{"id":3976,"date":"2010-04-22T17:52:35","date_gmt":"2010-04-22T22:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=3976"},"modified":"2022-04-03T05:22:18","modified_gmt":"2022-04-03T10:22:18","slug":"some-longitudinal-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/some-longitudinal-lines\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Longitudinal Lines"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have a soft spot for the unintentional readers of Twelve Mile Circle. Search engines send them randomly to my domain like pollen blowing in the wind. They aren\u2019t consciously trying to arrive at my site. In fact they never even knew it existed. Simply, the all-knowing search engines told these mystery readers that I could satisfy their curiosity. These are all false positives and the volume increases as I publish more pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love the search engines. I suspect most of you arrived here originally from a search engine query too. That\u2019s how I\u2019ve been able to build a nice audience of like-minded geo-oddity enthusiasts over the last couple of years. It\u2019s nice to have people that return regularly, read my simple articles and post their thoughts. However, most false positives generate nothing but a single digital fingerprint. Those people will click over to the next promising link and I will lose them forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the next few entries I\u2019m going to focus on legitimate search engine queries rather than the questionable ones<\/a> for once. I hope you enjoy the topics even though I\u2019m pandering blatantly to the search engine crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two questions I\u2019ve noticed in my web logs deal with lines of longitude. So let’s take a closer look at them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Why Aren’t Time Zones Straight Lines?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This question comes up all the time as I review my user statistics. So let\u2019s focus on it directly. It does have a certain appeal on the surface, doesn\u2019t it? Think of how this would simplify maps. That\u2019s certainly true although it would also create a bunch of unintended consequences. I\u2019m going to examine a situation that could conceivably cause problems in Europe if we followed that method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Europe<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s pick on the boundary between UTC+1 (Central European Time) and UTC+2 (Eastern European Time). The zones here respect international boundaries. Now let\u2019s draw a line straight down a major longitude, 20\u00b0 east in this example, and replicate the current time zone boundary as closely as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It creates the blue line on this map.<\/p>\n\n\n\n