# Daylight Saving **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 10, 2004, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving/273954 "2004-11-10T02:12:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving/273954/21 "2004-11-13T23:26:11Z")
> [@BoringDad](#): > > Ever had a garden and wanted to work in in before it got too hot? > Enjoyed a jog in the quiet morning? > > Just because YOU prefer something does not make it right. So let’s vote on it. You’re in the minority, bub. > [@Colophon](#): > > Strangely, the people that claim to want it abolished. when you question them further, often in fact want to keep it all year round and abandon standard time! I’d be opposed to that too, as there’s something nice about being in the “correct” time zone for at least some of the year. > > Face it, most people are up and about for far more hours after noon than before noon, so it makes sense to have more daylight in the evening. What the heck does this mean? Isn’t it kind of meaningless to talk about DST year-round, or “double summer time”, and so forth? The numbers on the clock are invented by humans, and personally, I think our lifestyles nowadays, compared to the past, are such that it’s silly to have the sun rise and set so early in winter. I don’t get, at all, what you mean by “correct time zone.” What does “correct” mean? What does it mean to be on daylight saving time year-round? If you’re not switching the clocks around, you’re not on daylight saving time. You’re just in a different time zone. The time zones are not straight lines, either. And a lot of places have really wacky times, like off by half an hour, or fifteen minutes. The times on the clock don’t have some independent meaning. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving/273954/22 "2004-11-13T23:46:44Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > Face it, most people are up and about for far more hours after noon than before noon, so it makes sense to have more daylight in the evening. Sorry, but this argument just doesn’t work. Otherswise it would be logical that given a typical 8-hour sleep of 11pm through to 7am, we should adjust the clocks so the sun is highest at 3pm, two hours beyond DST. If that seems silly, then the idea of adjusting clocks to adjust people’s sleep routines to match them to the sun should seem silly. The only way to spend more time in daylight is to get up earlier in the _actual_ day, irrespective of whether the clock says 7 or 8. ---
**Author:** ![davmilasav](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9bcb4/32.png) [@davmilasav](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davmilasav)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2004, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving/273954/23 "2004-11-16T15:00:03Z")
As far as DST is concerned here’s my problem with it: I hate mornings. Hate, hate, hate. But if I want to get to work on time I have to get up at 5 a.m. This is fine until the magic day when I suddenly have to get up at 4 a.m. It also sucks for all the people who work o/n shifts and, through no fault of their own, lose an hour’s pay. The only benefits I get from Fall Back are 1. getting to sleep in until (my body thinks it’s) 6 a.m. and 2. getting the extra hour on my check when I work the o/n shift ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2004, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving/273954/24 "2004-11-16T17:39:51Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > What the heck does this mean? Isn’t it kind of meaningless to talk about DST year-round, or “double summer time”, and so forth? The numbers on the clock are invented by humans, and personally, I think our lifestyles nowadays, compared to the past, are such that it’s silly to have the sun rise and set so early in winter. > > I don’t get, at all, what you mean by “correct time zone.” What does “correct” mean? What does it mean to be on daylight saving time year-round? Standard time was originally determined with reference to noon. Before we started with the time zones, your clock time was determined with reference to when the sun was overhead where you are; that was noon. Now, when we standardized the time zones (thanks to the Canadian engineer Sandford Fleming, incidentally), standardized time was still pretty close to zenith=noon in most places, albeit displaced forward and backward depending on if you were in the western or eastern part of the zone. There is, indeed, no practical reason why we couldn’t abandon the noon=zenith thing, and make it so that the zenith happened at 1 PM. I just think it’s sort of funny that this would be so much easier than making it so that everybody does things earlier (I, personally, would be the first to the barricades if they tried that). ---
**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:** [November 16, 2004, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving/273954/25 "2004-11-16T18:32:39Z")
Count me in for stopping messing around with the clocks. Saskatchewan does not do the clock messing around thing, and when I lived there for the first 21 years of my life, I did not miss it at all. Now that I’ve moved to Alberta where we _do_ mess around with the clocks twice a year, it is a pain in the ass. As far north as we are, we don’t gain anything in winter or summer - the days are incredibly long in summer, and incredibly short in winter, and that’s just the way it is. As far as I know, the street lights are light-sensitive - they come on and off when they sense the appropriate amount of light. Doesn’t matter what the clocks say. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-saving/273954.md?page=1)