[Sorpigal]

For people who are apparently enlightened enough to realize that no calendar, however rational and perfect, will be accepted if it violates a certain religious rule (the sabbath), they are apparently quite ignorant in their advocacy of UTC for all purposes.

It's all well and good to eliminate time zones as such and have each region operate on a fixed clock, but to suggest that people will simply stop paying attention to the sun is insane. If you want wide adoption you can't expect people to make radical change in their lives. Most people prefer to wake with the sun and sleep when it's dark; some studies suggest that we are biologically predisposed to want or need this. Whether it's 05:00 when I wake or 16:00 when I wake is immaterial to me (that's just a number, just what you call it) but whether it's daylight when I'm out and about just plain matters.

In effect you'll probably always need a way to divide the world by when the sun is up, even if the clock doesn't change.

[colanderman]

I'm pretty sure they're not advocating screwing with the Circadian cycle. You still wake up and go to sleep with the sun; just now you wake up at 13h00 instead of 8:00 AM.

[Sorpigal]

Read it again, they are.

Quote from the proposal: "For example, the adoption of Universal Time would give new flexibility to economic management in the vast East-West expanse of Russia: everyone would know exactly what time it is everywhere, at every moment. Opening and closing times of businesses could be specified for every class of business and activity. If thought desirable, banks and financial institutions throughout the country could be required to open and to close each day at the same hour by the world time. This would mean that bank employees in the far East of Russia would start work with the sun well up in the sky, while bank employees in the far west of Russia would be at their desks before the sun has risen. "

The article omits this in its summary.

[fr0sty]

A world in which the state mandates that your work day begins before the sun rises...

Where do I sign up??

sarcasm off

[colanderman]

Ah I missed that part. Crazy!!