In response to my previous entry, Phil Ringnalda posted a comment here explaining that there’s an undocumented Movable Type option that does what I want (print your timezone in the format required by RFC822).
Phil says he prefers to use the 3 letter code for a timezone (i.e, PDT), and talks about the problem of daylight savings time and your server being in another timezone. However, I’m in Israel, and I think 3 letter codes only cover the USA; my server is in the same timezone as I am, so no problem there, but daylight savings time is determined by government fiat and coalition-wrangling (the religious parties traditionally want to early, apparently to make life easier for those observing the early morning rituals related to the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur, or something like that). So my timezone here isn’t really scientific, it’s political. Oy.
Also, using trackback takes some getting used to. I hit Phil’s site with multiple pings while copyediting this entry.