[LEAPSECS] [time-nuts] Leap Quirks

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <p06230903c587bf762ae5@[192.168.0.5]>
            "Jonathan E. Hardis" <jhardis at tcs.wap.org> writes:

: >It is also remarkable that about one-fourth (12) of the U.S. states 

: >are bisected by timezones

: 

: 14 states:

: 

: Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, 

: Kansas, Texas, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Florida


In the case of Kansas, it is really only the extreme western counties
in a very thinly populated area where the timezone cut.  I thought
there was also a tiny portion of Colorado in the Central Time Zone
too, but a quick google says no.

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.


: >I would take this as evidence that people actually care about solar time.

: 

: Of course they do ... at a tolerance of +/- 30 minutes.  You can't 

: use this as an argument that people care about solar time at a 

: tolerance of seconds.  Indeed, whenever the weather lady on the 

: evening news tells me the times for sunrise and sunset, it is only to 

: a resolution of 1 minute, and not corrected for different portions of 

: the viewing area.

: 

: Time zones were established, and are maintained, for the convenience 

: of commerce.  Your time zone has a lot to do with the nearest big 

: city with which your community trades.


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.

Warner