"Urumqi simply adjusted their operation schedules to reflect natural waking hours, therefore, a store may be open from noon to 10 PM."<p>This is exactly why I would propose a single timezone for the entire world. Time notation is just numbers, after all. Why we still attach importance to having 12pm appear at the middle of the day boggles my mind. Why can't we just have different parts of the world start at different sections of a day?
Indiana is a very strange case. I had a business meeting there once where we met at the guys house. Coming down from Michigan I looked up the city hall just to make certain the time zone.<p>Well it turns out this particular guys subdivision was on a different time zone. He explained that the subdivision, being technically outside the city, voted to adopt the another time zone because the majority worked in a county with a differing time zone.
> Russia actually changed Crimea’s time, effectively moving the territory’s time two hours forward to Moscow Time. The peninsula of Crimea is completely unattached to Russia and the decision <i>has no real geographical basis</i><p>I am most definitely not defending Russia's actions, but Crimea is nearly due south from Moscow.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Crimea/@50,34,5z" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/maps/place/Crimea/@50,34,5z</a>
When I was in the Navy, my ship visited Petropavlovsk during the summer and they were on UTC+13. That was weird to begin with, what with the theoretical limit on only twelve time zones each direction from Greenwich. But then after the visit, we headed due south and then crossed directly over into the UTC+10 time zone for Guam. So one night we set the clocks back three hours.<p>Nice if you were asleep, not so nice if you were on watch...<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC%2B13:00" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC%2B13:00</a>
A lot of servers are just set to UTC even if they are in a different time zone. It simplifies a lot of headaches and translation bugs.<p>It would be nice to get rid of time zones and daylight savings time. People are so slow to change. Who cares if the sun doesn't come up until 4 PM where you are at. Stores, schools, etc can just change what hours they are open.
In an Internet (read: global) article about Time Zones around the world, and local customs related to such things, we get this gem:<p>> South Australian Premier Jay Weatherhill reintroduced the time zone debate this spring<p>The linked article is from April 2015. Spring in Australia is September-November.<p>This concept of using weather seasons as terms of reference for periods of time, is ridiculous, and kind of reinforces the view that Americans can't think outside their own little world.
When I was a teenager and more prone to rebelling against the shackles of conformity, I tried adjusting my desk clock and my watch to run on sidereal time.<p>It made it a bit more convenient when I wanted to observe a particular cluster or nebula to know when to take my telescope outside.<p>Everything else...not so much.
<i>Observance is a state matter, and only two of five mainland states have chosen to participate. Therefore, continental Australia became five time zones for six months out of the year, a decision that has created a bull-headed debate among all its states.</i><p>This has an error - <i>three</i> of five mainland states and one territory observe daylight saving time (SA, VIC, NSW and ACT).
It is here I can get to quote the famous justification why Queensland does not observe daylight saving like the sensible rest of Australia: Because it would fade the curtains.<p>(Interestingly, I'm not sure if this is apocryphal or not: I thought it was Flo Bjelke-Peterson who said it, but I can't find a source.)
Where is Saudi Arabia in this story? When I was there in the 90s I saw maps of time zones that listed Saudi Arabia as still using solar time. That was long after the official switch in the 60s. I understood the official "solar time" line as a nod to religion. Nobody was setting watches every sunset but the calls to prayer certainly moved with the sun.
It doesn't neatly fit into the "rebels" headline, but I think it should've given a sentence or two to the fact that countries like the UK, Canada, and (parts of) the US are now on summer time for most of the year. It's as though their timezones are all wrong.