# Daylight saving time - again. Let's go to back to "God's time" **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 11, 2021, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707 "2021-03-11T12:12:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/41 "2021-03-12T03:11:30Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Why would you need to? Farmers dont work by the clock they work by the sun. Same with their livestock. Because farmers don’t live in isolation from the rest of the world, and have to coordinate with people who do live by the clock. Farm kids go to school. A high percentage of farms have at least one adult with an off-farm job. Farmers go to markets, and to stores, and to meetings, and to plenty of other things that do run by the clock. ---
**Author:** ![Oredigger77](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/oredigger77/32/3181_2.png) [@Oredigger77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oredigger77)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/42 "2021-03-12T03:43:45Z")
I want my sunlight in the morning so I’ll take standard time year round please. My 2 year old still hasn’t adjusted to standard time since last Falkland has been waking up between 5 and 6 am every day. We’re excited to get her sleeping in until 6 and 7 since Ideally she’d wake up at 7 each morning. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/43 "2021-03-12T03:52:07Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > Let’s go even farther than that and abolish time zones, leap days, and leap seconds. Seriously. Never touch the clock again. It’s okay to have Christmas in the middle of the summer. The Southern Hemisphere manages it just fine. Everybody who needs to be aware of the sun already knows how to find it. I can’t agree with that too much. Christmas was put in the winter (in the Northern Hemisphere, where it originated) for a reason. It’s during that time of year when the days are cold and dark, and we could use a cheerful celebration. That’s why so many different ones happened around the same time. For those in the Southern Hemisphere, I would hope they have a holiday in June or July for similar purposes. If not, those days can get dreary indeed. As for Daylight Saving Time? I’ve never really been a fan of making it darker at night in the winter. And, here in Arkansas at least, the sun rises early enough that it wouldn’t be completely dark going to school if we stayed in DST all year long. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/44 "2021-03-12T04:09:04Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Christmas was put in the winter (in the Northern Hemisphere, where it originated) for a reason. I Yes, because a early Christian did some calculations with John the Baptist and the crucifiction and such. Again, early Christmas was not a holiday. No presents. No feasting, no merrymaking. No tree. Just a few prayers and lighting a candle. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/45 "2021-03-12T07:33:09Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Because farmers don’t live in isolation from the rest of the world, and have to coordinate with people who do live by the clock. > > Farm kids go to school. A high percentage of farms have at least one adult with an off-farm job. Farmers go to markets, and to stores, and to meetings, and to plenty of other things that do run by the clock. And one specific one at the time DST was first introduced, which was during WWI. Farmers who had dairy herds needed to get the milk to the rail station in time to catch the train to the dairy. Suddenly the train is running an hour earlier but the cows want to be milked at the same time as the day before. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/46 "2021-03-12T10:29:34Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The system I’d like to see would be that, every morning, at the moment of local sunrise, clocks would reset to 6 AM. Schools, businesses, etc. could then take for granted how light it would be at a certain time in the morning, and set whatever start times made sense for that. Morning hours would be as consistent as possible, which appears to be the aim of DST, and there would be no abrupt changes. And local noon would, on average, be 12:00. > > The downside, of course, would be that the time would be different everywhere, even in places at the same longitude. But we’re getting to the point where all clocks precise enough to care are controlled by computers, anyway. If you’re in New York and you want to know the current time in Los Angeles, you don’t subtract three hours (or wait, is it add three hours?); you just ask a computer “What time is it in Los Angeles right now?”. This sounds just like, or at least pretty close to, old-school timekeeping where the day is divided into XII hours, whose length depends on the season and latitude. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/47 "2021-03-12T11:40:40Z")
No, in old-school timekeeping, a winter hour was shorter than a summer hour, and both sunrise and sunset had fixed times. In my system, sunrise would be at a fixed time, but the hours would (almost) all be a constant length, and sunset would vary twice as much as it does in standard time. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/48 "2021-03-12T16:07:10Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > one specific one at the time DST was first introduced, which was during WWI. Farmers who had dairy herds needed to get the milk to the rail station in time to catch the train to the dairy. Suddenly the train is running an hour earlier but the cows want to be milked at the same time as the day before. Around here the milk is currently picked up by milk trucks. I don’t know what happens with the timing of the trucks; but if they don’t change with the clocks, then the coordination problem is spread out to the truck drivers and their families, and the processing plant and those workers’ families, and so on. As the trucks are picking up from a chilled bulk tank on the farm, I suspect the processing plant and drivers change with the clocks; but I don’t know whether it’s an issue to get the milk chilled sufficiently at the farm before the truck shows up. > [@Chronos](#): > > In my system, sunrise would be at a fixed time, but the hours would (almost) all be a constant length, and sunset would vary twice as much as it does in standard time. How would it be an improvement to have sunrise stay the same and sunset vary widely? Sunset also affects peoples’ lives. ---
**Author:** ![Honolulu\_Lulu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/87869e/32.png) [@Honolulu\_Lulu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Honolulu_Lulu)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/49 "2021-03-12T16:09:10Z")
> [@FairyChatMom](#): > > I assume there’s a valid reason that school hours can’t be shifted so kids don’t start in the dark? When I was still working, I was amazed at school buses on the road with me before 6AM. Say, for example, school now is from 8am to 2pm. We change it to 9am to 3pm. Now the kids have one less hour of after-school daylight from March to November. If schools change their hours, will other businesses follow eventually? So what’s the point? If you don’t want to change the clocks twice a year, why not stay on Standard Time? States (like Arizona, Hawaii) can do that without permission from the Commerce Department. If it’s because you want more sunlight at the end of your waking hours, just get up an hour earlier than you do now (without requiring the rest of us do it too). ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/50 "2021-03-12T16:49:57Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I can’t agree with that too much. Christmas was put in the winter (in the Northern Hemisphere, where it originated) for a reason. It’s during that time of year when the days are cold and dark, and we could use a cheerful celebration. That’s why so many different ones happened around the same time. NH gets to have Christmas as their winter holiday, and SH will just have to come up with something? Why can’t the NH do the same? If we abandoned solar time, it would be a full century before any fixed-date holiday even drifted a 1/4th of a year. Plenty of time for folks to invent non-Christmas solstice parties, as they’ve done from earliest history. The first Christmas wasn’t in winter, and it was set there for reasons that no longer matter. It would be a good thing to split off the solstice celebration from it. Then the people who want Christmas can celebrate Christmas, and those who are only in it for the Yule trappings (winter, gifts, decorations) can just do that. As I said, it would be 200 years for it to drift into summer. Just 100 years to drive into spring. That’s more than enough time for new customs to get established. As I said, SH has always had Christmas in summer, so there’s no real reason NH can’t. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/51 "2021-03-12T16:57:09Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The downside, of course, would be that the time would be different everywhere, even in places at the same longitude. But we’re getting to the point where all clocks precise enough to care are controlled by computers, anyway. If you’re in New York and you want to know the current time in Los Angeles, you don’t subtract three hours (or wait, is it add three hours?); you just ask a computer “What time is it in Los Angeles right now?”. This would be nuts. Currently, I’m talking to someone 1 timezone away, earlier or later, all I need to know is what longitudinal slice they’re in, and I add or drop 1. With a little experience and geography, I can guess the time offset pretty easily, give or take 2. But If we add latitude into the mix, every time we agree on a time we need to consult a computer. The number of effective “time zones” could be what… 36 longitudinal slices times 18 latitude slices? No thanks. Yes, I can look it up in a computer, but I like a system simple enough to where the need for that is minimal or nonexistent. There’s no reason in the world our timekeeping system needs to track solar time anymore. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/52 "2021-03-12T17:19:09Z")
Long, long ago in an essay Isaac Asimov commented, “If the Federal government passed a law that everyone get up and go to work an hour earlier six months of the year the complaints in this ‘home of the free and land of the brave’ would be deafening but it passes a daylight savings act that _does the exact same thing_ and there isn’t even a peep. People are funny, sometimes.” At least we’re not like the heathen Chinese where, despite being four time zones wide, they all operate on Beijing time. I’ve never calculated what time the winter sunrise is in western China but it has to be way off from usual. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/53 "2021-03-12T18:06:07Z")
As someone who spent the first 21 years of my life _not_ switching the clocks (Saskatchewan), I truly don’t understand what benefit people think they’re getting from the switches. You don’t gain anything at one end that you don’t lose at the other, either in the year or in the day. I keep hoping that Alberta will stop switching - fingers crossed! ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/54 "2021-03-12T18:27:27Z")
As I mentioned in a previous thread, the European Commission was well on its way to banning summer clock-switching in the EU > **[Parliament backs proposal to end switch between summer and winter time in 2021...](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20190321IPR32107/parliament-backs-proposal-to-end-switch-between-summer-and-winter-time-in-2021)** > > MEPs voted to end the practice of adjusting clocks by an hour in spring and autumn from 2021. but I do not know how DOA the implementation is. ---
**Author:** ![BrickBat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@BrickBat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrickBat)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/55 "2021-03-12T19:00:42Z")
> [@kayT](#): > > Nothing for you, you lucky soul. Many, many people are not so lucky. For me, I wake up at the same time every day, so “adjusting” to Daylight Saving Bull actually means adjusting my life to being up at 4 a.m. part of the year and at 5 a.m. part of the year. Year after year I’m continually amazed ( or should that be dismayed ) at how much a shift of one lousy hour affects me. I’m in good health but “springing ahead” one hour just kicks the absolute shite out of me for near a week. I feel fatigued all day long during this adjustment period, not just lousy in the am. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/56 "2021-03-12T20:20:41Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > NH gets to have Christmas as their winter holiday, and SH will just have to come up with something? Why can’t the NH do the same? Because you’re shifting around the calendar. So such a holiday would have to move to stay in the winter, near the solstice when the days get the shortest. That holiday would effectively be working on the same calendar we use now. The Southern Hemisphere can create one winter holiday, and it would stay in the winter without any extra work. That’s not as difficult as creating a moving winter holiday. And then the problem is compounded for any holiday where the traditional celebration depends on the season. Holidays are ultimately just traditions, after all. Not to mention the benefit of being able to make plans based on the calendar. even years in advance, without having to look up what season it will be in that month. The whole reason the Gregorian calendar was created was that people found that having all the holidays and other fixed days moving around the year caused issues. I don’t see any reason why that would be any different now. Sure, if we were floating around in space without any seasons, then staying fixed to Earth’s solar year would make no sense. But, since we’re on Earth, it makes sense to have a way to track where we are in our orbit, since that affects the seasons, weather, and amount of sunlight. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/57 "2021-03-12T20:45:48Z")
I spent probably five frustrating hours this week struggling with the clock changes. I’m trying to analyze several years worth of industrial machine data with time and date stamps, and the machine stamps are not uniform, either in date format (some in ddmmyyyy and some in mmddyyyy), or in whether and how DST was applied. And there are questions about whether the clocks get adjusted automatically or manually or both, and how do we know? So I keep trying to program out more and more complicated logic to try to decode this mess. DST does not change at midnight when date changes, so the decoding has to take date and time into account. At least in the springtime, there are no ambiguous times, because the clock appears to go from 01:59:59 to 03:00:00. But in the fall, there is an entire hour of real time when the time stamps are getting used twice (if there’s a stamp every second). So maybe we implement logic that identifies the first 01:59:59 and the second 00:00:00, track the observation number, and use that as the index to retard the time. But, no, it’s not going to be that easy, because these machines record stuff asynchronously, so the timestamps are sparse and there’s no guarantee any of them will actually fall into that hour. Do I write logic to try to figure out if that’s the case, and keep that index if it is? What if there are a few in that hour that are all standard time, or a few that are all daylight saving time, or what if they are mixed? Meanwhile, it’s a big data set, it takes a long time to process, and I keep fat-thumbing one thing or another, so the debugging is glacially slow. How many times in my life have I fought this battle? I hate this mess!!! ---
**Author:** ![HughGoply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hughgoply/32/7834_2.png) [@HughGoply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HughGoply)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/58 "2021-03-12T20:56:56Z")
The real problem is standard time. Fuck that noise. Before the train and telegraph, towns and individuals had their own time. That’s God’s time, not this industrialized capitalist white-supremist “standard” time. Not my standard. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/59 "2021-03-12T21:11:05Z")
When I worked with a bunch of people around the globe, and meeting times had to be sensitive to someone’s locale, I hated daylight savings. Some of the countries used it, some didn’t…add India’s half-hour disconnect on top of that, and scheduling regular/repeated meetings ended up a nightmare. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707/60 "2021-03-12T21:14:29Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > I spent probably five frustrating hours this week struggling with the clock changes. I’m trying to analyze several years worth of industrial machine data with time and date stamps, and the machine stamps are not uniform, either in date format (some in ddmmyyyy and some in mmddyyyy), or in whether and how DST was applied. Too late, obviously, but there’s no reason that industrial machines need to make DST changes. It might make more sense to leave them on UTC or local standard time. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving-time-again-lets-go-to-back-to-gods-time/937707.md?page=4)