Melbourne? That's 14 hours ahead of the Eastern Seaboard. Someone might have seen the email come in as it happened. I don't know how often they check.
Monday, July 29, 2024
Journey through the day
A little bit ago I sent a manuscript to Melbourne via email. Interesting to think about. I sent it between midnight and 12:30. If the recipient had been in California (3 hours behind) they might or might not be paying attention to things like that. It would be night but not late night, so who knows? Sending it to London, on the other hand, would mean they're five hours ahead. Still in bed unless they're unfortunate insomniacs or hardcore morning people.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Time zones are definitely strange things when considered that way. For most of human history time was measured by the sun and when clocks came along time passed wherever you were. Now that jet planes and modern communications have been normalized we have to keep in mind what the time is somewhere other than where we are.
The thing we hardly ever consider is that as the Earth revolves the sun can stay in the same time zone but where it is in the sky is noticeably different. New England is at the beginning of the Eastern zone and Ontario where your grandparents lived was close to the end. I remember saying to my mother that it would be dark where we lived while the sun was still visible there. I don't think she ever did believe me.
I hope you get good news from Australia.
Quite true. The standardization of time is something we've gotten used to, to greater and lesser extents, but it's a relatively recent introduction, and for the most part only took off in Europe well after the end of the Middle Ages. Of course soon after that the great European powers started colonizing elsewhere, introducing the same approaches. That's how we wound up with 24 time zones, which not everyone pays attention to but are good to know at times.
The time zones, if you look at them on a map, aren't straight lines. Partly, of course, because political borders aren't usually straight lines either. But even within those there are occasional quirks. But yeah, it can be hard to wrap your head around "It gets dark at 7:30 there but not until 8:20 here, even though the clocks are synchronized."
I'll check with them now and then. It would be neat to have a byline Down Under.
Post a Comment