Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 8, 1993 TAG: 9311110477
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD C. PENNOCK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Of course this lunacy may have come about because my mind had been pushed to the brink of surreality. It was about 11:30 in the evening, Tim McCarver had been spouting mind-numbing statistics ("This is the first time in history that a player has come into the game as a defensive replacement, made an error that let the other team go ahead, and then gotten the game winning hit!") for more than three hours in a World Series game, and the game itself was only in the third inning.
The lateness of the hour was one of the factors leading to this idea, and not just because my mind was fuzzy. The other circumstance was the then-impending change from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time. Last fall, I really had noticed the effect of this extra hour of sleep. I could stay up and watch the evening news to its completion, get an adequate amount of sleep, and still wake refreshed at a decent hour of the morning.
Take these factors, season with a few other facts, mix well in a fevered brain, and voila: THE IDEA. If getting an extra hour of sleep one night a year is good, why not do it all the time? Why not decree worldwide that all days will now be 25 hours long, maybe even 26?
By itself, this will have several effects. Since daylight and darkness will continue to come and go at 24-hour intervals, adding an hour or two to the day will skew the times when the sun rises and sets. On some days, the sun will be directly overhead at noon. On others, noon will occur at twilight or in total darkness. People would still go to work or school at their accustomed clock times, but the sun would be in a different position in the sky from day to day.
The problems associated with this are not as insurmountable as they might seem. We have, after all, been using electric lights long enough that we have probably gotten used to them. Drive-in theaters would not be affected because they died out years ago. Farmers shouldn't complain. They put their chickens on an artificial regimen of light and dark, so who are they to squawk if that sword is turned on them?
Think of the benefits. As our population ages, we will have more opportunity to catch up on the sleep we will increasingly need. People other than farmers, college students and long-distance haulers will get to experience the beauties of sunrise. The economy will get a boost as we replace all of our clocks and calendars.
And, probably most importantly, baseball teams could have at least part of their schedule played after working hours and in the daylight, enjoying the best of both worlds.
Now comes the coup de grace, Part II of THE IDEA, the part that will make the whole concept feasible. Since we have just untethered time of day from the rising and setting of the sun, there is no reason to have time zones. When it is noon here, make it noon everywhere in the world.
Think of the implications. All businesses in the world would be open during roughly the same hours. A bank in San Francisco could have transactions with banks in London and Tokyo during the normal business hours of all parties.
CNN could report on a flood in Bangladesh or an insurrection in Moscow without having to explain time differences to viewers. Events during Olympic games held in Peking or Athens could be televise worldwide without resorting to tape delay.
Election results from Atlanta would not be announced before voters in Albuquerque or Anchorage had a chance to vote.
Best of all, World Series games could be played at reasonable hours. Noa longer would it be necessary to find a now nonexistent time niche in which to fit a full game when East Coast viewers are still awake and Westerners have gotten home from work. And if the game does end late because of rain delays or extra innings, we'll have that extra hour or two to regain lost sleep.
\ Richard C. Pennock is a structural engineer who lives in Radford.
by CNB