Daylight Saving Time

Source: xkcd.com

Great cartoon.

As much about people acting without thinking as about daylight savings time, two things we pay a high price for.

In the 70's they tried moving the clock ahead early, and I do mean early. I remember heading to school in the dark with the moon still up. Felt like the middle of the night (I was on the Canadian border so we had short winter days and short summer nights anyways but it was ridiculous). That morning there was a kid killed in a crosswalk by a bus, in Florida, trying to get to school, in the dark.

Where I live now, we should be in the next time zone. Local high noon occurs at about 1:50 pm during Daylight Saving Time. It's ridiculous. One town to the Northwest of us, DOES run on the next zone though officially they are on the same one as we are (state line is the time line). I wish they'd just go back to nothing. Also, they shoved the advance to start earlier and end later with no measureable savings in energy, in fact it eats more. The sun is 'good enough time' if you're off grid and on the land, I agree totally.

Doesn't matter how it all transpires, trying to impose an industrially-determined schedule onto the rhythms of biological creatures is a recipe for angst.  When having morning coffee in the half-light of a winter's dawn, we often note the lit-up "schoolbus from Hell" that passes on the distant county road, engorged with all those groggy minds in transit to the appointed "assimilation" centers....

It's nearing that time again.

I grew up in an area that didn't do the daylight savings thing. So I was a real mess when I got out into the 'real world'. Once a year I was an hour early for work, and once a year I was an hour late for work (okay, maybe more than once a year for that one )

I am so far over and in one zone and should be in the next one west, with Daylight Saving Time, on Summer Equinox, our local high noon is 1:51 pm. So that tells you we REALLY should be one zone west. If they would just grant us that. We are about the furthest west of our zone. Just make sure you know in the morning which things click over automatically and which ones you have to set (I did all the ones in our place already)

Daylight Savings begins Sunday, March 12, 2017 and ends Sunday, November 5, 2017

I have decided that I will no longer dignify the concept by using a non-vulgar term for it. From now on I'm simply calling it "time fuckery".

It is so silly that we care what digit it is when we get up or when we start work. Why "6" is better than "14", "278", or "-5" is still a mystery to me.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/opinion/article-turn-back-the-clock-on-daylight-savings-why-standard-time-all-year/

They want to make it permanent here.

Yeah. I'm kind of torn. On the one hand, it just seems SO SILLY to artificially make "noon" happen an hour after physical noon, all year round, because society just wants to stay up later. Like, we could just have employers start work at a different hour, rather than changing the actual time. But no, now we're going to lie to ourselves and pretty much remove all meaning behind the word "noon."

But, on the other hand, as much as I hate Daylight Savings Time, I hate switching even more. So, being on Daylight Savings all year round is a lesser of all evils. At least I don't have a whole span of time where my animals want to be let out at their "normal" time, which suddenly is not my normal time because someone decided to switch the clocks.

My watch still has standard time. I didn't switch it to daylight savings in the spring. I just kept adding the hour when people asked me the time. I'm honestly tempted to always have my watch on standard time, even if we legally never live acording to the sun ever again. At least my watch will still tell the true time.

I feel like such a cranky, weird old person about this. I'm only 34! But, changing the clocks just so people can stay up later to buy more stuff, seems so SILLY.

Nicole Alderman wrote:Yeah. I'm kind of torn. On the one hand, it just seems SO SILLY to artificially make "noon" happen an hour after physical noon, all year round, because society just wants to stay up later. Like, we could just have employers start work at a different hour, rather than changing the actual time. But no, now we're going to lie to ourselves and pretty much remove all meaning behind the word "noon."

But, on the other hand, as much as I hate Daylight Savings Time, I hate switching even more. So, being on Daylight Savings all year round is a lesser of all evils. At least I don't have a whole span of time where my animals want to be let out at their "normal" time, which suddenly is not my normal time because someone decided to switch the clocks.

My watch still has standard time. I didn't switch it to daylight savings in the spring. I just kept adding the hour when people asked me the time. I'm honestly tempted to always have my watch on standard time, even if we legally never live acording to the sun ever again. At least my watch will still tell the true time.

I feel like such a cranky, weird old person about this. I'm only 34! But, changing the clocks just so people can stay up later to buy more stuff, seems so SILLY.

I thought I was the only person that did that! Ha...I am not alone! I never switch my watch...

The interesting thing about time zones is, it was all started because of the railroads, BUT today the railroads do not even use time zones. Like I worked for Union Pacific which is based out of Omaha Nebraska. Soooooo...all times were central time. It did not matter if you were on a railroad track in California, or an some rail in the eastern part of the country; "railroad time" was always Central Time.

So in that period of my life, I had (3) times going on. I lived in Maine so to call my wife I had to be aware of what time Maine Time was, which if I was in California would be four hours later then local time. Then I had local time which was 4 hours after Eastern Time, and then Railroad Time which was 3 hours later than local time. It does not seem confusing until you get out of the locomotive at 6 PM railroad time, then go back to the hotel which is operating at 3 PM local time, which you make a call that is actually at 7 pm Maine Time.

Oh but it gets worse...some states and some counties do not recognize daylight savings time, like Arizona does not believe in it, nor do some counties in Indiania...so a person has to factor all that in too if they are located there, and it is during day light savings time...

The railroad did operate on military time though, and to this day I do use that, also called 24 hour time.

China has one timezone. I think they actually span five different zones, but have chosen a single one.

There's a clock in my car that I never change. My primary clock is on my cell phone and it changes automatically.

Time of day doesn't seem to matter as much to people in the Philippines. Many people are on the road when it's still dark outside. Night comes at 6 p.m. or close to it, all year. Social events are planned for the darkness, as a way of avoiding the heat. Rural areas seem to operate much more by the sun.

I have heard conflicting reasons why we change the clocks...

I heard it was because of school kids getting on the bus, then I heard it was because of farmers, and some conspiracy theorists told me it was because it influenced when people shopped...or did not shop...like headed for home when it got dark out.

I have heard a lot, but no one seems to know why we do this silly thing. I am all for doing away with it.

I used to hear that there was some energy savings. That changing the clocks prevented people from using electric lights. I think using some electric light early in the day, can be a very good thing. It means they are out of bed when the Sun is up.

All over the world we have this problem. It's hard to get some people out of bed early, and this means that they waste a good portion of the light, if they are working outside and then they stretch their day using artificial light after it gets dark, or they have to stop. I talked to a farmer on the equator in Kenya, about his time management. He is up before dawn and has his breakfast, because he does all of his open-field work during the early part of the day. Once it gets hot, he works under his trees or by the pond that has shade. His neighbour, who drinks is up, making noise half the night, and then he doesn't get going until the heat of the day.

My younger brother spent half of his life with his days and nights screwed around. He couldn't seem to get going until 11 a.m., because of substance abuse. In the summer this still allowed him to work a reasonably long day, although he started in the heat. In the winter, it would sometimes get dark 4 hours after he finally got going.

I don't know that the government making minor adjustment to clocks could fix this. Perhaps someone could invent a bed that dumps certain people onto the floor at sunrise. Optimally, it would douse them with water and give them a little slap as well. :-)

From all that I've researched, we switch the clocks as an energy saving measure during the war. They wanted everyone to wake up early with the sun, so they'd have more sunlight hours after work and could get more done (and, eventually, buy more things, but I don't think that's the reason we changed it during the war, but it's probably a large reason why we've kept it so long).

But, people don't LIKE to wake up early. And businesses don't want to change their operating hours. There's a stigma to having to be at work at 7:00am rather than 8:00am. There's a stigma to waking up at 5:00am rather than 4:00am. So, to get everyone up earlier, they just changed the clocks.

Now everyone wakes up earlier but feels okay about it because the clock reads a happy number that they like. It's like clothing size. We feel better buying size 8 pants than size 10, and so the clothing sizes have changed over the years to make people feel better about buying their clothes.

Basically, we're stuck with Daylight Savings because people don't want to wake up with the clock reading an earlier hour.

I seldom have to coordinate my work with other people. If I've had a really hard day the day before, I may not start until 10 a.m. . If I wake up at 4 feeling really refreshed, I may get going before dawn. The clock is only referenced if I have to meet someone or I'm going to a place that may be closed.

I know another demolition guy named Syd. He sometimes shows up for work very late in the day with a ragtag crew of sleepy heads. Long after I go home, they are still doing something under electric lights, to the annoyance of the neighbours. Cordless LED lights have been around for a while now. Syd runs a generator and drags cords around while using inefficient drywall lights. In this case, a huge amount of waste could be prevented by getting that business to operate during normal hours.

The article makes a really good point: having it lighter later in the day is not good for human health.  They say that sleep problems are the biggest cause of other health issues now.  Perhaps even more than diet.  These sleep issues are caused by too much light late in the day...

I did the government survey about stoping the switching of the clock.  There were two choices: keep it as it is (switch twice a year) or keep permanent daylight savings.  Having real-time wasn't an option.  The survey was biased.  

The type of light that affects most people's sleep, is the light emitting from the sort of shiny screen that I am currently looking at. You'd have to be pretty young for daylight to interfere with your bedtime.

Dale Hodgins wrote:The type of light that affects most people's sleep, is the light emitting from the sort of shiny screen that I am currently looking at. You'd have to be pretty young for daylight to interfere with your bedtime.

The article mentions that it's the bright light in the morning, like the light from the sun, that resets our clock and makes sleeping later easier...

.... of course, they didn't do their research in Victoria where winter generally comes with such heavy cloud cover that it's not easy to tell the difference between daylight and the city reflecting off the clouds.

But that said, as a farmer (and I'm so glad they stopped blaming farmers for daylight savings), I would rather have the chickens go to bed at 10:50 in midsummer than 11:50.  I haven't figured out how to get the little watches to stay on the chicken legs so they still tell time by the sun instead of the clock.

Wow - 4 years have gone by and this discussion is still so relevant today - yep, adjust your clocks everyone!

What bugs me - when I was just starting school, we had a kitchen clock, my parents had an alarm clock, and my parents each had wrist watches. That was for a family of 5.

Now, to even try to list all the clocks we've got would be nearly impossible - this computer I'm typing on, the cell phone I'm expected to carry, our car, our stove, the ornamental chicken clock my sister gave me, the carabiner watch hooked to my farm pants... those are just the tip of the iceberg!



Enjoy changing all your clocks everyone!

Jay Angler wrote:Now, to even try to list all the clocks we've got would be nearly impossible - this computer I'm typing on, the cell phone I'm expected to carry, our car, our stove, the ornamental chicken clock my sister gave me, the carabiner watch hooked to my farm pants... those are just the tip of the iceberg!

Fortunately, pretty much all internet-connected computers (computers/phones/tablets/etc) adjust on their own.  

Since I'm retired, I've missed DST more than once and only noticed when the light outside doesn't match my phone time or I notice the difference between my nightstand clock and my PC/phone.  My chickens don't care about the change in time, only that I let them out to free range when it is light out.

When my children were small they used to wake up between 5 and 5.30 am. When the clocks changed to Greenwich meantime in October that year, I thought: "Great, they'll be getting up at a sensible time now." To my disappointment it only took them 3 days to acclimatise, even though I changed their bedtime by just 10 minutes a night. Ah well, I consoled myself, at least when they're teenagers they'll sleep in on a morning but they never did and even though they're well grown up now they are still considered early risers.

This says it all...

These say a little more, lol!

Cujo Liva wrote:

Jay Angler wrote:Now, to even try to list all the clocks we've got would be nearly impossible - this computer I'm typing on, the cell phone I'm expected to carry, our car, our stove, the ornamental chicken clock my sister gave me, the carabiner watch hooked to my farm pants... those are just the tip of the iceberg!

Fortunately, pretty much all internet-connected computers (computers/phones/tablets/etc) adjust on their own.

A bunch of non-internet connected things will also automatically adjust. My alarm clock and wall clocks have WWVB receivers in them so they automatically adjust to daylight savings time, automatically reset themselves after power outages, and are never fast or slow.

As a night owl by nature (it is a genetic and immutable characteristic, so Early Birds who love to boast about being that way can also brag about their eye color with similar pride), I think I get more benefit from falling back than springing forward. I get up when the sun tells me its too damn late to be sleeping, and I have an hour less of Early Bird imposed guilt (similar to going to Catholic primary school as an agnostic). I take solace in how Night Owls are much better companions for evening parties, board games and movie watching.

The whole system does seem to make Seasonal Affective Disorder much worse though. Most people, especially the depressed, are not going to get up earlier to get some sunshine before work in the winter, and therefore will get very little natural light, and get more depressed. I am fortunate to work for myself, mostly outside, and can take days off to enjoy hiking in nice weather in the winter.

While I generally agree with Benjamin Franklin, who came up with the idea to save candles and their inefficient cost to light productivity (more time is spent making a candle than the light it produces), I would scrap DST altogether and keep noon as the solar apex. But then what would happen to the poor BBQ and fossil fuel corporations that are the main lobbies for DST? I remember hearing (maybe on NPR’s Planet Money?) that people drive and grill more when its light later, making those industries a few percent more profit.

It is pretty funny and baffling to me that most people I’ve talked to who want to scrap the clock change actually want to just keep DST year round. It seems akin to putting all one’s junk food on shelves out of reach without a ladder, trusting my laziness will balance out my desire for a late night snack. But if I haven’t figured out that I am the weird one yet, I have not been paying much attention.

Daylight saving time is really hard at our house because pets don't understand about time change.

Dogs and cats still want to eat at their regular time.

And with the cat, it is her time to come in to spend the night which has to be coordinated with taking the dog out for the last time.

I propose a compromise:
Permanently change time to a half hour ahead of real Tim.
The pro time change people will get half of what they want.
The anti will only get half the misery….

For goodness sake folks... daylight saving time is SINGULAR... that means there's no S on Saving!!!@

This week because I'm a weirdo, I'm celebrating time keeping silliness by experimenting with keeping "medieval monk time"

Which means for me, at my location, I have 12 hours of daylight... because there are always 12 hours of daylight... and right now, they're about 50 minutes long.

The time is neigh

Thanks for the reminder.

Dogs and cats still want to eat at their regular time.

If we can't ditch this for good because people can't decide whether to stick with Standard time year round or DST year round, it's no wonder we haven't managed to do the important stuff like cure cancer or have world peace!

I'm so... done with the change business - like Anne says, the animals will want what they want based on the sun, not some artificial human construct!

Yes indeed Anne and Jay, and this time change thing is a distraction from far more important issues

To speak freely about the predicaments humanity (and the rest of the biosphere!) faces, I am not sure I could even be acceptable in the cider press!

I may be an outlier, but I really do have a problem with the time change ….or not.

John F Dean wrote:I may be an outlier, but I really do have a problem with the time change ….or not.

You may not be an outlier, John.  I can’t say whether or not this is factual, but I have heard that the death rate goes up the week after the “spring ahead” date.

I don’t know how I would research the veracity, but it sounds “right”.

And so yikes and warnings to us all!  High mortality approaches, unless we, like the animals can stay with our routine.

Which makes me wonder:  does the southern hemisphere have daylight savings?  Does southern hemisphere fall back as northern springs ahead?

What about the tropics?  Just how extensive has this weirdness extended?

What happens at the equator when the times change ( in northern and southern hemispheres?)

I wish we were on daylight savings time all year long!  That way it would never get dark before 5:30pm (currently in Dec. on standard time it gets dark at 4:30pm and its awful.)  And if we switched to perminent standard time it would get dark in June at 9pm instead of 10pm and I'd dislike it mightily because those 10pm twilights are exquisite.

So I want perminent daylight savings time.  I know some people disagree though.  I have big feelings about it.

I despise DST. When it stays light out until 10pm, my chickens won't roost until then, and my ducks won't bed down until then, meaning I have to be outside doing chores until *after* then, when I REALLY need to be inside then, taking care of other things. It totally screws up everything on my farm, and in my life.

Riona Abhainn wrote:
So I want perminent daylight savings time.  I know some people disagree though.  I have big feelings about it.

Permanent daylight savings time = standard time one zone east. There Is no effect on day length. The semi-annual shift forces a shift in sleep and awake times, with well-known negative consequences. If you want light later in your day, you can shift your awake time to start an hour earlier. But for most people, starting the day in the dark is unpleasant at best, and that would happen far more and more often, especially at northern latitudes in the winter, if the time zone is shifted eastward.