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Had a disagreement w/family regarding time description. We live in Texas and talking about Alaska. I was trying to think if it was earlier or later in Alaska. She said it was 5 hours later. It was 10 am here this morning and trying to clarify, I said it must be 3 pm there, she said no it would be 5 am. She also described East Coast time as earlier although it is an hour ahead from here, I said the time is later. Which is correct?
Yes, this is a "time question" more than a "word question," but I have an easy solution for you. Go to the link below:
http://www.worldtimeserver.com/
and type in the name of any city and state to see the current time at that location, including daylight saving time adjustments when applicable. I do a lot of conference calls, and the World Time Server helps me stay synced. Nothing more embarrassing than having to tell a client you missed a conference call because you forgot to adjust for time zones.
I think it is a word question, and while I tend to side with dennwayn (the time in Alaska is "earlier" than Texas), I can see why someone would interpret it the other way (it gets to be ten o'clock "earlier" in Texas than in Alaska). It's more of a gray area for me when someone talks of one locale being "ahead" or "behind" another. It all depends on how you're viewing the situation (the old "you take the one on the left"/"is that our left or their left?" problem).
The one I have the most trouble with involves maps. Is a larger-scale map one that covers a larger area, or one that requires a bigger map?
I have frequent need to communicate across time zones, and concede "earlier" is a relative concept. The ambiguity is resolved if all parties agree to define "earlier" in terms of absolute time (relative to the local "now") or define it in terms of time zones, in which case "earlier" means a difference in longitude.
You're right Ron ... I guess this is a "word question." Interesting spin on time.
But I maintain that, here in Arizona, whatever we're doing, we're doing it earlier than those in New York. Unless they did it first.
I have enough trouble in Arizona with the Daylight Saving thing. The usual advice to set clocks forward or back at certain times of the year don't apply, but twice a year I have to change the timed recording events for any cable TV shows (or streaming internet broadcasts), and I need to use a blackboard to work out whether to make them record an hour earlier or an hour later.
Matters with the Public Radio stuff since I get those from a Wisconsin source; less with Taiwan Radio since their programming is all on a four-hour repeat anyway.
Indiana used to also not observe daylight savings time. Sometimes it would be an hour later in Ohio, sometimes it would be an hour earlier in Illinois, and it was always a century earlier in Amish country.
Be a lot easier to have everyone adopt GMT and forget the whole noon thing if you ask me.
We Alaskans get accustomed to which way the time zones go when someone in NY or DC calls us at 9:00 AM and wakes us up at 5:00 AM. I'm not really sure why it is so difficult to keep it straight, but for many people it's a baffling concept.
The basic idea that needs to be grasped is that the sun rises in the east, so that when sunrise hits the East Coast, it hasn't happened yet in the west, where it is still before sunrise, or "earlier". Remember, though, that this is a clock issue, not a time issue. "Now" is the same for everyone, we're just in different places relative to where the sun is, and in different parts of our daily rhythm.
I believe that the most common idea about "ahead" is that it means later. The east is "ahead" of the west in that sunrise happens there first, so that it's later there when sunrise hits the west; DST is when we set clocks "ahead," or make them read an hour later than they did.
We haven't watched much TV in the last thirty years or so, but but they used to announce broadcasts with something like, "Tuesdays at nine, eight Central Time." the implication being that "nine" was Eastern Time. Might make a good mnemonic. (In the east it gets late earlier? Sorry.)
I agree with Phil: let's just use GMT. And Metric, while we're at it.
Oh, and Alaska time is three hours earlier than Texas.
"In the east it gets late earlier" cracked me up, but it's true!
I'd also vote for GMT, as well as totally dropping DST. In our modern, interconnected world, it would make more sense. Metrics too, but that's a whole nuther battle.
I find myself defaulting to GMT often, since my hobby is astronomy and celestial events are virtually always timed GMT. Been doing it so long I convert it to local time automatically in my head. No more difficult than converting a 24 hour clock to AM/PM.
Here's link to a cool page on our astronomy club website that pulls local time off your computer, corrects for DST, and displays GMT. All Javascript:
Ron Draney said:
The one I have the most trouble with involves maps. Is a larger-scale map one that covers a larger area, or one that requires a bigger map?
As a professional photographer, let me assure you that it confuses a lot of people. Here's how that works:
The "scale" is a ratio, 1:x, or 1/x. The bigger the denominator, the smaller the number. So a 1:24,000-scale map is a larger-scale map than a 1:1,000,000-scale map.
Or, as I think about it, how big would the total map have to be? A world map that's 1 inch=1000 miles would fit nicely on my wall. 1"=10 miles would be the size of pittsburgh! Larger scale means larger map.
I have to side with dennwayn. The question was whether "it was earlier or later in Alaska than Texas". "It" refers to time as shown on a clock. Since the clock in Alaska shows 5AM and the clock in Texas shows 10AM and 5AM is earlier than 10AM, "it" is earlier in Alaska than Texas. The question was NOT "does it get to be ten o'clock "earlier" in Texas than in Alaska".
Well, as I pointed out earlier(!), if it's 5:00 AM in Alaska it's 8:00 AM in Texas, not 10:00, but yes, by the clock it is earlier in Alaska; however, it appears to me that dennwayn's family member has the concept backwards, and does indeed think that it's earlier in Texas because it was 5:00 AM earlier than it was in Alaska. I don't think it's too far afield to investigate where the confusion come in, and try to promote a little understanding as a bonus.
Heimhenge said:
CheddarMelt said:
Darn you, autocorrect!
i am a CARtographer, not a PHOtographer!
Pardon what might be a dumb question, but with the whole planet (and others) already mapped, not to mention the existence of online services like Google Earth, just what does a cartographer "do" these days?
I've had my picture taken many times in my life, but the DMV does it again each time I go in there!
I actually get that question a lot, and my usual answer is to have that person remember asking it the next time their Garmin takes them over a bridge that doesn't exist any more, or can't find a subdivision that just went up last spring. The world is constantly changing, and if we are to have accurate data, then we have to review and update that data constantly.
But besides that, these ain't your grandfather's maps. Location-based services are hot. This is actually a Golden Age in cartography. The products you mentioned--online services like Google Earth--aren't just a bunch of scanned maps from an old atlas somewhere. These are whole new types of geographic information, presented and used in ways never seen before.
The type of map I make hasn't changed all that much in the past hundred years, though the equipment I use changes. I'm what's known as a photogrammetrist, which means that I interpret airphotos and draw 3D maps from it. This cannot be done from satellites, no matter how good the satellites are. My products are custom-made, mostly for civil engineering firms, and are accurate to within the height of a blade of grass. The images themselves are sometimes gathered digitally (but just as often they use black-and-white photography--nothing beats it for accuracy). While computers can help draw the contours, it still takes a human to interpret features such as driveways and utility poles.
So the short answer is, yeah most of the Earth has been mapped at least once. But it changes. And different apps require different maps. There are more cartographers working now than ever before in the history of mankind. Now pardon me; I have to go contour a ski slope.
Martha Barnette
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