Sunday is more like Monday than it used to be, places of business that used to keep daytime “business hours” are now open late into the night. And on the Internet, the hour of the day and the day of the week have become irrelevant. A half century ago in the United states, most people experienced strong and precise dividing lines between days of rest and days of work, school time and summer time, today the boundaries still exist, but they seem not clear.
星期天比过去更像是星期一，过去保持白天“营业时间”的营业场所现在营业到深夜。在互联网上，一天中的时间和周几变得无关紧要。半个世纪前，在美国，大多数人都经历了休息日与工作日、上学与暑期之间强烈而精确的分界线。如今，界限仍然存在，但似乎并不明确。
The law in almost all states used to require stores to close on Sunday; in most, it no longer does , It used to keep the schools open in all seasons except summer, in most, it still does. And whether the work week should strengthen its legal limits, or whether it should become more “flexible” is often debated, How should we , as a society, organize our time? Should we go even further in relaxing the boundaries of time until we live in a world in which every minute is much like every other?
几乎所有州的法律过去都要求商店周日关门；在大多数情况下，它不再这样做了。它过去让学校在除夏季外的所有季节都开放，在大多数情况中，现在仍然如此。工作周是否应该加强其法律限制，或者是否应该变得更加“灵活”，这是经常争论的问题，作为一个社会，我们应该如何组织我们的时间？我们是否应该进一步放松时间的界限，直到我们生活在一个每分钟都很相似的世界？
These are not easy questions even to ask. Part of the difficulty is that we rarely recognize the “law of time” even when we meet it face to face. We know as children that we have to attend school a certain number of hours, a certain number of days, a certain number of years - but unless we meet the truant officer, we may well think that we should go to school due to social custom and parents’ demand rather than to the law. As adults we are familiar with “extra pay for overtime working,” but less familiar with the fact that what constitutes “overtime” is a matter of legal definition. When we turn the clock forward to start daylight-saving time, have we ever thought to ourselves; “Here is the law in action”? As we shall see, there is a lot of law that has great influence on how organize and use time: compulsory education law, overtime law, and daylight-saving law - as well as law about Sunday closing, holidays, being late to work , time zones, and so on. Once we begin to look for it, we will have no trouble finding a law of time to examine and assess.
这些问题甚至都不容易提问。部分困难在于，即使我们面对面地面对“时间法则”，我们也很少认识到它。我们知道，作为孩子，我们必须上学一定的时间、一定的天数、一定的年限，但除非我们遇到学监，否则我们很可能会认为我们上学是出于社会习俗和父母的要求，而不是法律。作为成年人，我们熟悉“加班加薪”，但不太熟悉构成“加班”的因素是一个法律定义问题。当我们把时钟往前拨，开始夏时制时，我们有没有想过自己；“这是正在实施的法律”？正如我们将看到的，有很多法律对如何组织和使用时间有很大的影响：义务教育法、加班法、夏时制法，以及关于周日休息、节假日、上班迟到、时区等的法律。一旦我们开始寻找，我们就会毫不费力地找到一条时间规律来检查和评估。
网友评论