We did it abruptly in January. Just about the worst way to attempt it. Of course everybody complained about that. The way they went about it made no sense.
And suddenly changing the time on your clock magically changes our circadian rhythm? This makes no sense. We massively disrupt our natural rhythm twice a year and I’d like to get rid of that, one way or the other.
Then they don’t have to. I already have a tough time figuring out when some businesses are open or not. I just vaguely assume most major stores are open by the time I’m out and about and close sometime after I’m interesting in shopping.
And this doesn’t appear to be an issue in Hawaii, Arizona, Japan, or several other countries. They just don’t adjust their hours.
Like I said, rather than an ‘adjustment’, this is simply a strange way to have more daylight after working/school hours.
I’m dubious that this is an important enough goal to force on everybody. Yeah, some of us might like to have some more daylight after work, but it’s not important enough to force on everybody else.
And that’s beyond the energy argument. If you recall, one of the early justifications was reduced use of electricity (Ben Franklin argued it reduced candle use) if there’s more natural daylight during prime hours. This doesn’t seem to be borne out in the data, at least in modern times.
Suddenly changing our clocks realigns our schedules with the sun, which slowly drifts away from our optimal schedule.
A better solution that may be within our technological grasp is a gradual time change. That would require that all clocks auto-adjust, but we’re not too far away from that being a possibility.
There are several competing and conflicting goals, which is why there’s no obviously great solution. You want to be on the same time as everyone around you. You want to be on a time where the sun rises around when most people get up. You want to minimize disruptive time changes.
Different places can balance those goals differently, and it doesn’t mean that the things they give up don’t exist. Hawaii, for one, doesn’t have to worry about being on the same time as everyone. Both Hawaii and Arizona are further south than most states, so the seasonal variation is lower, etc. Japan is very different culturally from the US in many ways so I’m not sure how well that will translate. But I agree that it’s certainly possible to have a functional society without changing the clocks.
Obviously the world will not fall apart if we don’t change the clocks twice a year. In the great scheme of things this is a relatively minor thing and life will go on. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a better solution.
It is unfortunate that they did it in January, which I agree is probably the worst way to do it, and which makes it harder to draw useful information from.
It is interesting to me that the disagreement over this policy is between people who think that the time change is more disruptive than the schedule/sun misalignment, and people who think the opposite. And of course our interpretation of the 70s experiment reinforces both our beliefs. Because it was a sudden shift the change is worse people see that it supports their position because time changes are disruptive. Because it was in the winter the schedule misalignment people see that it supports their position because waking up when it’s dark is disruptive.
The nice thing if the current legislation goes through is that we’ll at least have a better answer. We’ll switch back to DST next spring and then just ride it out. If people hate it in the winter enough to change it back, it will be because of schedule/sun misalignment issues, not due to a sudden change.
Yup. 2nd shift too. It was definitely different. My brother and a friend where living with me. And had standard hours.
When I worked 2nd shift, I got home at 11pm. No way could I go to bed just getting off of work. But I had to remain quiet. So I started cooking with some low music on.
Third shift I would go out to breakfast with a good friend that I worked with after work. Or sometimes we would share a few beers on my back porch at 7am at my house after work. We at least got to sit there dinking a beer, while others went off to work.
Such BS on the Senate’s part. They’re over the moon to do something that is the most useless and POS boondoggle they could possibly get up to, whereas doing anything that could REALLY help the populace is forbidden and endlessly argued about and always comes to nothing. Health care? Public health? Better working conditions and hours? Protection for consumers? Pandemic aid that doesn’t go mostly to the wealthy? Never heard of it!!
Oh, and never mind voting rights and other democracy protections!
I suppose the one thing positive about keeping things as one time year-round is that the change into winter as sunrise gets later and later is a gradual one as opposed to a sudden shift of an hour, so people can adjust their expectations of sun-up and sun-down times as the seasons change. So there’s that, I suppose.
All the talk about the importance of circadian rhythm and sleep cycles is kind of amusing to a mostly night worker like me.
My shift is 11pm-9am for 3 nights. After the 3rd night when I get off at 9am Friday I only have 23 hours off and report back to work at 8am Saturday morning for another 10 hour day shift. Followed by 3 days off during which time I am a totally up-with-the sun daytime person who never stays up late at night at all. Repeat for the following week. I have been doing this for 12 years so far.
Doesn’t bother me at all. Your results may vary.
When I was much younger I started a job at 5:30am and got off at 1:30 in the afternoon. I loved that shift but it was hard for a young man to get to bed early on a summer evening and get some sleep. The boss was an old farmer who had already been up feeding his cows long before coming to work. He said; “You are going to die in a bed, why do you want to spend so much time there?”
18 States have enacted legislation/resolutions at the State level in support of year round DST. It’s something Florida and California agree on. Calling it BS on the Senates part for not obstructing this into oblivion is a sad state of affairs. This is the minimum they can do.
I agree. While I think it’s a bad idea on the merits, it clearly has popular support. The costs of doing this and finding out it was a bad idea are not that high, and of course those of us who think it’s a bad idea might be wrong.
By the way, States can opt out of time change. States cannot switch time zones without Congressional approval. This bill gives (actually forces) that approval.
One thing that I don’t think has been covered here is that compared to when the time change failed in the 1970s, a huge percentage of the US population has shifted south. Virtually every state to have a population boom relative to the rest of the country is to the south - so a much lower percentage of people will suffer the really late sunrise vs. 40-50 years ago. All those Texans and Floridians, etc. won’t have it that bad compared to the northern population.
My problem with it is that it’s absolutely not even up to the level of “minimum.” It’s so far below minimum that it’s laughable. And then they will sell it as them working for us, when they SO don’t work for us.
I wasn’t saying they should obstruct it. I’m saying they should work for us all the time at a level that actually helps us, but they don’t.
Ironically, corporate culture has pretty much cut the lunch hour to zero minutes. This isn’t entirely due to oppressive management; many workers’ desire to make the overall workday shorter also contributes to it. I had several coworkers who had extremely early schedules, like 6 - 3, so they could hit the road to their distant suburbs and still be able to see their young children before their bedtimes.
Wait. I wasn’t alive yet then so I need some help understanding this. So instead of just not changing the clocks one year, they changed them in October and then changed them back in January??