Outside of the USA, that is. I believe the reason the USA now delays it is to add one more hour of daylight to Halloween.
Here in St. Petersburg, we’ve gone to Permanent (try it for a while) Winter Time. Two years ago the country went to (not-so-much) Permanent Summer Time. But 11AM sunrises in Winter weren’t so good, I reckon.
My computer hasn’t changed its time. Probably because the last batch of Microsquish updates nearly broke my computer. For one thing - I couldn’t use Remote Desktop without logging off the main computer. So I had to roll them back. Just like the clocks in this flat. Thanks, Bill the Gates! (second Bloom County reference).
Yes, we do ours next week in the US. I wish they would pick one and stick with it. Either it will be dark in the morning or it will be dark in the early evening. I don’t care, just pick one.
I used to live in Indiana when they didn’t change the clocks, and it was nice. I think Arizona doesn’t mess with their clocks. I should move there.
Well fuck. Here we go again with the annual “don’t change the clocks!” thread. Mostly written by people who live nearer the equator and don’t get that it makes a huge difference to people in different latitudes. Here in Ottawa, it’s rather nice to arrive at work when the sun is above the horizon. Without daylight saving time kids would be going to school in complete blackness. Not really a good idea from a safety perspective. Give it some thought this year before bitching, please. Do you want your kids being out until the sun rises at 8:40 AM? Of course not.
We changed ours three weeks ago. In recent years the commencement of daylight saving seems to have been becoming the unofficial start of the countdown to Christmas.
The Sun just rose here - 8:04 AM in St. Petersburg. This is (maybe, possibly) the last time the clocks will change . They also created a couple more time zones (now there’s 11). So we’ll be the same time as Finland and the Baltics when they “spring forward”. No springing in Russia :b
From what I have heard, lots of people die on the roads (and in other ways, such as heart attacks) because of the time change, because, their sleep patterns get messed up, often not getting back in sync for weeks. I live about as far from the equator as you do, and I am firmly in favor of the system being abolished. We have electric lighting (including street lights for those poor kids) these days, and we use it.
Here in China, we just stick with one time zone and no DST. Of course, that kind of inconveniences the folks on the eastern and western edges of the country, but, hey, there’s no mucking around with the clocks.
[QUOTE=Bricker]
Lots of people die because of the time change?
Cite?
[/QUOTE]
This page cites a gaggle of journal articles about increased rates of traffic accidents, suicide attempts and cardiac events.
DST has also been found to cause extra energy use, contrary to the old claim that it saves energy. Apparently, when Indiana started DST a few years ago, it was easy to see an increase in energy consumption.
Not to mention the collective billion dollars or so worth of time wasted nationwide with everyone changing clocks.
This is the reason we don’t observe DST in Arizona. We had it in 1967 and people were running their air conditioners and evaporative coolers longer in the daylight hours and were using more energy. The state was granted an exemption in 1968 and we have been on permanent Mountain Standard Time since, except for the Navajo Nation, which does observe DST.
I can’t buy any of that shit, and besides, it’s only an hour. Is everyone a robot synchronized to the exact minute of the day? Shit, my schedule has me getting anywhere between 5 hours to 7 hours sleep a night at the best of times. A one hour clock shift is meaningless. I have yet to see succinct statistics. everything seems to be anecdotal.
ETA: And it lasts only for one fucking day! Then you should be totally able to adjust. Not buying it.
Well, this suggests an obvious solution. We should divide the world into time zones by horizontal (east/west) bands of latitude instead of vertical (north/south) bands of longitude.
I grew up in Indiana. In the heart of winter it got light between 7:30 and 8:00 in the morning, which meant that high school kids and commuters all did it in the dark.
I frankly preferred that to a 4:30 sunset, the way we have here in Illinois during the winter.
Me too. What’s the point of more daylight in the morning? That’s a serious question, coming from a morning person. So what if it’s dark when you go into work.
Meanwhile, further from the equator in Scandinavia, it doesn’t matter again. Here at 63 degrees North, the sun rose at 8:30 on Friday and will - most probably - rise at 07:40 on Monday. Big effing deal, 'cause it’ll last only a week or so at the most. A month from now, the sun will rise sometime after nine, and around Yule it won’t pull its butt above the horizon until ten o’clock. OTOH, go back a month or so, and it was bright light when normal people were still happily sleeping, no matter whether we observed DST or followed normal time.
At really high latitudes, DST doesn’t make a shred of a difference. It’s just a minor annoyance to have to adjust the clocks twice a year, 'cause in the summer it’s bright light whenever you get up in the morning and whenever you go to bed, and in the winter it’s fucking dark until you’ve had your third cup of coffee and your second meeting of the day and it gets dark again several hours before you’re heading home.