed the date

> as well, rather than just time of day modulo 12 hours, his habit would

> have avoided all that fuss.  And avoided a dramatic plot twist, of course.


The plot point never made much sense to me, even when I read it first 
as a kid.  After crossing the International Date Line, the entourage 
had to get all the way across the United States, and then the 
Atlantic Ocean, making various transportation and accomodation 
arrangements in the mean time.  The reader is expected to believe 
that through all of this none of their party happened to notice that 
the date, as reckoned by locals in the places they passed through, 
differed by one day from the date they believed it to be, despite 
managing to catch various trains and ships whose timetables depended 
on the actual date.

-- 
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