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In a message dated 97-01-12 00:24:22 EST, Stan or Dennis or Joao or somebody wrote: >>> Let's see, if it's 20 o'clock, it must be 8 hours after 12. But which 12? Did the computer start counting at midnight or at noon? (Don't laugh. Remember, I'm a Parkie. And HAL has already screwed up the date.) And how many hours do I add or subtract from the time to relate it to my location? >>> Aha! Another case of misapplied science in action. If we but used latitude instead of longitude to measure time this silliness of +/- 4 hours to the east or west, International date lines and Greenwich Mean Time would all vanish. It would always be the same time ALL the time at any one place in the world, totally eliminating the need for watches other than as a place to hold your friends' phone numbers, your bankcard PIN #, your favorite Parkie chat person's id (Lil Runny or Watusi Honey), and perhaps the local taxi company's number in case you needed a ride home from the local pub late of a summer evening. The equator would be the standard time zone and would be universally recognized and evidenced by the relative lack of clothing persons wear there. As a person goes north or south further and further from the equator, more clothing is required to keep warm, thereby giving the person and all those around her/him an idea of how far away from Equator Nearly-Naked Time he or she had strayed. Thus 4 o'clock would be bemudas and a polo shirt, 6 o'clock dockers and a long sleeved oxford, 9 o'clock mittens, scarf and long woolies and 11 o'clock a wheezy nose and a set of beady eyes peering out of a parka. Another nice feature of this method of distinguishing the vagaries of time is that the hours ahead/hours behind En/NT would be bipolar in their expression, meaning simply that if an individual stood in Hudson Bay or at the tip of Patagonia, either time zone would be properly expressed as 20 warm t-shirts, 2 sweaters and 2 jackets and 1 heavy parka beyond ENT. There would be no ahead or behind, only lots of shivvvvvvering. For the truly rigorous scientific types who would need a definitive indication of whether it was AM or PM for the accurate recording of scientific data, this too would be much simplified from the atomic clock world we live in today. The only equipment required to calibrate AM/PM would be a toilet and an observer to note whether the water flow swirled to the left or to the right. Thus, the 4:00 previously discussed would be noted in New Science Time Notation as Bermudas and Polo shirt, clockwise or Bermudas and Polo shirt, anticlockwise. (a spurious group of timekeeping technicians has sprung up to challenge this standardized time notation and would rather split the AM/PM by noting the position of the sun in the sky. Thus they would have us divide the 12 hour repeating stretches of time in a 24 hour day into Bermudas and Polo shirt, sunglasses and Bermudas and Polo shirt, glow-in-the-dark bolo tie. But this thinking is heretical for it throws some scientific weight back upon the shoulders of the old and confusing theory of the passage of day and night having something to do with time. There are some problems still to be worked out in the adoption of this scheme. New calendaring methods and ways to know when a year has completed are needed (possibly a pair of good mittens last one season? or every time the jonquils bloom it's your birthday? hmmmm.) And, certain forms of ceremonial or uniquely stylized dress are known to not tell time very well (thus the ever vexing problem that when everyone is wearing kilts it is hard to tell what time it actually is. The same problem arises with pyjamas but using Kentucky windage, one can pretty fairly estimate that it is a) either pretty late in the day or b) you run with a really sleazy crowd).... But, never fear, the same New Age scientists that brought you the Adjustable Rate Mortgage and New Car Leasing are hard at work on the problem). In the meantime, to you and all yours, this is Rat in Arizona wishing you the best in this new year. Don Anderson, aka Sandrodent (52/6/registered Republican/A pos/11C shoe/7 & 1/2 hat/Bears win, Cubs lose, Sox who cares)