The way I see DST, it’s a brute force solution for an antiquated problem. In the modern age, most people spend hours of their day awake and active thanks to electricity, whether it’s early in the morning or late at night, does it really matter? I think it’s odd to make everyone adjust their sleep schedule for the few people that have a particular need for that. I think we could make use of modern technology to come up with better solutions.
Just leave it alone, have everyone just set it to some time, doesn’t really matter what, and let people make adjustments in their personal and business lives as they want. I don’t see a reason why we can’t leave it at standard time and let businesses have winter hours of 9-5 and summer hours of 8-4 if they want. Hell, as an office worker, I have a lot of flexibility in my work schedule and can adjust my hours earlier if I want more daylight or later if I want more sleep. In the past I’ve actually adjusted my hours so I could minimize the impact of DST.
Have more periodic adjustments, possibly even daily. Most of the clocks I have, on my computer, on my phone, in my car, on my TV are all completely automatic. Even a lot of watches and alarm clocks set themselves automatically. So it wouldn’t be difficult to set a start or close of business time relative to sunrise or sunset rather than relative to noon or midnight. And as for things that don’t really care about that, like computers, I’d just leave it all on ZULU.
I guess I still live in the dark ages because most of my clocks have to be manually changed and it is mildly annoying. Indiana didn’t observe DST for 20 years and life was good. However, since I’m on the western edge of EST, I would rather move Indiana to central time, then keep the time the same. I’m not sure why the rest of the world can’t just appease me. sigh
DST is of less import to states farther south, since the length of the day varies less across the year. It’s also why countries closer to the equator are less likely to observe DST.
This year was actually the least disruptive it’s ever been for me. Church started an hour later to accommodate everyone, so all that changed was that the break between morning and night services was shorter. The very next day, everything just felt normal.
Meanwhile it caught me completely by surprise this year, and was puzzled why my mom was asking me why I was so late for church when I slid into the pew next to her at two minutes before the hour.
I sleep like crap most of the time. The time changes seriously mess with my sleep, and it doesn’t matter when I go to bed to try to compensate. Both changes mess with me for weeks. Yes, I cope. But it takes a toll.
“Let”? What are you going to do about it? Go to everyone’s home and change their clocks for them? Arrest people who give the time as 9:00 am when it’s 8:00 am everywhere else?
Say what? The further north you go, the less you need DST; kids are still going to go to school in the dark in the winter and you’ll still have lots of daylight after work in the summer.
In the arctic zones, DST has less of an effect because it’s going to be mostly dark in the winter and light in the summer regardless of how you adjust the clocks.
In the tropics, it’s basically sunny 12 hours and dark 12 hours, year-round.
In the temperate zones in between those two, DST matters.