http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2007/12/09/half-an-hour
Half an Hour December 9, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts
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Today, December 9th 2007 the clocks go back in Venezuela – by Half an Hour.
Half an hour?
Yes, half an hour. That may sound a bit like the craziest thing a whole country has ever done in recent times but actually it’s just a reversion to the time zone which was used previously by Venezuela between 1912 and 1964 in the twentieth century.
The new official time zone of Venezuela is determined by meridian 67° 30? west of Greenwich, in South East London, UK. This meridian divides Venezuela into two almost symmetrical areas and represents a -4:30 hour offset from Greenwich Mean Time.
So what’s the time now? Here, very near Greenwich when it’s eight o’clock in the morning 8.00am – GMT, in Caracas, Venezuela it will be half past three: 3.30am.
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It does sound like a “dumb idea”. For the life of me, I never understood why people don’t just set their clocks on GMT and organize their lives around whatever time they need. What’s so sacred about working 9to5? Who cares if you go to bed at 11PM, 2300 local, or 0400+1? I know at my employer, GMT would save a lot of time zone confusion providing across the USA. When I was in the USAF many many decades ago, everything was ZULU this or ZULU that. Guess that’s politically incorrect now? But, there was never any time zone confusion. When I returned to my civilian employer and tried to bring this insight to our datacenter operations, everyone poo pooed it. Every years I’d watch them struggle with Daylight Savings Time or a national time zone confusion. Sigh. Some memes are just too powerful to change. I guess?
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Notice the fine hand of gooferment in the people’s lives.
Not to make things simpler. But to make a role for themselves.
Why not just go to GMT and allow people to organize themselves. It’s not like businesses could figure out what time they should open to best serve their Customers. It’s not like people couldn’t figure out what time they should hit the sack or get up. It’s not like life wouldn’t go on regardless of what digits were on someone’s clock!
In protest, I’m going to be GMT. As soon as I can find my watch!
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