2 ms·
UTC is nice not because it is euro centric, but because there is a lot of sea on the opposite side of GMT and therefore it is pretty easy to place the date chan
by bonzini 4y ago
UTC is nice not because it is euro centric, but because there is a lot of sea on the opposite side of GMT and therefore it is pretty easy to place the date change line. There are multi-timezone countries on both sides of the oceans (USA, Russia, and the European Union basically counts as a third) so the date change line has to stay on the sea.
There is only one good alternative, which would be to place the date change line in the middle of the Atlantic (between UTC-3 and UTC-2) and the fundamental time zone in Japan or somewhere Australia (UTC+9/UTC+10).
- billpg 4y agoI wonder which side Greenland, Iceland and the Falkland Islands would pick.
- bonzini 4y agoIceland and the Falklands would likely be respectively -9 and +12 from Japan. Greenland is probably the best reason to keep Greenwich as the reference time zone. :) Most of the population (so to speak) is on -13 to -12. I have no idea if the people there have more ties to continental Europe and Iceland, or to Labrador.