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Bolivia Congress Clock Altered to Turn Anti-Clockwise

posted by n1 on Friday June 27 2014, @03:18AM   
from the how-does-it-work-on-a-digital-clock dept.

dryriver writes:

The BBC reports:

The clock on the facade of the building housing the Bolivian congress in La Paz has been reversed. Its hands turn left and the numbers have been inverted to go from one to 12 anti-clockwise.

Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca dubbed it the "clock of the south". He said the change had been made to get Bolivians to treasure their heritage and show them that they could question established norms and think creatively.

"Who says that the clock always has to turn one way? Why do we always have to obey? Why can't we be creative?", he asked at a news conference on Tuesday. "We don't have to complicate matters, we just have to be conscious that we live in the south, not in the north," Mr Choquehuanca added.

• 'clockwise', of course, comes from sundials... 'clockwise', of course, comes from sundials... (Score: 4, Informative) by Theophrastus on Friday June 27 2014, @03:55AM

  by Theophrastus (4044) on Friday June 27 2014, @03:55AM (#60712)

  ...situated in the northern hemisphere.

  but sundials are worse off than 'backwards' in the southern hemisphere [wikipedia.org]:

  Sundials are used much less in the Southern Hemisphere than the Northern. One reason for this is the seasonal asymmetry of the Equation of Time. From early November to mid-February, during the Southern Hemisphere's summer, a sundial loses about half an hour relative to a clock. This adds to the difficulty of using it as a timepiece. The change during the northern summer is only about one-third as great, and is often ignored without causing much error. Since sundials are mainly used during the summer months, they are therefore better suited to the Northern Hemisphere.

  hell, if you're going to reverse the face, might as well go ahead and try for a different base than 60 (e.g. minutes/hour) (dang, can't find a video link of Dan Aykroyd doing "metric time")

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• Re:'clockwise', of course, comes from sundials... Re:'clockwise', of course, comes from sundials... (Score: 1) by JNCF on Friday June 27 2014, @02:39PM

  by JNCF (4317) on Friday June 27 2014, @02:39PM (#60876) Journal

  hell, if you're going to reverse the face, might as well go ahead and try for a different base than 60 (e.g. minutes/hour) (dang, can't find a video link of Dan Aykroyd doing "metric time")

  The answer is twelve. We should switch everything over to base twelve. [io9.com]

  Parent

  • Re:'clockwise', of course, comes from sundials... (Score: 2) by meisterister on Friday June 27 2014, @08:58PM

    by meisterister (949) on Friday June 27 2014, @08:58PM (#61083) Journal

    Wouldn't that completely break the metric system?

    --
    (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.

    Parent