Permanent Daylight Saving Time

[StrandedonEarth]

Is there a thread for this already? I don’t think so....

So the West Coast (California, Oregon, Washington state, and British Columbia) is poised to adopt DST permanently, pending congressional approval. Sounds great, not having to change clocks twice a year, with the ensuing traffic havoc caused by sleepy drivers and sudden lighting changes  

My only question is, why stay on DST? Shouldn’t it stay on Standard Time, so that the Sun is at its highest at “high noon”? After all, AFAIK that’s how noon is defined, when the Sun is at its highest point in the sky. Does anyone know a good reason for being on permanent Daylight Saving Time, so the Sun is at its highest at 1pm?

 

[Superfluous J]

I think they should add a few seconds to each day so we slowly creep forward over the year, and that way we can "Fall back" twice a year instead of having to "Spring forward" which is the big problem with DST.

I also think the year should be exactly 360 days long and consist of 12 30-day months. Any days left over should be a big "New Years' holiday." The months should consist of 4 7-day weeks and the last 2 days should be little mini "New Month holiday"s. Yes this means you'd get like a full week off at the end of every year.

I like holidays.

But no. I think the whole thing is ridiculous and should have never been instituted in the first place. I don't care what time they set it to it just just stay the same.

 

Edited September 10, 2019 by 5thHorseman
I had the whole seconds thing backwards.

[Geonovast]

Frankly I don't care which one they pick, just stop freaking changing.   Abolish that crap worldwide.

[adsii1970]

Get rid of daylight savings time:

1. We are no longer dependent on the railroads in the U.S. for our means of transportation.
2. We are no longer an agrarian society to the extent the U.S. was in the last three centuries.
3. Most all children ride a school bus, even if they live a mile from school. So no worries about them walking in the dark.

[Nuke]

dst really doesn't serve any real purpose in the modern world. much of the people live and work under constant artificial light now, so only people who work mostly outdoors (farmers, construction workers) would really be affected, and they tend to vary their schedules based on weather and lighting conditions all the time and dont really care about the number on the clock.

[Nuke]

15 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Get rid of daylight savings time:

1. We are no longer dependent on the railroads in the U.S. for our means of transportation.
2. We are no longer an agrarian society to the extent the U.S. was in the last three centuries.
3. Most all children ride a school bus, even if they live a mile from school. So no worries about them walking in the dark.

i mostly grew up in anchorage. in the winter it was dark when we went to school and it was dark when we came home. the only time we had a chance to see sunlight was during class. of course in summer you could go get you a coke at 1am in full daylight. 

[cubinator]

We should just redirect asteroids into Earth until it stops rotating, thus saving us from having to worry about what time it is ever.

 

In all seriousness, Daylight Saving Time doesn't actually give us more daylight, it just shifts what part of the day is dark a little. Totally useless.

[Guest]

Some people just want to see the world burn

[Nuke]

i know, im one of them.

[TheSaint]

22 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

My only question is, why stay on DST?

I think you answered your own question.

22 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

...pending congressional approval.

Whenever anyone talks about DST, I always remember the old joke: A railroad man was trying to explain DST to an old American Indian. The Indian looks at him and says, "So, you want to make a blanket longer by cutting an inch off the bottom and sewing it onto the top?"

[Kerbart]

21 hours ago, cubinator said:

In all seriousness, Daylight Saving Time doesn't actually give us more daylight, it just shifts what part of the day is dark a little. Totally useless.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d prefer the same timezone all year around, but at least for me it means that in the winter my morning commute is in daylight, and it wouldn’t be otherwise. So, not totally useless. Still not worth the rest of the aggravation though.

[StrandedonEarth]

Just now, Kerbart said:

Don’t get me wrong, I’d prefer the same timezone all year around, but at least for me it means that in the winter my morning commute is in daylight, and it wouldn’t be otherwise. So, not totally useless. Still not worth the rest of the aggravation though.

Actually, winter is on Standard Time. So if it stayed on DST year-round you'd be screwed out of your daylight winter morning commute. In spring we spring forward to Daylight Saving Time. Saving it for the evening, I guess?

Why did DST start in the first place? Survey says Google says: http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/c.html

Really, to get the same effect as DST, we just need to adjust our business/school/life schedules by an hour...

[kerbiloid]

1. Are electricity tariffs for companies higher than for households in your country?
2. If so, are they higher than a typical tax on an employee's salary?

Say: You pay 1 USD/kWh at home. Company pays 4 USD/kWh in office. Total tax on your salary is 50%.
So, if you spend 1 kWh more at home, the company pays you 1.5 USD more to let you do it, and still gains compared to 4 USD to be paid for the office light.

Edited September 11, 2019 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

On 9/10/2019 at 7:24 AM, StrandedonEarth said:

why stay on DST? Shouldn’t it stay on Standard Time, so that the Sun is at its highest at “high noon”?

France and Spain lies in similar longitudes as the UK, yet it uses CET (UTC +1).

Alaska uses UTC -9 where it lies in UTC -10.

Argentina uses UTC -3 where it should've used UTC -4.

Western Malaysia (and Eastern Malaysia largely) lies in UTC +7 yet it uses UTC +8.

 

Now, you might ask, "why" ?

There are two reasons :

- Productivity

- Political

Now, the latter wouldn't be very well to be explained here, and is a lot more 'obvious', but the first one can be explained.

Humans have circadian rythm, largely depending on sleep cycle.

Note the time for "best coordination" : 14:30.

If one were to shift the solar noon to that hour, then you'd be most useful during that day.

Basically what it actually does is allowing your rythm to line up even better with the sun, rather than slightly lagging.

This happens very well in, say, France - during DST (CEDT, UTC +2) their solar noon will occur at roughly 14:00 on the time.

Even in places without DST, the shift of one hour puts it in slightly better alignement.

So yeah. That's why many countries put themselves one to two zone times ahead of where they should be.

 

That being said, I'm glad the zone time where I live is truer to the solar noon.

Edited September 23, 2019 by YNM

[tater]

I think we should stop changing the time, but I am unsure which we should stick on. I've read some compelling evidence that DST is a health risk, though I personally prefer extra time to be outside in the evening.

Edited September 12, 2019 by tater

[razark]

17 hours ago, Kerbart said:

...it means that in the winter my morning commute is in daylight, and it wouldn’t be otherwise.

Yes, I love that part of the year when I'm driving in to work, and the sun is finally not blindingly ahead of me, and then we change the time and it is again.

 

I propose a compromise.  We get rid of "Spring forward", but we keep "Fall back".

[TheSaint]

1 hour ago, razark said:

I propose a compromise.  We get rid of "Spring forward", but we keep "Fall back".

So we fall back one hour every October, but never spring forward? Eventually we're all driving to work at midnight?

[Geonovast]

1 minute ago, TheSaint said:

So we fall back one hour every October, but never spring forward? Eventually we're all driving to work at midnight?

My mom makes that joke all the time, and I nearly go into a frothing rage about how that would be much, much worse than just leaving it the way it is.

[TheSaint]

1 minute ago, Geonovast said:

My mom makes that joke all the time, and I nearly go into a frothing rage about how that would be much, much worse than just leaving it the way it is.

I think it would be worse. But much, much worse would need to be quantified.

[razark]

51 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

My mom makes that joke all the time, and I nearly go into a frothing rage about how that would be much, much worse than just leaving it the way it is.

Right.  We should standardize on something that makes more sense.

 

 

53 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

So we fall back one hour every October, but never spring forward? Eventually we're all driving to work at midnight?

Sure.  It's not like hours and minutes are actually connected to anything in physical reality.  We all just sort of collectively agree to pretend it's X o'clock.

 

Edited September 11, 2019 by razark

[YNM]

2 hours ago, razark said:

We should standardize on something that makes more sense.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Decimal_Time_Clock.jpeg

You'd have to ask CGPM/BIPM about that, since we've fixed what is "one second".

Edited September 11, 2019 by YNM

[razark]

9 minutes ago, YNM said:

we've fixed what is "one second".

So?  We've also quite clearly defined what a year is, and had lots of practice.

What one group of humans defines can be redefined by other humans, especially when it is not connected to anything except what we have defined.

The best we've got is the day.  Anything smaller is just human definition.

[YNM]

1 hour ago, razark said:

What one group of humans defines can be redefined by other humans, especially when it is not connected to anything except what we have defined.

... except for atomic clocks I suppose.

You're the one who works at the world's largest research organization, maybe you should ask your colleagues first.

Edited September 12, 2019 by YNM

[razark]

23 minutes ago, YNM said:

... except for atomic clocks I suppose.

Nope.  Those are based on the vibrations of atoms, and X vibrations occur in one second, by definition.  We could redefine that as 1 second = 2X vibrations, or 10 billion, or .314159X, or 13X, or X/(the number of potatoes in a bag on my counter at 9:13 am, 23 August 2007), or any other number of vibrations we define.

 

28 minutes ago, YNM said:

You're the one who works at the world's largest research organization, maybe you should ask your colleagues first.

I never said it was a good idea, or likely to occur.  Only that our system of timekeeping is quite arbitrary and human-defined, and human-defined systems can be redefined or replaced (like the metric system replacing imperial (almost) everywhere).  I mean, why does the day start (approximately) halfway between sunset and sunrise, instead of 00:00:00 being set as sunrise on the equinox or solstice?  Why twenty-four hours divided into twelve hour halves, divided into sixty minute hours, divided into sixty second minutes?  As the rest of the world is so fond of telling America, base 10 measurements are so much easier to work with.  500 seconds being 5 minutes is an easier conversion than 300. 

It's all completely arbitrary in the first place, and then we throw daylight savings time in to make it even worse twice a year.

[Superfluous J]

7 hours ago, razark said:

I propose a compromise.  We get rid of "Spring forward", but we keep "Fall back".

 

6 hours ago, TheSaint said:

So we fall back one hour every October, but never spring forward? Eventually we're all driving to work at midnight?

That's why I added a clause to the idea.

On 9/9/2019 at 9:21 PM, 5thHorseman said:

I think they should add a few seconds to each day so we slowly creep forward over the year, and that way we can "Fall back" twice a year instead of having to "Spring forward" which is the big problem with DST.

I was of course joking. It's hard to justify even doing it the way we do it now, but justifying changing it in any way other than eradicating it entirely? No thank you.