Bush Proposes Universal Time Zone
New York, NY - At the United Nations today President George W. Bush announced a proposal to unify all the world's time zones into a single Universal Time Zone (UTZ), formerly known as the Eastern Time Zone.
The Future?
"It's unfair to the United States that other countries have the advantage of being in tomorrow while the US is stuck in today," said Bush. "If it's 9 PM in Washington D.C., it's already tomorrow in London or Paris. That patently unfair."
Bush continued, "Right now, Americans are losing jobs to other countries whose workforce can give overnight service during their normal daylight hours. We'll level the playing field and keep more jobs in the US with the UTZ."
If all countries agree it would make jet lag a thing of the past, and international callers wouldn't have to worry about waking someone up.
Experts have agreed the the current system is confusing. Some areas use Daylight Savings Time. Others are shifted by a half an hour. It causes unnecessary confusion and is estimated to decrease worldwide GDP by a half of a percent every year.
"Under the Bush UTZ plan, countries could either keep their current schedules and just adjust their clocks, or they could change their whole society to match the new time. But Bush warned against the former option, "It would be very risky for countries to eat lunch at a different time than the US. You are either with us or against us on this."
Britain immediately supported the US plan. "If it means sleeping in broad daylight then we'll stick with our allies," said Tony Blair, "Of course there's never broad daylight in the UK, so it's not much of an issue."
Opponents of the plan, which include many prominent biologists, said that it will throw off the normal circadian rhythms that humans have, and that "species with almost human intelligence like dolphins and lawyers will be unduly traumatized by the clock shift."
France, another opponent of the plan, claimed it is too Anglocentric, and should be based on French time. President Chirac did concede that "it wouldn't affect us too much because all our workers stop working at noon anyway."
Whether or not the rest of the world implements the UTZ, Bush plans to have UTZ in place by October in the US. "I get confused when I go from DC to the ranch. I can't remember what time it is. Is it ten? Is it eleven? Under my plan everyone can watch The West Wing at the same time, and those lazy Californians can get up at decent hour like the rest of us."
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Great idea Mr. Bush, I have my best ideas at night anyway. ;)
Fredi
PS: This was a joke if you not realised it anyway.
:rolleyes:
Re: Umm this already exists
Quote:
Originally posted by flipshark
There is already a universal time zone used by the USA.
I'm not sure of the name specifically but I think it is called zooloo time and it is used by the military to avoid confusion in strikes and things where time zones are different.
Basically, all soldiers when using zooloo time (again not sure of name) don't need to know the local time, they simply follow zooloo time. So a strike at 0 400 hours could be 4AM in one place 11PM back in the US, etc., etc.,
It's Zulu time but close enough :D
Quote:
The world is divided into 24 time zones. For easy reference in communications, a letter of the alphabet has been assigned to each time zone (less the letters "I" and "O"). The "clock" at Greenwich, England is used as the standard clock for international reference of time in communications, military, maritime and other activities that cross time zones. The letter designator for this clock is Z.
Times are usually written in military time or 24 hour format such as 1830Z. To pronounce this, the phonetic alphabet is used for the letter Z, or Zulu. This time is sometimes referred to as Zulu Time because of its assigned letter. It's official name is Coordinated Universal Time or UTC. Previously it had been known as Greenwich Mean Time or GMT but this has been replaced with UTC.
Gerbs, the original post in the thread was a joke, I don't understand why you don't take it as such?
Re: Re: Umm this already exists
Quote:
Originally posted by jamble7000
Gerbs, the original post in the thread was a joke, I don't understand why you don't take it as such?
I did. I can also take the stance that it's boring too.
