【华盛顿邮报 20141104】怪异的时间地缘政治

满仓

【中文标题】怪异的时间地缘政治
【原文标题】The strange, weird geopolitics of time
【登载媒体】华盛顿邮报
【原文作者】Adam Taylor
【原文链接】http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/11/04/the-strange-weird-geopolitics-of-time/



各个国家的夏令时。蓝色代表北半球实行夏令时的地区；橙色代表南半球实行夏令时的地区；深灰色是从未实行过夏令时的国家；浅灰色是曾经实行过夏令时的国家。

一个星期天的早晨，美国人醒来后多出了一个小时，这是实行夏令时造成的结果。这其中也伴随着一些争议。和许多人一样，Chris Mooney批评这样的做法，他写道：“在星期日把时钟调回一小时根本没有意义。”还说美国最初实行夏令时的逻辑是有缺陷的。

无论你持什么观点，必须要知道，设定钟表时间的做法并非通行的惯例，而是由各个国家的政客自主决定的。所以才会引发争议。

最早，只有70多个国家实行夏令时（主要是北美和欧洲国家），其它国家并不实行。这些国家的做法有些奇怪、无法解释的区别。例如，在欧洲，人们在3月的最后一个星期日和10月的最后一个星期日调整时间，比美国早一个星期。

这些定期调整时钟的国家经常会检讨这么做的理由。例如在英国，改变时间这个问题引发了非常多的争议。环保组织曾经提出一个想法，现在被称为“单/双夏令时”，要求英国人在冬天也使用“夏季时间”。这样到了夏天，时钟会比夏令时再提前一个小时，因此被称为“双重夏令时”。

英国似乎很快会改变这项政策。2010年，一位政客提交了一项提案，要求政府调查，在一年中的某些时间点把时钟拨快一小时是否有任何好处。结果极富争议，尽管这项法案得到了大卫•卡梅伦首相的支持，但在规定时间内未能呈交给下议院，因此被搁置。

其它一些曾经实行过夏令时的国家，纷纷决定放弃这个做法。2011年，时任俄罗斯总统的迪米特里•梅德韦杰夫通过了一个终止俄罗斯夏令时的议案。决定停止这项自苏联时代沿袭下来的做法，永久使用夏季时间。梅德韦杰夫引用了一些医学报告，其中提到，在调整时间后的一段时期，心脏病发病率是平常的1.5倍，自杀案例比平常增加了66％。

但是依然还有一些问题存在。有些居民抱怨太阳在早上9点才会升起，愤怒的立法者用数据显示俄罗斯人的健康因此收到伤害。7月，履任总统职位的弗拉基米尔•普京宣布，俄罗斯放弃使用夏令时，转为使用冬令时。

这是一个在政治上举足轻重的举措，实际上普京抛弃了他的门徒梅德韦杰夫在位期间为数不多的传承之一。改为冬令时的同时，普京还宣布，他将恢复被梅德韦杰夫移除的两个时区，让这个国家的时区数量从9个增加到11个。


世界时区，2014年10月。（点击查看大图）

时区或许要比夏令时更容易在政治上引起争议。尽管俄罗斯是世界上时区最多的国家——这当然是它庞大国土的一种象征，但其它大国似乎对此不屑一顾。1918年，新生的中华民国设定了5个时区。但是在1949年共产党政府执政之后，决定反其道而行之：整个国家只有一个时区，所有地区都以北京时间为准。

在远离北京的城市，这显然引起了一些问题。Matt Schiavenza去年在《大西洋月刊》上撰文称：“在夏季的新疆省会乌鲁木齐，人们往往在午夜欣赏落日的美景。”在实际生活中，很多生活在中国西部的人都使用非正式的“乌鲁木齐时间”。

中国并非唯一这么做的国家，另一个大国印度，也使用单一的时区，造成了同样的问题。现在有些人在挑战时区的设定规则。今年早些时候，印度东北部省份阿萨姆邦宣布，计划把这里的时钟调快一个小时。

正如我的同事Ishaan Tharoor所指出，这或许和治国之道大有干系。当代著名理论学家本尼迪克•安德森把时钟作为现代欧洲社会最重要的两个发明之一（另一个是报纸）。在中国和印度国内保持一个时区，你可以强化人民团结的理念。值得一提的是，克里米尔在今年公投加入俄罗斯之后，把时区改为莫斯科时间。

这样的做法其实问题多多，事实是，世界上大部分地区的时区都是“错误的”。以下图表由谷歌工程师Stefano Maggiolo绘制，其中显示了世界各地所使用的时区与它们经度对应的时区之间的差异。


经度时区与官方时区之间的差异。（点击查看大图）

你可以看到，不仅仅是印度和中国存在时区问题，几乎每一个国家都有问题。有些可以理解，比如与巴西有密切经济关系的阿根廷，与巴西东部大城市保持一个时区，而不是遵循人烟稀少的巴西西部时区。但是为什么位于日本北部的俄罗斯城市符拉迪沃斯托克要比日本晚两个小时？

所以，或许美国没有足够的理由实行夏令时，或许这个国家应当改为两个时区（不少人提出过这样的建议）。但是我们必须了解，这样的决定无疑隐含着政治意图，而且容易引起争议。各种迹象显示，无论我们怎么做都不可能完美。



原文：

Daylight saving time by country. Blue means "Northern hemisphere summer time" is used, while orange means "Southern hemisphere summer time" is used. Dark gray is countries who have never used DST, while light gray means they once used it but do not any longer.

On Sunday morning, Americans awoke to an extra hour, the result of the country's adherence to daylight saving time. With it came a reignited debate. Wonkblog's Chris Mooney was among those who criticized the practice, writing that "turning our clocks back Sunday makes no sense," and argued that the original logic that made America switch to daylights saving time was flawed.

Whatever you think of America's daylight savings debate, it's a useful reminder that the time we set our clocks to are not set in stone. It's decided upon by politicians — and all around the world, it causes controversy.

For a start, while more than 70 countries use some form of daylight saving time (it is particularly popular in North America and Western Europe), the rest of the world doesn't. And among those countries that do use it, there are some strange, unexplainable differences: In Europe, for example, clocks are changed on the last Sunday of March and on the last Sunday of October, one week earlier than the U.S.

Those countries that regularly change their clocks often debate the logic of doing so. In Britain, for instance, the changing of the clocks has led to some quite significant controversy. One idea put forward by environmental groups has become known as "Single/Double Summer Time," and would require the U.K. to keep its clocks in "summer time" during winter. The clocks would then go forward one extra hour in summer, for what would be known as "double summer time."

The U.K. has come fairly close to changing its policy. In 2010, one politician put forward a bill that would have required the government to investigate whether moving the clock forward for part of or all of the year was actually beneficial to the country. It proved remarkably controversial, and while the bill saw some backing from Prime Minister David Cameron, it did not make it past the House of Commons before the allocated time and thus was abandoned.

Other countries that have used daylight saving in the past have turned their back on it. In 2011, Russia's then-President Dimitry Medvedev pushed through a plan to end the practice in Russia, which the country had observed since the Soviet era, and shift to permanent summer time. Medvedev cited a medical report that said that the number of heart attacks increase by 1.5 times and the rate of suicides grows by 66 percent in the period when clocks were changed.

However, there were problems. Some residents complained that it meant that the sun would be rising at 9 a.m. in certain locations. Angry lawmakers cited health data that suggested that the time change was causing damage to Russians' health. In July, Vladimir Putin, who had returned to the president's office, announced that Russia would do away with permanent summer time. Instead, Russia would go to permanent winter time.

It was a politically notable event. Putin had in effect destroyed one of the few real legacies of his protege Medvedev's time in office. And along with the move to winter time, Putin also announced that there he would reintroduce two time zones that had been removed by Medvedev, pushing the country's total number of time zones from nine to 11.

Time zones around the world, as of October 2014.

Time zones may be an even more politically charged subject than daylight saving. While Russia may have the most time zones of any country in the world, a symbol of its grandiosity, other large countries don't bother with them at all. In 1918, for example, the nascent Republic of China established five time zones. However, in 1949, the new Communist government decided to reverse this: The entire country would have one time zone, and clocks would be set to Beijing time.

This causes some pretty obvious problems for cities far from Beijing. "In the summer, for instance, it isn’t uncommon in Ürümqi, Xinjiang's capital, to see people enjoying a beautiful sunset ... at midnight," Matt Schiavenza noted in the Atlantic last year. In practice, many in China's far west adopt an informal "Ürümqi Time."

China is not alone. India, another large country, has a single time zone, creating similar problems. In that country, some are now challenging the time zone hierarchy: Earlier this year, Assam, a northeastern Indian state, announced plans to shift its clocks one hour forward.

As my colleague Ishaan Tharoor has pointed out, this probably has a lot to do with nation building: Benedict Anderson, a leading modern theorist, listed the clock as one of the two most important inventions for modern European state-building (the other was the newspaper). By having one time zone in China and India, you strongly strengthen the idea that these are single nations with a unified people. It's worth noting that after Crimea voted to become part of Russia this year, it changed its time zone to Moscow time.

As problematic as such a practice might seem, the reality is that most of the world's time zones are "wrong" to some degree or another. Take a look at the map below, charted by Google engineer Stefano Maggiolo, which shows how far off some of the world's time zones are from what they should be, according to solar time.

The difference between solar time vs official time

As you can see, it's not just India and China who have some time zone issues: Virtually every nation does. Some of these are understandable — Argentina, which has significant economic ties with Brazil, follows the same time zone as the big cities in Brazil's east rather than the sparsely populated Brazilian regions. But why is the Russian city of Vladivostok, just north of Japan, two hours behind Japan?

So, perhaps America's adherence to daylights saving time doesn't make sense. Perhaps, the country should move to two time zones instead (one widely floated idea). But it's worth remembering that such a decision will no doubt be political and controversial. And evidence suggests that any way we do it, it may be imperfect.

爱中华里的财哥

违反自然规律必然不适应