It seems very odd to permanently change the clocks so that they are roughly an hour off from the solar time. Like said above, change the business hours if that’s what people want, and if they don’t want that then why the hell do they think they want permanent DST? They are functionally the same thing.
DUMB!!! You can’t alter the amount of daylight in the winter.
With DST, January sunrise in Seattle, Detroit, Indianapolis, Omaha, occurs 8:45-9:00. In Williston, ND, sunrise would not occur until 9:45.
With DST all year, the kiddies will be walking to school in the dark. If you shift school end times, then the kids lose an hour of after-school daylight ALL YEAR. There would be little play time between school and supper.
DST should coincide with Europe: Last Sunday in March to last Sunday in October.
I live in the Seattle area. In the heart of winter, seattle has 8 hours & 25 minutes from sun rise to sun set and about 16 hours at the Summer Solstice. To be honest, I could care less if the winter is sunrise at 8am and sunset at 4:25, or if sunrise is 9am and sunset at 5:25. Either way it’s dark when I leave home to work and dark when I come back home from about Nov to Jan.
I would however appreciate not needing to reset the clocks twice a year. I see zero advantage with the spring forward/fall back nonsense, and the disadvantage is the inconvenience 2x per year to adjust. I also work the China timezone, and China doesn’t have DST (they tried for 2 years back in the 1980’s and concluded there were no real benefits). I guess there is a slight advantage with DST as China workday overlap with the West Coast worksay is an additional hour, but this doesn’t matter to me personally as either way I’m on with China well into the evening.
IMHO, pick either standard or DST and then keep it. There are no real benefits to spring forward/fall back in the modern world, and it’s highly debatable there were any benefits in WW2.
according to this link, Williston ND (maybe the northernist point of the US?), has 8 hours and 8 minutes between sunrise and sunset on the Winter Solstice, or 17 more minutes of darkness than Seattle.
If you want kiddos to walk to school in daylight in Winter, then there needs to be a 2 hour savings time difference so it’s light in the morning. Otherwise, you’re solving for a problem a one hour “savings” won’t fix.
Why don’t they simply change their time zone to MST year round?
I don’t know for sure, but it’s likely Congress would have to pass a law moving the time zone boundary.
If you read down far enough in that article I linked to in the OP, the California legislator leading the issue may change it to going to all Standard time, instead of Daylight. That would not require a new law from Congress.
If this either option does go into effect, I expect the two BCs[sup]1[/sup] would scramble to go along. They’re just too interdependent economically with the US West Coast to be out of sync time-wise.
[sup]1[/sup] Baja California and British Columbia.
I don’t know about Seattle but here is Colorado school seems to start about 830 for elementary school, 800 for middle school and 730 for high school. We have sunrise at 720 on december 25th so everyone starts school in daylight. It seems even up north the little kids would go to school in sunlight on standard time. That really is a benefit for parents.
Why is it odd? Clocks exist solely for our convenience. The only reason for them to match up with the sun at all is that we find that convenient.
They aren’t functionally the same at all. Business hours are completely decentralized and changed by individual whim. DST is coordinated centrally. Those are very different, even if they could theoretically lead to the same thing.
It’s why, say, a city council can say that trick-or-treat is on October 29th this year, and people mostly follow it, even if they never would have changed the date through individual actions.
I’d say the opposite. The only reason we don’t match it to the sun exactly is for convenience.
Of course it’s the same. DST is just people saying “hey, let’s all go to work an hour earlier and finish an hour earlier for the summer!”
“But that would be awkward, we’d have to rewrite the opening hours and everything on our doors and websites.”
“Alright, what if we just changed the clocks?”
“Ok, fine”
That makes sense for a temporary change, but if you permanently want people to go to work an hour earlier and finish an hour earlier, why not just fess up and say that’s what you’re doing? Personally I think it would feel better, psychologically, to finish work at 4pm and still have it get dark at 7pm or whatever, instead of finishing at “5pm” and it getting dark at “8pm”.
Nah, that daylight saving nonsense is over in Europe (except for the two-year transition period). It’s about time.
Uh…If we didn’t leave daylight savings time for standard, it would get dark around 5pm in December and January, not 4pm here. I can’t imagine it’d be much different in Washington state.
I’m pro ditch standard time. If it’s only from November to March now it’s hardly “standard”, is it?
Back when I had the office job I loathed going to standard time. It meant that I only had the sun in the morning when I hated it most, and I always went home in the dark. My office had zero windows, so for standard time I only saw the sun for 20 minutes each day. So I hated it while probably becoming vitamin deficient. Made me miserable. I love seeing the sun or sunset driving home from work, though, so DST is my chosen time.
The kids have to get up way too early for school anyway. If everyone’s so worried about school in the dark, make school start at a sensible later time that science agrees is better for them anyway. I remember as a kid I had to wake up at 6 am to eat, dress, and still make the bus (it was a LONG bus ride). I was a barely functional zombie every day because of it.
Russia had permanent “summer” time for a couple of years, but people apparently really didn’t like it. In Europe, member states are now supposed to pick their own time zone to stick with; not sure what has been settled at this time. Some countries like France were already in the “wrong” time zone.
Oregon wouldn’t piss if their pants were on fire unless California told them it was okay. And yet they fucked up the entirety of college football uniforms in just a season or two.
Fuck them. And their lazy assed gas station attendants.
Zo!
I remember when Western Australia did a DST trial for a year. Living in the tropics it was hopeless. We tended to do things based on how hot it was not what the clock said. When we went to DST we ended up walking the dog an hour later in the evening once it had cooled down, went to bed an hour later, but still had to get up for work at the same time. So we were losing an hour of sleep every night.
I couldn’t care less about having more daylight in the morning. I mean what are ya gonna do, mow your yard before going to work?
Much rather have it in the afternoon when you can use it (confession time, I get off work at 3:30, so I can actually use it - plow snow, walk dogs).
Sorry about my mistake. I had originally written it coming another way and then changed … some of it.
But still but are not going to like it once they actually experience it.
I don’t care if we in New England stay on DST or EST year round. As stated multiple times, just pick one and stick with it. It’s the change I have trouble with not the actual hours. We’re so far east we probably should be on Canadian Atlantic time anyway.
My personal preference, which would piss off everyone, is to piss off everyone and instead of falling back an hour in a month, fall back half an hour and stay put (or spring forward just 30 minutes in the spring and never change again). It splits the difference between DST and EST, but isn’t a huge difference from Atlantic or the rest of Eastern. However we’d always be off and never in sync with anyone else.
Speaking as a programmer… Let’s get rid of DST altogether.
Speaking as someone who spends nearly 6 months of the year going to work and coming home in the dark. Fuck DST entirely.