Time Zones (was: billion+ seconds)

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Sis Laura scribeth...

> I have a question.  If time began, and it began at the same time everywhere, 
> why are there time zones, and who is right?  Is it today, or is it tomorrow? 
>   Is today Wednesday or Thursday?  I know part of it is so that it's night 
> when it's dark, all the way around the world (I think), but who is actually 
> right?  Just wondering

"Time" is a relative thing.  Time did start at the sime time for the
whole earth.  Since only half of the earth can receive sun light at
any one time, and that on each half (the part that's facing the sun)
has varying points (at the same moment in time) in which the sun appears
to be *higher* or *lower* in the sky based on you're geographical location,
it was necessary (by what body, I don't know) to create time zones based 
in part by the longitudinal lines of the globe (also accounting for different
market areas/regions, etc) so that the earth is split up into twenty four
(I think) different zones.  I think there may even be a couple of zones 
in other remote corners of the world where their time zone is offset from
the previous time zone a half an hour instead of a full hour.

I think mostly, time zones were created so that the majority of the daylight
hours are business hours.  So that, more than likely, you have daylight
(for the sakes of school and normal daylight hours business) from maybe
6am/7am-ish -to-> 6pm/7pm-ish.  With the tilt of the earth, that amount of
daylight a hemisphere will gain in it's summer months will be somwhere around
a total of 15+ of daylight whereas in the winter, it might be 8+ hours of
daylight.  So it all depends.  It's all relative based on where you live.

Time is all based on Universal Standard Time (Greenwich Mean Time) where
there's a town, I think, in Greenwich England where all the time zones
are based.  Whatever the time is there, is how the clocks are set.  

Ever look at incomming e-mail and it says the time is something like...

    8/11/1999 12:00:00 -500

... that means that the Universal Time that it's reflecting is twelve
noon in Greenwich (and that it's further adjusted locally by the amount
in the parenthesis) a minus 5(00) hours or 7am at it's origination.  If 
the originating e-mail came from a time zone on the eastern side of 
Greenwich, then it'd show a plus ... 8/11/1999 12:00 +500 (or five hours
of time zones east of Greenwich).

If you want to see all of the time zones, and you have a windows based
computer, double-click on the time in the system tray (or open up the
Date/Time control panel applet) and click on the Time Zone tab.  You'll
see all of the time zones of the world and yes there are several that are
a half-zone (based on 30 minutes instead of 60) like Tehrah, Kabuhl, 
Newfoundland, etc.

If you look at weather maps, time is given only in Greenwich Mean Time.
Then you have to be saavy enough to be able to make sense of the time
from wence it was in Greenwich at a certain moment.

Time is *right* wherever you are.  People to the east experience the
changeover of days earlier than the people of the west.  So that on
New Years day, somone in New York City will celebrate the new years
three hours before someone on the west coast.  In that case, it's
already tomorrow in NYC (from LA's standpoint) while it is still 
today in Los Angeles).

It's all relative.  And it's all based on where you live.

Bro Tyler