Gothamist: What time is Zulu time?

whatisee

Sun, 11 Apr 2004 22:29:35 -0500

Ben Franklin was one of the first people to suggest it. If you're at all curious about timezones, you need to go download the Olsen database and read the raw files. It's the closest thing to accurate we have in the world. http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2003e.tar.gz Hint: read up on Brazil, Manitoba/Canada, Israel and Mexico for the best laughs. Brazil: picks new dates each year Manitoba: Nativa Americans don't like being told what time it is Israel: it's a political/religious issue Mexico: it's a campaign issue,something about farmers not having enough free time with their wives in the morning.

joe s

Fri, 09 Apr 2004 11:16:20 -0500

Thanks for pointing that out. I've always said "savings" without thinking about the usage. Since no daylight is actually saved (how would you do that?), saving is also incorrect. It should be something like daylight shifted time.

seekaltroutes

Fri, 09 Apr 2004 09:42:31 -0500

Perils of reading Gothamist in reverse chronological order and not clicking on links: KP mentioned the "savings v. saving" thing in the other post on DST. <Sheepish>

seekaltroutes

Fri, 09 Apr 2004 09:37:58 -0500

It's Daylight *Saving* Time! Not Savings. By springing forward an hour, the sun now sets at, say, 6pm instead of 5pm, so we are "saving" an hour of daylight we would have "lost" if we didn't spring forward. Benjamin Franklin may have "passed the savings on to you" by coming up with the idea in the first place, but it's still Daylight Saving, *not* Daylight Savings. The quality of Gothamist's content usually more than makes up for its occasional typos, but Savings/Saving is a big usage no-no, especially for weather/time/almanac aficionados like you all.

jake

Thu, 08 Apr 2004 11:32:50 -0500

i want more posts about time zones! for instance, their origin, how they got their names (some, like the aleutian time zone, just don't make sense), and how daylight savings time really works. i just don't understand why we do it.