To avoid hijacking this thread, I want to know just what would happen if we picked Daylight Saving Time over Easten Standard Time, permanently. Would the world end and Nazis ride around on Dinosaurs?
Ok, seriously. I’ve heard the arguments for DST. Fine. Good. Great. What I have not heard is the argument for keeping EST. If DST is so great, why don’t we just pick it and move on. Add to that, US will increase the length of the year that is DST in 2007. In 2007, only 01/01/07 to 03/11/07 and 11/04/07 to 12/31/07 will be EST. It doesn’t sound very “standard” to have 127 out of 365 days (or just over one third of a year) in Eastern “Standard” Time.
So, why are we keeping EST around? What benefit does it give us as a society?
Here in Minneapolis, we don’t use Eastern Standard Time at all. I understand that several other states, and most other countries, also don’t use it. :rolleyes:
As Brian pointed out, the E in EST is irrelevant to your question, since it refers to a single time zone… call it ST versus DST… standard time versus daylight savings time.
I don’t think anything too bad would happen. The reasons we flip back and forth are because the benefits of the DST adjustment fade to near zero in the winter months, when there isn’t that much daylight anyway and all of it is being used on a fairly ‘normal’ schedule. Also, there are probably a lot of sticklers who insist on being on ‘standard’ time whenever possible – standard being defined as aligning noon with the point in the day when the sun is directly to the south and at zenith, (allowing for irregularities owing to the standardized time zones.)
EST is set up so that the most amount of folks have the smallest amount of time difference between noon and the time of day where the sun is at its zenith. Having the sun hit its zenith at 9am would strike most folks as unusual.
The argument I heard the last time this came up in the '70s was that DST in the winter would make it dark in the morning for kids waiting for school buses.
Right, but that’s not really the question. Zenith should happen at one “time” every day, right (for every longitude in a time zone)? So we are trying to decide between zenith at 12noon and 1pm, I think. (Maybe it’s a choice between 11am and 12noon, not sure). Regardless, whatever the local zenith time is, you’ve always had two options, one hour different. Why not pick one and be done with it?
I’m just confused why the people in charge feel we’re stuck with keeping an appearently useless, but confusing system of time keeping. Or maybe, they are slowly trying to get rid of ()ST; in which case, just tell us, and I think we’ll deal with it.
:smack: ummm… but the title sounds cooler? …nevermind
:D I thought it was fake gay marriage for health benefits :D glad to see I'm not the only one who watches *Drawn*. I do feel my brain shrinking every time I see it, tho! :eek:
The simple answer to this is to look at the sunrise and sunset times at the long and short days of the year.
Sunrise in summer = about 5:00 a.m. Sunset in summer about 7:30 p.m. With Daylight Saving Time that becomes 6:00 a.m./8:30 p.m.
Winter sunrise about 6:30 a.m., winter sunset about 5:00 p.m. With DST, sunrise gets pushed up to 7:30 a.m. – too dark for a large number of people starting work early in the morning. Sure, sunset comes later, but 6:00 p.m. still doesn’t give you much time after work to enjoy the daylight after you leave work.
This will be the last year my state is on Eastern Standard Time all year 'round. Next spring, we’ll go into the cycle of EST/EDT along with the east coast. Geographically, we’re pretty far west for Eastern, though, so we’ll continue quoting Yogi Berra, who said, “It gets late early here.”
So you guys will get to be really confused. Not only will you switch to the EST/DST cycle, the EST/DST cycle will then change the following year. I swear someone is playing cruel tricks on all of us.
How about we adjust the time the kids go to school? Or change the time by 1/2 hour and leave it, that would be a compromise. The people I work with really enjoy ribbing me twice a year cause I think changing the time of the clock is futile, their response is " we get more daylight after work with DST" my response, adjust your schedule not the clock.
I think it’s ridiculous that people want more DST, & think they get some magic benefit from it. If it were about half the year, fine. But to make the “standard” time so much less than half the year is silly.
What if we reversed it? Have standard time from March to October, work 8-4 instead of 9-5, then go on “Extra Morning Daylight Time” for a few months. Would anyone want this? Would anyone try it? But that’s what we’re doing. Daft.
If we’re going to do one thing year-round, just have it be standard. Noon would be noonish most places, & the time zones would correspond to longitude.
And remember, folks, DST year-round is Stalinist!!!
Fundamentally Daylight savings time is a psychological trick of course… in that it accomplishes nothing that doing everything one hour later, (but CALLING it one hour later instead of the same time) in the summer would do. To take a hypothetical schedule:
7 am: wake up
9 am: arrive at work
5 pm: leave work
7 pm: dinner
11 pm: go to sleep
now, on a summer day, maybe dawn is at 5:30 am and sunset at 6:30 pm. During diner and the evening up to 11 pm, this person has electric lights on. He’d (or she’d) use less electricity by adjusting to this schedule:
6 am: wake up
8 am: arrive at work
4 pm: leave work
6 pm: dinner
10 pm: go to sleep
However, maybe he doesn’t want to make all these changes to his schedule, and even if he did there are other people who might not agree to it: his boss, the TV station that airs a program at 10 pm that he doesn’t want to videotape and watch later. But if everybody changes their clocks by one hour, then everyone can adjust to an earlier schedule with fewer disruptions.
What I wonder is: what were the reasons that so many people adopted a schedule that makes them stay up so late after sunset?? If daylight savings time becomes universal, say, will those hidden factors reassert themselves and get people staying up until midnight? Just something to think about.
on preview I see that manduck has expressed my thesis idea a little more concisely, but I prefer to be elaborate anyway.
Just something to think about.