Why do we have to have just 24 hours in a day?

marabhfuil · 05-03-2009 04:45PM #1

Yeah... okay. i know its because of the circle and its division into 24 equal potrions of degrees etc... etc..

What i mean is why cant we, say, have 32 hours in a day?

A day is still a day long, except that we would have 32 hours in stead of 24. The original 24 hours being condensed into 32.

Therefore a working day of 8 hours, under the current 24 hour day, is equivalent to a third of your day. Whereas under the 32 hour day only a quarter of your day is spent working though you have still worked eight hours... More time for friends and family, shopping, knitting, you know, and the things that make living worthwhile.

How could such a thing be achieved?!!! Help me to make this dream a reality!!!

nyarlothothep · 05-03-2009 04:56PM

We would have to change our notation system no? I think the real crux of this is that you find the working day too long. I agree completely and the reason for it is to exhaust people and thereby maintain the status quo, if you're too tired to do anything else after a days work you're less likely to examine the way things are run in your society, job security was reduced for a reason, so people worry about keeping their jobs rather than about the political climate in their country. Why do college grads have mountains of debt? To pay it off by working in a big multinational, they're immediately co-opted and therefore rendered non threatening to the establishment.

In maybe 200 years time people could look back on us and think we worked obscenely long hours, just as we look back at people in the 19th century and think how unjustified 16 hour workdays for the majority were. We are only productive for about 4 hours, the rest is just to destroy the will. A 4-6 hour workday is good enough, any longer is just exhausting.

jhegarty · 05-03-2009 04:57PM

Because you would have to change the speed the earth spins at.

As we won't even get started on the effects on your internal clock.

Mal-Adjusted · 05-03-2009 05:00PM

if the hour was shorter, then we'd spend more of them working...there's no way out!

Captain Chaos · 05-03-2009 05:01PM

jhegarty wrote: »

Because you would have to change the speed the earth spins at.

As we won't even get started on the effects on your internal clock.

Not really, look at the North and South poles, 6 months of brightness or darkness at a time. Look at Alaska, Sweden, Siberia, day and night is just trivia for humans. Only has an effect on plants and animals.

im_invisible · 05-03-2009 05:17PM

i was thinking about this a while ago, about decimalising time,
one day is fixed as one day
10 'hours' in one day
100 'minutes' in one 'hour'
100 'seconds' in one 'minute' (i think these seconds worked out to about .8 of our seconds)

10 days in a week,
3 weeks in a month,
12 months a year, (with 5 (or 6)days holiday at the end of the year)

or, i heard about this guy who tried using 25 hour days, going to bed an hour later every day, his days syncing in and out of time with normal days, he quit that after a while, found it depressing getting up when everyone else was going to bed

marabhfuil · 05-03-2009 05:40PM

jhegarty wrote: »

Because you would have to change the speed the earth spins at.

As we won't even get started on the effects on your internal clock.

Damn it man... you would not.

A day would still be a day long. I.e, the length of time it takes the earth to spin one full revolution upon its axis. though that length of time would be split up into 32 equal segments of time... get me now?

marabhfuil · 05-03-2009 06:03PM

nyarlothothep wrote: »

We would have to change our notation system no? I think the real crux of this is that you find the working day too long. I agree completely and the reason for it is to exhaust people and thereby maintain the status quo, if you're too tired to do anything else after a days work you're less likely to examine the way things are run in your society, job security was reduced for a reason, so people worry about keeping their jobs rather than about the political climate in their country. Why do college grads have mountains of debt? To pay it off by working in a big multinational, they're immediately co-opted and therefore rendered non threatening to the establishment.

In maybe 200 years time people could look back on us and think we worked obscenely long hours, just as we look back at people in the 19th century and think how unjustified 16 hour workdays for the majority were. We are only productive for about 4 hours, the rest is just to destroy the will. A 4-6 hour workday is good enough, any longer is just exhausting.

Why that is precisely what i am suggesting my dear.
Now how would one go about gaining support for such a proposal?

your observation as to the beslavement through dependence to the established powers that currently preside and to the multinationals that pull the strings, through the bedebting of societry is a spot on observance.

we are slaves to the banks and the banks invent money. they do. they could print as much of it as they wanted. they could flood the market with any currency they pleased if the so wished and cause it to become worthless and likewise they can loan you money that they dont even have. i could do that. anyone could do that if they were allowed to. its like playing make-believe. "tell me how much do you want..." i print it up, "debit yerman so much there roisin... there ye go now and i'll have 12% on top of that too paid back to me so while yer at it". so what does that make us??? The thralls of a fancy dreamt up by a sneaky greedy minority to enrich themselves at our debt.

jhegarty · 05-03-2009 06:47PM

marabhfuil wrote: »

Damn it man... you would not.

A day would still be a day long. I.e, the length of time it takes the earth to spin one full revolution upon its axis. though that length of time would be split up into 32 equal segments of time... get me now?

So you don't mean a 32 hour day, you mean a 45 minute hour ?

marabhfuil · 05-03-2009 07:25PM

jhegarty wrote: »

So you don't mean a 32 hour day, you mean a 45 minute hour ?

Well einstein you are truely in a league of your own.

A 45 minute hour = a 32 hour day, hence...

Yes i do mean a 32 hour day and thus a fourty five minute hour...
Smartar$£

Gadjodilo · 05-03-2009 11:23PM

The French magazine cover below from 1906 glorifies the 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of leisure campaign. The figures add up but hands up here who gets 8 hours of sleep AND 8 hours of pleasure on a regular basis?

1906%201er%20mai%20Assiette%20au%20Beurre%20Grandjouan%208%20heures%20de%20travail%208%20heures%20de%20loisir%208%20heures%20de%20sommeil.jpg

1906%201er%20mai%20Assiette%20au%20Beurre%20Grandjouan%208%20heures%20de%20travail%208%20heures%20de%20loisir%208%20heures%20de%20sommeil.jpg

marabhfuil · 06-03-2009 12:04AM

Not I... Nor any other that I know of.
If the whole of the workforce were to refuse to work so many hours with no reduction in pay and went on strike at the same time on the same day across Europe or even, dare i suggest, the world, what could the company do but give in to our demands... and if they wouldnt would they not be proving that democracy is being p**sed upon

nyarlothothep · 06-03-2009 12:52AM

absolutely. If people had that kind of independence of mind and solidarity then you wouldn't have government, hierarchy or exploitation. I just don't understand why people follow the pied piper, indoctrination sucks.

SkepticOne · 10-03-2009 01:25PM

So what is the advantage of 32 hours? Why is it a more natural unit? If you want to work just a quarter of the day then why not just work 6 normal hours?

Red Sleeping Beauty · 10-03-2009 01:26PM

Not everyone works 8 hours a day and not everyone sleeps 8 hours a day.

Red Sleeping Beauty · 10-03-2009 01:28PM

I think the length of a day has to do quite simply with "sun up" and "sun down". If we lived by the law of nature and went to sleep when it got dark and woke when it was light then maybe our day would be longer/shorter ?

seamus · 10-03-2009 01:33PM

If you spend only a quarter of your day working then you'll lose one-twelfth of your pay because you'll be doing one-twelfth less work. The productivity of an economy will then theoretically drop by one-twelfth.

Then you'll have those bastards like me, who'd be more than happy to do 10 of your hours in a day and drop your wages even further.

If there was a change to be made, we'd split the day either into 100 units or 10 hours. 100 units seems easier because you could "price" activities in terms of units, where each unit is worth nearly 15 of our current minutes. That sounds like a very standard time "unit". If there were 10 hours, we'd have to split those further by 10, which just leads us back to our "units".

"Just one more unit of sleep" also sounds better than, "Just one more deci-hour".

Why do we have to have just 24 hours in a day?

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