Mapping Humor: Time Zone Map

Monsen · December 2019

Thought we needed a bit of mapping humor in this busy season. Found this on xkcd.com, and while this one is a bit old, I am sure not everyone here reads xkcd, so it will be new to some people.

I love xkcd because Randall takes a scientific approach to the most silly ideas, and spends the time required to do it properly.

There is a larger version of this map if you click through to the xkcd site, and then click on the image there.

Loopysue · December 2019

LOL! Looks like Russia has the nuttiest time zone problems

JimP · December 2019

There are half time zones. Which I find rather strange. They are a half hour ahead of a nation to one direction, and a half hour behind in the other direction.

https://www.timetemperature.com/time-zone-maps/large-world-time-zone-map.shtml

taustinoc · December 2019

Arizona has its own time zone (check your computer settings) because, unlike every other state in Mountain Time, it doesn't do Daylight Savings Time. So half the year, California time is the same, and the other half, we're an hour behind.

Loopysue · December 2019

That sounds seriously inconvenient if you live right on the edge and shop or go to work in a different state. I thought time zones in America were more coordinated than that.

roy.denton · December 2019

I am not positive, but I think one of the tribes in Arizona actually use mountain time.

taustinoc · December 2019

Posted By: LoopysueThat sounds seriously inconvenient if you live right on the edge and shop or go to work in a different state. I thought time zones in America were more coordinated than that.

It's also inconvenient if you work for a California company that owns multiple stores in Arizona, especially when they keep earlier hours to boot. And, to make matters worse, they're all right on the border, and one of them does extensive business with casinos that are less than two miles away - in California.

I am not positive, but I think one of the tribes in Arizona actually use mountain time.

I wouldn't be surprised, but at least I don't have to deal with ti.

JimP · December 2019

Arizona doesn't use DST, the Najaho Reservation does, and a reservation inside theirs, doesn't.

mike robel · December 2019

Then there is changing to ZULU time when you are 8-12 hours before it. You get totally messed up and it is actually hard to sleep sometimes when ZULU and say, bedtime is light.

Also, is the proverbial question is what Zulu time is it during DST in say, Fort Riley, KS?

thehawk · December 2019

I'm actually looking forward to getting rid of not only this daylight saving time nonsense, but the whole concept of different times in different places. It's ridiculous. My vote is for one single world time - so much easier to deal with.

JimP · December 2019

Zulu time is the same thing as GMT. So many hours different, or the same as, Greenwich, England.

mike robel · December 2019

Crud. I forgot the smiley face.

Medio · December 2019

Damm. The region where i live doesn' t exist!!

(Galicia, in Spain. Its on the CET but geographically should be the same as UK).

Loopysue · December 2019

Oh don't let that worry you too much. The UK itself should be nothing more than a vertical line at the Greenwich meridian if the map was really all that serious

Wyvern · December 2019

If we're being pedantic, there already is a single world time standard, Coordinated Universal Time, abbreviated to UTC. However, in practice that's exactly the same as Greenwich Mean Time, GMT, and Z = "Zulu" time (which is simply the aviation name for UTC/GMT, as also used by, for instance, the US Navy). Further pedantism comes from the fact GMT is technically a time-zone while UTC is a time standard, but being a pedant only takes you so far, and liable to result in becoming pendant... There can be minor variants between UTC/GMT/Z, of order much less than a second, aside from the fact there are four main slight variants of Universal Time beyond UTC anyway (Wikipedia link for "Universal Time"). Again, the UT differences are much less than one second between all.

Can't help feeling that timezones map would have been more entertaining if the fractional zones had been given separate vertical offsets (Nepal and the Chatham Islands east of New Zealand both have ¾-hour offsets for extra confusion, as does the unofficial, but locally widely-observed, Central Western Time Zone towards the south-central Australian coast between roughly Border Village, South Australia west to Madura, Western Australia), and if all the island variants had been included too - looking at you Kiribati, spread across two timezones (and pushing the International Date Line well out of kilter too) in the central South Pacific with +13 and +14 hour differences to UTC. Jakub Marian's 5 weird things you didn't know about time zones webpage is worth a look in this regard.

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Mapping Humor: Time Zone Map

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