Proposed Shortening of Daylight Savings Time [Israel 2002]

[Steve Summit]

A few days ago, this snippet passed my way, which I'm sure the
members of the tz list are already familiar with:

> While today the Knesset passed the initial proposal to reduce DST
> by some three weeks, a new compromise is being worked out between
> Minister of Justice Meir Sheetrit and Minister of Interior Eli Yishai
> to revert to standard time for a period of 48-96 _hours_ (sic) around
> the Yom Kippur fast day (September 15-16) and then go *back* to DST
> until the end of October.  The details of the proposal have yet to be
> worked out, but the second and final readings of the bill have until
> July 24 to pass.

That announcement prompted this reflection:

I've occasionally wondered how much the deployment of our
favorite tz package was slowed (back before it was as widespread
as it is now, that is) by a perception that it was overkill.
"Yes, there have been some historical quirks with time zones and
DST in the past, and we used to be at the mercy of lawmakers who
didn't know better, but now that everyone knows what a bad idea
irregular times are, surely there won't be any more of them going
forward, so we can use a minimal, compiled-in table of the
historical quirks, and avoid all of these dynamically-loaded
tables and associated overhead."

If the 48-96 hour version of the Israeli bill passes, I'm
thinking that Arthur David Olsen ought to get the Turing Award.