<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Zev,<br>Nice try. But that doesn't explain, how, in this day of "atomic" clocks and UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) how Chatzot varies as much as 30 minutes in my chart. Latitude and Longitude make a difference.<br><br>Daylight in Seattle varies from 9:15 hours today (Jan 26) to 15:12 hours on July 26.<br><br>BTW, "Camp time" is actually "standard time" not "daylight time."<br><br>Chaim<br><br><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">----- Original Message ----<br>From: Zev Sero <zev@sero.name><br>To: Chaim Tatel <chaim.tatel@yahoo.com>; A High-Level Torah Discussion Group <avodah@lists.aishdas.org><br>Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 9:27:41 PM<br>Subject: Re: [Avodah] Chatzot and
location<br><br><div>Chaim Tatel wrote:<br>> On 1/21/07, Zev Sero <zev@sero.name> wrote:<br><br>>> Time zones are an artificial creation, which must of course be taken<br>>> into account. But the natural time of chatzot on a given date is the<br>>> same all over the world.<br><br>> Zev, I have to strongly disagree.<br>> Chatzot on given dates *DO* depend on location on earth.<br>> I made a small chart to prove this (data comes from HEBDATE).<br>> I couldn't get it to look right in email, so I put it in my website:<br>> <a target="_blank" href="http://chaimyt.tripod.com/noon.htm">http://chaimyt.tripod.com/noon.htm</a><br>> Chatzot varies by location, and time of year.<br><br>The times you give have been adjusted for standard time (or "railroad<br>time", as it used to be known), which is a recent invention, and just<br>as artificial as daylight saving time, or "camp time".<br><br>Suppose you chose to keep
your watch 4 minutes behind. It is obvious<br>that you would then have to subtract 4 minutes from all zemanim. You<br>wouldn't conclude that the zemanim vary from person to person, and that<br>shabbat comes in for you 4 minutes earlier; instead you'd recognise that<br>the metziut hasn't changed, and that the 4 minutes' adjustment you must<br>make is purely an artifact of your choosing to keep your own personal<br>"time zone".<br><br>Now suppose your entire shul decided to keep their watches 4 minutes<br>behind. The sun would, of course, take no more notice than it did when<br>this was just your personal shtick. All mitpalelim would have to<br>subtract 4 minutes from all their zemanim, because the metziut wouldn't<br>have changed, but their watches would have.<br><br>Now suppose the entire population of New York joined in this shtick,<br>and all decided to turn their watches back 4 minutes. Would that<br>change the
metziut, would it finally convince the sun to alter its<br>path in the sky, and rise 4 minutes later, because "it's too early"?<br>Of course not. Everyone would simply have to subtract 4 minutes from<br>all published zemanim, until they reprinted the calendars to reflect<br>this pecularity.<br><br>Well, guess what, that is exactly what New Yorkers in fact do.<br>A bit over a century ago the railroads announced that their clocks<br>in New York would be moved back 4 minutes, and anyone who wanted<br>to catch a train on time would have to do the same. And since then<br>New Yorkers have kept their watches 4 minutes behind. So if today<br>chatzot was at 12:12, New Yorkers' watches all said 12:08 (at least,<br>those that were "correct"). That didn't change the metziut, it's<br>just an artificial adjustment that must be made to watches that are<br>deliberately kept out of sync with the natural time. Seattleites,<br>OTOH, keep
their watches 9 minutes ahead, so when chatzot happened<br>over there, at 12:12, their watches said 12:21. Again, the change<br>wasn't in the metziut but in their watches.<br><br>-- <br>Zev Sero Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's<br>zev@sero.name interpretation of the Constitution.<br> - Clarence Thomas<br></div></div><br></div></div><br>
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