With Daylight Savings looming in the UK (and showing up in Iraq two days later, and in the US three days after that), Yoz Grahame, a member of the Greenwich Mean Tribe, runs down some of the amazingly complex issues associated with keeping the world's clocks in synch.
It's at this point that the brainhammers move in, because if you're going to do a decent job of calculating DST, you need to know where you are, and I mean really know where you are. While all of Europe starts and ends DST at the same time, other countries vary wildly from each other, and some aren't even able to keep it consistent internally. Australia is a prime example: each state sets its own DST dates. Israel decides its DST start and end dates every year to ensure they don't clash with the High Holy Days. However, that doesn't include the Occupied Territories because the Palestinian Authority, clearly sick of all the mucking about, moved to solid dates at the first chance it had.
