Showing posts with label watson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label watson. Show all posts

Tuesday, 18 August 2009

"New Scottish Time" - Hoax? Or legitimate finding?


News has broken on the interwebs of a possible geographical miscalculation from back when time zones were designated, meaning most of our clocks are out by 20 minutes.

Read the PR release here: http://www.prlog.org/10312906-edinburgh-researcher-discovers-time-is-more-relative-than-we-thought.html

Right now, social networks are all a-Twitter with the story and the hashtag "#watson24hour", the Twitter page of Mark Watson's 24 Web Show. #stephenfry is also credited with early posts: "The source for new information on time appears to be #watson24hour" (3 Hours Ago) and "Can it be that it's 20 mins earlier than we thought it was? That GMT has to be recalculated in light of new evidence? So I'm hearing..." (4 Hours Ago).

So far, the claim has not been verified as legitimate, and even Wikipedia is maintaining a page on "New Scottish Time" as marked for "speedy deletion" if it turns out to be a "blatent and obvious hoax".

Sticky Media will continue to keep its collective ears to the social media wall.


[Update] Further to our thoughts of a hoax, anyone digging to Mark Watson's 24 Show, will find the following posts and a reference to the tasks page -

By: admin
Posted: 18 Aug 2009 12:24 UTC

The show has begun! Welcome to all.

We are currently deciding what to do about the fact that the show started 20 minutes late.

By: admin
Posted: 18 Aug 2009 01:42 UTC

We have decided to change the world's reference time zone to New Scottish Time. This time is 20 minutes behind the current reference time, GMT. See the tasks page for more information.


A hoax after all. But a clever one at that. We're off to catch up 20 minutes of work.


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