notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

Can You Change Some Change?

There’s been a bit of buzz about the Dollar ReDe$ign project, especially the Dowling Duncan and Raffael Hannemann entries. There’s one thing that’s bothering me, though.

If this is truly an attempt to consider radical change for US banknotes, the spec should eliminate the one dollar bill. Sure, redesign the $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100, but if you’re thinking big, cut the little one.

I can’t think of another Western currency that has paper money worth so little. The UK eliminated the old 10 shilling note in 1969, replacing it with the decimal 50p piece; the pound note hasn’t been produced in England and Wales since the pound coin was introduced in the mid-’80s, and it was formally withdrawn in 1988. The smallest UK banknote is the fiver. The dollar is currently worth 64p.

Similarly, the smallest Euro note is €5, with €1 and €2 coins. Denmark and Norway both start at 50 krone, which is also roughly worth £5. The Czech Republic recently phased out their 20 Kč note, which was worth 66p, in favour of coins and the 50 Kč note.

Meanwhile, the US Mint is complaining nobody uses dollar coins, while no doubt dollar bills wear out terrifying quickly (just like the old UK ten bob note did). Maybe the shift from cash to electronic transactions will save the dollar from itself, but that seems like wishful thinking. Perhaps some Americans reading this can understand: why is the dollar bill so entrenched?

Changing Clocks

Today Europe changed its clocks for daylight saving time, two weeks after the US did. I’m not going to take part in the twice-a-year ritual of suggesting that the UK should move a further hour ahead, or the counter-complaints that changing clocks is silly. Instead, I’m going to praise the way Europeans change their clocks, and criticise the way Americans do.

The core of the question is, when do you actually change the clocks? Obviously, doing so during the night is the right answer, but the European scheme is subtly better: everyone changes their clocks forward and back at 0100 GMT. By contrast, the American scheme has the change happening at 0100 local time.

Why’s the European scheme better? It means it’s obvious what time it is everywhere, at the (smallish) cost of making the local time for each change different. As an example, let’s say it’s 2:30 GMT this morning in Berlin; half an hour after the clocks have gone forward.  The local time is now 3:30 CEDT; in Helsinki, it’s 4:30, and in London, 2:30 BST.

Contrast that with the time in Chicago, at 3.30 am on the morning the US enters daylight savings time. It’s easy to find the time in New York: it’s an hour ahead, at 4:30 am. In San Francisco, though, it’s not the usual two hours behind, but three, at half past midnight; they won’t enter DST for another hour and a half. Instead of the clocks all moving forward, there’s a wave of confusion.

Now, I’ll admit it’s easier for Europe to do this. It only spans three time zones, whereas the continental US spans four, and including Alaska and Newfoundland, six (although the latter is only a half-hour). Making the change simultaneous would mean that, say, Juneau would have a local change at midnight while in St. John’s the change would be as late as half past five in the morning.

Easy or not, though, I prefer the European approach. It’s certainly easy to code around.