Time

It's time for my annual rant observations about time. We have returned to Eastern "standard" time.  If it's standard, why not keep it all the time?

Have you noticed that "daylight savings time" doesn't actually save any daylight? In fact, the actual length of a day varies with the declension of the sun (don't ask) and the position of the earth in its annual orbit around the sun.

In an earlier (simpler?) time in the history of man, human activity was governed by the position of the sun relative to the particular place people lived. Before clocks, that position was measured by sundials. Before sundials, prehistoric man built vast public works (e.g. Stonehenge) to keep track of the seasons by solar and sometimes by lunar observations. Our time scale was slower, but no less inexorable.

Peasants went out to till the fields based on sunrise and sunset and when the sun was overhead. Before the sun crossed the local meridian was ante meridian (a.m.) and after it crossed was post meridian (p.m.). It bothered no one if the local time by sundial in Prague was different from that in Vienna.

Even at sea, where ships have no fixed location, time was reset every day at local apparent noon (when the sun crossed the meridian) and the officer of the deck received permission from the captain to "strike eight bells on time."

This perfectly satisfactory arrangement was destroyed by the railroad. Railroads wanted to run according to a fixed, printed schedule. They couldn't handle differences in local time between Prague and Vienna and every little train stop in between. Time must be made to conform to the mechanical age and become standardized.

But now we have computers. Computers can't actually think, but they can keep track of vast amounts of data, including the longitude of every town, city and metropolis on earth. It is longitude that determines local time. We could all set our timepieces to global standard time (that is, Greenwich Mean Time) and refer every time-based activity to that standard. That would satisfy the need for a time standard for any scheduled operation. It would make trains and airplanes happy. For local activities, just subtract or add a longitude-based time correction to derive local standard time. It would no longer matter to the railroads that Prague, Budweis and Vienna are on slightly different local times. Or Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington.

Oriental could have its own standard time.

Now synchronize your sundials.