What time is it? Some time!

I think we're reaching one of those pivotal points in history where a ball has started rolling and...it's going to just keep gaining momentum having a kind of snowball-like influence on surrounding places until it becomes a somewhat standard thing.

I know there's a word for this. Andrew suggested "cascade" and I suppose "domino effect" would work as well. But I told him I was looking for less of a vocabulary word and more of a jargon and he finally gave me "policy diffusion." I think that may have been what I was after!

Alberta just announced their new time system—Alberta Time! They have done away with clock-switches and are going to permanently stay at their current time, aligned with Mountain Daylight Time, the same time zone Utah is in right now. 

BC made a similar announcement in March. 

The Northwest Territories did so in April. 

There's chatter about ending the practice in other places (such as throughout the United States—but that legislation is yet to become official), but I imagine we'll see other places adopting this practice soon. 

Of course, I could be wrong because good ol' Saskatchewan has been...sticking to their tickings...since 1966, and Arizona has been the odd-duck out in the United States since ending their observation of Daylight Savings Time in 1968. They have been on Mountain Standard Time ever since. 

(And I missed Hawaii in this list—they opted out of the Uniform Time Act 1967, the same year the act came into effect and they observed DST for a few weeks in 1933 before noping out of that, and again were "placed on" Hawaiian War Time in the 1940s for a couple of years—even then they only moved their clocks by half an hour. I'm still trying to figure out how changing clocks changes energy consumption...it seems largely like a remnant from wartime rationing than anything that sounds relevant for the way our power/consumption works today.)

Farmers don't like it (plants and animals don't care about it). Only 34% of the world observes it... 

I'm team "changing the time twice a year is insanity!" and am happy to be in Qatar where they've never participated in such games.

But I do feel sorry for my poor mother, trying to remember what time to call everyone! She's got children on three separate continents, in four separate countries, and—amazingly enough—in two separate states and two separate provinces.* I'm almost laughing about the absurdity of it! 

Currently my sister Kelli lives in Arizona (though she's doing a stint in Atlanta right now, of all places), so she is permanently on Mountain Standard Time and is an hour behind Utah (the same time as California). 

When Utah switches their clocks, they will be on the same time as Arizona.

But my brother David lives in Alberta and is on Mountain Daylight Time (the same time as Utah right now). So when Utah switches their clocks to be the same time as Arizona, they will be an hour ahead of Alberta (which will remain on Alberta Time). 

And my sister Abra in BC is one hour behind Utah and Alberta right now, but when DST comes along she will be two hours behind Utah but remain one hour behind Alberta. 

Do I have this right? 

It's kind of breaking my brain...I'm not going to lie. 

And I'm not sure it's entirely sustainable, so surely more places will see the light and go on permanent time. If not, we'll all have to be very careful about communicating time for things. 

(Just now there was some confusion about when a youth fireside was tomorrow evening—7 PM or 8 PM—because Qatar is (almost inexplicably) an hour behind the rest of the Gulf...so it's 7 PM for us but 8 PM for Abu Dhabi...where Grandpa and Darla are).

*Not mentioned explicitly in this post is my brother Patrick (in Austria) and sister Josie (in Utah).