On Nov 15, Cecil mentioned some strange manipulations of the time in Saudi Arabia. I’m afraid you’ve been misled by your sources. I have been living and working here in Riyadh since 1989 and can assure you that is not true. I also checked with my Saudi co-workers and they tell me they never heard of such a practise. The day runs from midnight to midnight here, just as it does in every other country.
Saudis do, however, delay the start of a month until they actually see the moon. Islam requires an actual sighting, not just calculating when the first day of the month should be.
No moon? The new month doesn’t start until the next day, if they see the moon there. However, the only thing they really delay slip is the religious celebration of a month like Ramadan when they have to fast during daylight hours. The actual calendar stays in step with the rest of the world.
This is sort of like Americans moving holidays around so they mesh nicely with weekends.
I would be interested to know where you got your information.
As a sort of protest against the dirigisme inherent in Daylight Shifting Time, I’d like to set my computer’s zone to -0808 (mean solar time for my longitude), but none of my many Linux books will tell me how.
That’s an interesting approach, but rather obscure for most people in the real world. It’s hard enough to communicate with people using straightforward words and symbols; your way is even more complicated than the Islamic calendar we were talking about.
DSYoungEsq, yes that does not quite apply to India. I think I stated in the other thread another caveat. India is wide enough for 2 time zones, but wishes to retain 1 time zone across the whole region. As I mentioned, having multiple time zones causes confusion, and retaining one time zone eliminates that confusion, at the expense of the time not corresponding to the sunlight. I do not know the details, but suppose India’s capital is in the center of the country, and that is chosen as the reference point for the whole country. That capital will most likely not be an even number of 1 hr time zones off GMT. So you set it where that reference city is closest to noon = high in sky, and then have the offset from GMT.
