Daylight Savings

[poochyena]

Why don't they keep daylight savings time? When it ends, the days are so much shorter, wouldn't keeping daylight savings time be more beneficial to more people? why does it even end? (i live in america btw, idk what its like in other places or if they even have it)

[Azrael]

... the days are so much shorter

Not so much. The days may seem shorter, if you don't get up early enough to make use of the "earlier" sunrise. I imagine your take on which side of the shift you prefer depends on your schedule.

I'm in the camp that the change is rather obsolete at this point, and I'd prefer to keep the clocks more or less aligned so that midday is midday; +/- what's necessary for timezones.

[Pez Dispens3r]

(i live in america btw, idk what its like in other places or if they even have it)

A conceptual consideration you may want to entertain: the idea of clock time, where there is an official time for a particular region, is a recent innovation of the industrial era. Before then it was pretty universal that your 'time of day' was malleable (as per the tilt of the earth which makes days longer or shorter according to your hemisphere or season). Shifting clock time by an hour or so is a step removed from this intuitive understanding of the daylight cycle.

That is, yes, every other fucking place has daylight savings (or the same thing by a different name).

[Aiea]

I loved it when I lived in Hawaii, no Daylight Savings to be had. It was great. Though I still had to remember about it when I wanted to talk to other people.

[AvatarIII]

... the days are so much shorter

Not so much. The days may seem shorter, if you don't get up early enough to make use of the "earlier" sunrise. I imagine your take on which side of the shift you prefer depends on your schedule.

I'm in the camp that the change is rather obsolete at this point, and I'd prefer to keep the clocks more or less aligned so that midday is midday; +/- what's necessary for timezones.

I agree, the change is obsolete, they should just keep midday as approx 12pm all year round, but perhaps have people work 8-4 as standard instead of 9-5 (or perhaps have it change depending on the time of year).

It does kind of annoy me that during the winter the hour or so of daylight before I go to work is wasted by me eating breakfast and getting ready for work, and then it's dark when I leave work, I'd rather it be just getting light when I leave for work in the morning and then I would get to leave work in the daylight!

[Chen]

That is, yes, every other fucking place has daylight savings (or the same thing by a different name).

You do realize the vast majority of the world no longer uses (or never used) daylight's savings time right?

[AvatarIII]

That is, yes, every other fucking place has daylight savings (or the same thing by a different name).

You do realize the vast majority of the world no longer uses (or never used) daylight's savings time right?

Yeah, I doubt anywhere between the tropics has DST, because there is no need for it, and there seems little point to DST near or beyond the Arctic and Antarctic circles, it is only really temperate countries that use it, and often different places don't even use it starting on the same date.

[kiklion]

I think the world should just use GMT, and ignore the timezones/offsets. In this international world we live in it would make my life so much easier (and I am all that really matters).

Talking to friends in Israel, Canadia, California, Australia, Ohio, Germany, Iraq... trying to co-ordinate when we will all be online is made more difficult with the timezones. We use EST exclusively now and everyone else just does the math for their area so we are already converted.

[Chen]

I think the world should just use GMT, and ignore the timezones/offsets. In this international world we live in it would make my life so much easier (and I am all that really matters).

Talking to friends in Israel, Canadia, California, Australia, Ohio, Germany, Iraq... trying to co-ordinate when we will all be online is made more difficult with the timezones. We use EST exclusively now and everyone else just does the math for their area so we are already converted.

You'd still need to do math to know if you were trying to arrange a meeting in places where people might be asleep (or at work or whatever). You'd still need to know time zones, except if everyone used the same time, that information would just be obscured (not to mention people's morning/noon/evening times would all be vastly different).

[kiklion]

Math wouldn't be needed. 'Conventional' times for dinner/lunch/breakfast/sleep are gone for a lot of people who aren't restrained to a 9-5 job or public education time frame. Perhaps my subset is rare in that I am the only one with a semi- 9-5 job (and it's flexible at that, need to pull an 8 hour shift anywhere between 7-6) out of everyone I communicate with frequently. If I wanted to see if people were available when I am, I would mention what time that was and they would almost instantly know if it was in their window of availability.

[Izawwlgood]

Pfft, all of you privileged individuals not saving your candles. Why, in my day....

[Heisenberg]

DST is needlessly complex. It's name is misleading. The disruptions to sleep cycles fucking kill people.

To people who love it I often say "Let's make it last all year. Think of how much Daylight we would Save!" Frankly, I don't care what time it is, as long as I don't have to change my clocks.

[DSenette]

[Proginoskes]

The Usenet Oracle once provided the following bit of wisdom (along the line of the last post): "The entire concept of daylight savings time is like trying to make yourself taller by cutting off your head and standing on it." (690-09)

I've lived in Arizona for over ten years, and I don't miss DST.

[Chen]

Math wouldn't be needed. 'Conventional' times for dinner/lunch/breakfast/sleep are gone for a lot of people who aren't restrained to a 9-5 job or public education time frame. Perhaps my subset is rare in that I am the only one with a semi- 9-5 job (and it's flexible at that, need to pull an 8 hour shift anywhere between 7-6) out of everyone I communicate with frequently. If I wanted to see if people were available when I am, I would mention what time that was and they would almost instantly know if it was in their window of availability.

The vast majority of people still do sleep when its dark out. If I live in London and I'm communicating with someone in Beijing I have to realize if I call them at 4 pm GMT, yes with your system it will be 4 pm there too. But its the middle of the night for them and they'll likely be asleep. You still need to know the time difference between areas. With time zones its FAR simpler especially since most people are asleep during the night hours and awake during the day hours. Instead of just knowing a time difference you'd need to know the specific times it was day/night depending on where the person you were talking to lived.

[Calica]

My mom and I both hate the time changes. But I love Daylight Saving Time (i.e., summer) and hate winter time, and my mom is the opposite. I crave more sunlight late in the day, while she's driven crazy by a "noon" that isn't actually at midday. What to do?

Since our schedules are defined by when things are open - work, school, stores, services - we could adjust business hours, if we must, instead of changing the clocks. But you're still not going to have a "day" that everyone feels they can live with. I - like many of the people I know - would prefer to start my day 4-6 hours after sunrise (but still eat my afternoon sunlight cake). But my work schedule doesn't allow it, so I live with several hours of perpetual lag.

[Bill5]

Aaarrrrgggghhhh! NAILS ON BLACKBOARDS!!! (What is the 21st Century analogy for a screeching sound you can't stand?)

Why don't they keep daylight savings time?

OK, First, It's Daylight Saving Time. Daylight Saving is a adjective (phrase) modifying time; Saving is not a plural noun. That is, there's only one "s" in saving.

I agree, the change is obsolete, they should just keep midday as approx 12pm all year round

Second. "pm" means post meridiem -- or, after mid-day. Which 12 is the one after mid-day? There isn't one! (Except, perhaps, on Daylight Saving Time - more on that later.) 12 can only be Noon or Midnight, not am or pm. "12 am" is the 12 before noon, and "12 pm" is the 12 after noon. Nonsensical!!

(In Daylight Saving Time, 12 o'clock actually *IS* before mid-day, since mid-day is moved to 1 pm. But, then, the 12 in the middle of the day (when it's sunny) is 12 before mid-day, or 12 am !! And, then, 1 pm is not post meridiem any more, it *IS* meridiem. See, DST screws it up even worse when you try to make the English make sense!)
(And, yes, I know, time zones are approximations of mid-day, and the analemma means that noon is only an approximation of mid-day even at the center of a time zone .. but I'm sticking to fretting about DST for now.)

[Bill5]

I *LOVE* this

and this

The Usenet Oracle once provided the following bit of wisdom (along the line of the last post): "The entire concept of daylight savings time is like trying to make yourself taller by cutting off your head and standing on it." (690-09)

Fabulous!!

[Bill5]

In the end, it boils down to this:
- It's a terrible pain to change back and forth.
- It grates on the few pedants and navigators who associate 12:00 noon with meridian passage [I'm in both camps]
- It is an easy way for everyone to automatically agree to get up an hour earlier every day, so that work finishes early and you get more time in the evening. (i.e., if you get up at 6 am, and you set your clock ahead in the spring, you'll get up at [real] 5 am but your clock will read 6 am.) This is socially useful, and it's easier than everyone changing business and school hours and not changing the clocks.

So - do we want the pain of annual changing (and, for a few, the pain of the un-naturalness), so that we can change all our times to get up an hour earlier in the summer, without actually having to re-post business hours?

(I'd just leave it alone. Arizona & Hawaii have it right. Indiana used to have it right -- but then both added DST, and also re-defined their longitude to push them eastward into the Eastern time zone, whose natural western border runs through mid-Ohio. But what do you expect from the state whose assembly passed a statute that pi would be 3.2?)

[phlip]

Second. "pm" means post meridiem -- or, after mid-day. Which 12 is the one after mid-day? There isn't one! (Except, perhaps, on Daylight Saving Time - more on that later.) 12 can only be Noon or Midnight, not am or pm. "12 am" is the 12 before noon, and "12 pm" is the 12 after noon. Nonsensical!!

All other parts of the time are left-inclusive (or, essentially, "rounded down") - ie the hour part of the time reads "12" starting (and including) noon exactly, until ending (but not including) 1pm exactly. The minute part of the time reads "00" starting (and including) noon exactly, until ending (but not including) 12:01 exactly. And so on. It only makes sense for am/pm to follow that convention, with pm starting (and including) noon exactly and ending (but not including) midnight exactly.

Or, to put it another way: the time epsilon before noon is represented 11:59:59 am, while the time epsilon after noon is represented 12:00:00 pm (both for epsilon less than a second). The time at noon is going to be 12:00:00 <something>... may as well make that "something" be "pm", so that it's continuous on the same side as everything else.


Back on topic: DST may have had a place once, but it's been steadily having diminishing returns (increased use of lower-energy lights like CFLs means less energy is saved by having less awake-at-night time... increased use of daytime-specific electricity use like air conditioning means more energy is spent by having more awake-during-the-day time). Add the twice-a-year spike in sleep problems for everyone who has to change their cycles to the new time (and the resulting asleep-at-the-wheel accidents, lost productivity, and the like) and I really think the whole thing should be scrapped.

That said, the "cut off your head and stand on it to be taller" analogy isn't quite accurate to what they're doing... they're not trying to make the daytime longer... just trying to make it so that more of the daytime happens while people are awake. The extra hour of daytime happens in the afternoon while most people are awake, while the lost hour of daytime happens in the early morning while most people are asleep. Cutting off your head and standing on it may not make you taller in total, but you'll still be able to reach something on a higher shelf.

[distractedSofty]

Aaarrrrgggghhhh! NAILS ON BLACKBOARDS!!! (What is the 21st Century analogy for a screeching sound you can't stand?)

Why don't they keep daylight savings time?

OK, First, It's Daylight Saving Time. Daylight Saving is a adjective (phrase) modifying time; Saving is not a plural noun. That is, there's only one "s" in saving.

Saving can be a countable noun, as in "There are two savings that can be made". Since every day there is a saving of daylight*, it is correct to say that during DST, there are "Daylight Savings". Now, it is true that it was originally intended to be a verb, as in "this is the time that saves daylight", but it could equally be "this is the time during which there are savings of daylight". In English, this would also be more natural, after all, we don't usually say "Electing Day".

* And it is a saving: When you save money, you don't create more of it(despite the common idiom), you just move spending from now into the future. Similarly, when everyone gets up 1 hour earlier, you move one hour of daylight from when you are asleep to when you are awake.

Back back on topic:
I personally don't like the messing with the clock aspect of it, and was happy when Western Australia defeated it's fourth referendum trying to introduce it.

I also don't quite understand why it's so common in the high latitudes, since those areas already get hugely long daylight hours: In Seattle in June , it doesn't get dark until after 10pm (with DST). I have on more than one occasion complained about the "Wasting of Darkness/Twilight" that occurs due to DST (ie. If it doesn't get dark until after 10, then you have to wait really late to do any nocturnal activities. Moonlit strolls, outdoor cinema... made all the more challenging by the excess of daylight. Very disappointing given that the weather is otherwise perfect for them.) An 8pm sunset with a decent twilight period afterwards still gives you plenty of time.

It seems unlikely that DST would ever be repealed in the USA: there's too much money in it now. Extensions are usually supported by outdoor activities vendors (Coleman, golf courses etc), and I believe that the 2007 extension, which had the side effect of putting Halloween inside the DST time period, was heavily lobbied for by confectionery makers. (After all, an extra hour of daylight is an extra hour to trick or treat)

On the other hand, Russia went into DST this year and never came back (as did a handful of countries that share close ties: Ukraine and Belarus at least). That idea doesn't seem to be a too horrible one, but it does have the disadvantage of making people drive to work in the dark during winter.

[EvanED]

That idea doesn't seem to be a too horrible one, but it does have the disadvantage of making people drive to work in the dark during winter.

At Russia's latitude, non-DST would have the disadvantage of making people drive home from work in the dark during Winter.

Even in southern Wisconsin, far south of most of Russia and where solar noon is almost exactly noon in standard time, sunset happens as early as 4:22pm. (Which can make winter really depressing. The early sunsets are 10x worse than the cold. I'd love to switch to DST year-round.)

[Calica]

Even in southern Wisconsin, far south of most of Russia and where solar noon is almost exactly noon in standard time, sunset happens as early as 4:22pm. (Which can make winter really depressing. The early sunsets are 10x worse than the cold. I'd love to switch to DST year-round.)

This. So much.

I've contemplated adjusting my work schedule so I'd get up before sunrise and be able to leave work while it's still light out, but the problem with that is that the rest of the world is still on a later schedule. It's depressing to go to bed at 7 when your friends are just getting started hanging out online, and things like evening church services are suddenly prohibitively late.

Plus, I find it hard to wake up at all before the sun has been in the sky for several hours. I don't know how much of that is because of my natural circadian rhythm, and how much is because work and school have kept me in a perpetual state of chronic sleep deprivation since I was 8 years old, so I don't know what it's like to have a normal sleep cycle anyway. Thanks, American culture!

[pizzazz]

This topic has gotten me to wondering if most people wake up and go to bed early, or late. I'm in the latter camp, though I suspect most people who fall into one or the other (ie not people who work the graveyard shift every day) fall into the former. On the other hand, I'm not sure there is any reason for this. It may have been beneficial when most people farmed (get things early so you're not working in the heat of the day and the animals can be out during daylight, maybe?), but as far as I know, in the countries that tend to care about DST, most people go through a cycle mostly resembling sleep--work--relax(?)--sleep etc. Thus making daylight later would tend to have people work when it's dark out (largely irrelevant) and have daylight time for recreating (psychological benefit of being awake and not working during daylight, more flexibility).

But since in the summer there's plenty of light anyway, I'm not sure what is gained by switching back from Dst. I know that for the last 2 years, I've been traveling across time zones when the switch is made, which wreaks havoc with sleep schedules (not physically having enough time to get enough sleep doesn't help either).