Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: Is It Time To Dump Time Zones In Favor of Coordinated Universal Time? (nytimes.com)
Last Sunday, those of us in North America, Europe and some areas of the Middle East rolled back the clock an hour in accordance with Daylight Savings Time (DST). The tradition -- first imposed in Germany 100 years ago -- has been around for so long that many of us fail to question its significance. What is the importance of Daylight Savings Time? Is it still relevant in today's world? Is it time to dump time zones in general? James Gleick makes the case via the New York Times for switching to Coordinated Universal Time, or U.T.C.: When it's noon in Greenwich, Britain, let it be 12 everywhere. No more resetting the clocks. No more wondering what time it is in Peoria or Petropavlovsk. Our biological clocks can stay with the sun, as they have from the dawn of history. Only the numerals will change, and they have always been arbitrary. Some mental adjustment will be necessary at first. Every place will learn a new relationship with the hours. New York (with its longitudinal companions) will be the place where people breakfast at noon, where the sun reaches its zenith around 4 p.m., and where people start dinner close to midnight. ("Midnight" will come to seem a quaint word for the zero hour, where the sun still shines.) In Sydney, the sun will set around 7 a.m., but the Australians can handle it; after all, their winter comes in June. The question has been posed before, but given the timeliness of Daylight Savings Time, we think the question may evoke some new, heartfelt attitudes and beliefs: Is it time to dump time zones in favor of Coordinated Universal Time?
Last Sunday, those of us in North America, Europe and some areas of the Middle East rolled back the clock
No they didn't. The USA now changes its clocks at a different time from most of us. The end of "Summer Time", to give it the English Language title, is in the morning of the last Sunday in October. This year, that is the 30th. The USA changed a week later because GW Bush thought it would be funny to make the USA non-standard in yet another way.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
The USA is metric in almost everything that matters: engineering, science, and medicine. The only place you see non-metric units extensively used is in weights and distances expressed in terms for ordinary citizens. But specialized fields made the transition long ago.
Of course, that doesn't change the fact that forcing everyone to switch to UTC would be the most hare-brained idea in history of timekeeping.
Obligatory xkcd:
https://xkcd.com/1335/
probably no one here knows how many cups are in a gallon without looking it up
What is the "here" you're referring to? A school for the retarded?
2 Cups = 1 Pint
2 Pints = 1 Quart
4 Quarts = 1 Gallon
Bonus Tip: 1 Pint weighs 1 Pound since 1 (fluid) Ounce of water weighs 1 Ounce.
Your explanation just proves the superiority of the metric system. You don't need to do three calculations to convert between say "mL" to "L" it's obvious. If you want to convert cups to gallons, you either have to do 3 separate calculations OR memorise a whole bunch of conversions. How many cups in a pint. How many cups in a quart. How many cups in a gallon.
As for how many cups in a gallon? I would have to do the maths or look it up. Even with your "conversion chart" above. Looks simple maths, but I haven't bothered to calculate it yet.
As for a pint (of water) weighing a pound. It approximately weighs a pound, it's not exactly a pound, and that's another problem. It's not exact.
Now try calculating the number of cups in 1756.4598 gallons. It's doable with some simple arithmetic. However calculating the number of ml in 1756.4598 litres is easy- you just move the decimal place. Simplicity. Much more efficient.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
For instance, 1g of water is exactly 1ml.
At about 273.5 K and a pressure of 1 atm, maybe.
Every end has half a stick.