Time zones and why they change so damned often (was: the Gravity of Python 2)

[Ben Finney]

Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> writes:

> On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 2:34 PM, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> > With time zones, as with text encodings, there is a single
> > technically elegant solution (for text: Unicode; for time zones:
> > twelve simple, static zones that never change)
>
> Twelve or twenty-four?

Twenty-four time zones, yes. My mistake.

I'm currently reading <URL:http://savingthedaylight.com/> David Prerau's
_Saving the Daylight: Why We Put The Clocks Forward_. It's got an
acknowledged bias, that DST is overall a good thing; I disagree strongly
with that position. But it's also very well researched and engagingly
written.

Not only does it explain the motivations and history of the present
system of Daylight Shifting Time (or, as the world misleadingly calls
it, Daylight “Saving” Time), it goes into the history that pre-dates
that system and led to the system of time zones at all.

I'm approaching it with the goal of knowing better what I'm talking
about when I advocate scrapping the whole DST system :-)

-- 
 \              “Only the educated are free.” —Epictetus, _Discourses_ |
  `\                                                                   |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney