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.
Half hour timezone differences will not be unique to Venezuela though, they will be in the company of several others including Afghanistan (GMT +4:30 hours) and Iran (GMT +3:30 hours) and also the states of South Australia and Newfoundland, Canada. And in Kathmandu, Nepal they are a quarter of an hour out of step with neighbours by adhering to GMT +5:45 hours!
The Minister for Science and Technology supporting the the new timezone declared
“I see it as a very positive thing that while there is light we can be in it”.
Controversial Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez also claims that people will be healthier and school children will arrive for lessons with more energy as a result of the extra half hour.
Andy Roberts is a writer who initiated DARnet. Contact me on aroberts@gmail.com or @aroberts on twitter
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, 0r 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?
I thought about this and eventually decided that the local time on the clock is more than just a number. It has cultural significance which will actually influence behaviour and particularly social synchronicity.
For example, If the local time was effectively random depending on where you are then it would be hard to know when travelling, what’s the best time to pull in for lunch?
So People would be less inclined to eat together, the trains would run better without any rush hour, and if the clock strikes three it’s time for tea, but that could be in the middle of the night!
>local time on the clock is more than just a number.
Hmmm, interesting. So, it makes a difference if lunch is at “noon local” or “1700 GMT”?
>actually influence behaviour and particularly social synchronicity.
I’m hard pressed to see the “synch” impacted by what is essentially a labe.
>For example, If the local time was effectively random
But it’s not “random”; it’s a globe-wide universal constant.
>what’s the best time to pull in for lunch?
When you’re hungry?
Seriously! Isn’t it more likely that figuring out a plane or train connection from afar is complicated by the lack of a universal time constant.
Just working in a two time zone company with Microsoft Outlook screwing up meetings for travelers, I keep coming back to the idea of GMT. Like that proverbially “stopped clock” being right twice a day.
>the trains would run better without any rush hour
I think you still have rush hour, or hours — here in the NYC, but we would just assign another number to lable it. NYC 8 to 5 would be GMT13 to GMT20. Maybe Dolly Parton has to redo her hit song, but we’d all profit from the simplification.
>if the clock strikes three it’s time for tea
GMT15?
>
And England will always be the center of the world!