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posted by
martyb
on Saturday April 06 2019, @05:11PM
from the Everybody-Talks-About-It,-And-Finally-Somebody-Is-Doing-Something-About-It dept.
from the Everybody-Talks-About-It,-And-Finally-Somebody-Is-Doing-Something-About-It dept.
The Oregon Senate has passed a bill establishing permanent Daylight Saving Time in the state, and the Governor has signaled she supports the effort. If it passes the House (and possibly the US Congress, it is a bit ambiguous to me), it could end the semi-annual resetting of clocks which causes so much annoyance and increase of injury and deaths.
Personally speaking, I'd rather it settled on permanent Standard time than Daylight time, but as long as it is steady I think it's better than the current regime.
See also:
Texas efforts: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/03/05/1413228
Europe's efforts: http://fortune.com/2019/03/26/european-union-parliament-daylight-saving-time/
Mandatory XKCD: https://www.xkcd.com/1268/
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Oregon Senate Passes Bill for Permanent Daylight Saving Time
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Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.
-- Neil Armstrong
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RandomFactor on Saturday April 06 2019, @05:13PM (16 children)
This. I could care less where they set it. Just quit screwing with it twice a year.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 4, Touché) by maxwell demon on Saturday April 06 2019, @06:50PM (1 child)
So you do care?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Funny) by RandomFactor on Saturday April 06 2019, @08:32PM
I feel like I stumbled on someone's pet, his collar says Peeve.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 06 2019, @07:22PM (13 children)
I care. I want the sun to be as high in the sky as it is going to get at "noon". And, I want "mid night" to come twelve hours later. Anything else is artificial bullshit.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @07:36PM
Fortunately, most of the rest of us can use a watch.
But feel free to live your true life as a caveman.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @07:53PM (1 child)
The concept of "noon" made sense in the days when the primary source of light was the sun. It mattered to people when it was light, obviously. Noon was great because it was easy to define: when the shadows were shortest. Move the sundial to make that moment "noon", and there you go.
Now we have the artificial bullshit that is light bulbs. We can run our society independent of when the sun is in the sky. That doesn't mean we shouldn't take into account other things like sleep cycles, and accident rates, etc. But when the sun is at the top of the sky simply doesn't matter much anymore to most people, except to the astronomers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @09:15PM
Also having month before day made sense when you mostly had farmers, because a day was not that important. But now, it's just retarted.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @08:16PM (7 children)
You realize that your "noon" and "midnight" definitions could only happen twice a year, right? But, if it will keep you inside for the rest of the time I'll write each of my representatives a letter every day until it happens.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by RS3 on Saturday April 06 2019, @10:58PM (4 children)
Didn't think this one through, did you. You're a springtrap ready to snap your petty insults. What's that old saying? “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out (or write online) and remove all doubt.”
As the length of daylight time changes throughout the year, the sunrise and sunset times stay pretty much symmetrical around noon. The sun appears lower in the sky in winter, but its peak is still "noon", 1/2 way between sunrise and sunset. All year long, every day. There's a slight variation for a couple of weeks around the solstices, but it's only a few minutes.
Why don't you write your representatives and ask them to find you something productive to do.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @11:08PM (2 children)
Fear not comrade. He will be assigned appropriate work in the mines, come the revolution.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday April 06 2019, @11:37PM (1 child)
He's already living lower down, so it might be a upgrade. But he's sleazy enough to get work in the gold or diamond mines and smuggle some out. He'll jamb nuggets and diamonds in his sores. Nobody will want to look there.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @09:53PM
Lol look at the hypocrite! You gotta be an alt of Runaway's, keep chiming in when people correct him. Sure they are nitpicky but not wrong, which makes you a triggered jackass.
About what I expect from conservative engineers, self important "geniuses" who get upset easily. Mega MAGA if you will.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Sunday April 07 2019, @02:34AM
If this is you definition for noon (which is called the solar noon [wikipedia.org]), you are willing to accept that the time between two successive noons (the solar noon day) will vary through the year - see? the Earth orbit is elliptical.
Even more, there will be only one longitude that will see an exact 24h solar noonday (and the antimeridian will experience an exact 24 solar midnight day). And this longitude will vary from one year to the other - the year not being an exact multiple of days.
There are 4 days in a year when one solar noon day is the closest to 24 h: 11 Feb, 13 May, 25 Jul and 3 Nov.
There are 2 days when the solar noon day is the longest: around 20 Jun with 13s longer, and 21 Dec with 30s longer.
There are 2 days when the solar noon day is the shortest: around 25 Mar - 18s shorter - and 13 Sep is 22s shorter.
Ummm... you were saying... "Better ..." what?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday April 07 2019, @02:47AM (1 child)
It will actually happen 4 times [wikipedia.org] somewhere around the globe (there are 4 moments when there exist places on earth experiencing an exact 24 h solar noon day).
In a given particular location, it may not happen in a life-time - the solar year is not an exact multiple of solar days - the longitude where those 4 exact times happen will "wander" slowly across the globe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @09:56PM
But it will happen only 2 times where Runaway lives. If you read the rest of my comment, keeping him inside the other days of the year was the objective.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday April 07 2019, @06:55PM
Not doing daylight saving time won't make that happen. Only elimination of time zones and having clocks vary by several minutes from one side of a city to the other will achieve your preference.
Of course, a lot of people would just guesstimate or set their clock to whatever the TV or radio stations says (even though that would be off by a few minutes).
There would be some benefits, of course. Bosses and others who blow their stack as soon as the second hand ticks past the appointed time would either have to stop or stroke out and leave reasonable people alone.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday April 08 2019, @01:19PM
That would require variable length time increments. A day is not exactly 24 hours, and it is not the exact same length all year round. It would also require eliminating timezones, and make things like keeping clocks in sync pretty difficult (which would REALLY screw with crypto), so we'd basically have to use UTC for everything internally and then auto-update the offset based on GPS coordinates, assuming the device has a GPS receiver...and without GPS or at least cellular radios to set the location your clocks would basically never be correct....and if you drove a hundred miles east or west you'd have to reset your clocks...that sounds *awful*. We're trying to get rid of arbitrary time changes here, not add infinitely more of them!
It would be a hell of a lot easier to just flip the whole world to UTC and forget about this whole obsession of syncing clocks with orbits....does it REALLY matter if you work 9-17 or 23-7 if the difference is just the numbers on the clock?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bob_super on Saturday April 06 2019, @05:35PM (18 children)
Settling on Summer time makes sense to me, because of the example of Western Europe, where most countries are at GMT+1 in winter and GMT+2 in summer, rather than the GMT they would geographically belong to.
Being at +2 feels great in summer (really late evening sun, especially with the higher latitude), but you can't really be at +2 in winter if you're near the west end of your time zone, because you'll see the sun rise at 10AM.
So settling at +1 permanently makes sense.
I am glad Oregon is pushing for PST+=1, because that should help the rest of the West coast choose the same offset.
(all this is absurd, obviously, because we could choose TAI, GMT, GMT+7.358, or GMT-Pi^2, and just adjust our freaking schedules to have appointments at 15:27:56Z ... but humans are pretty absurd creatures of habit)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday April 06 2019, @06:27PM (5 children)
Can't they just call it "Mountain Standard Time"? I believe that is the time zone they are switching to. That time zone should all the way to the coast now anyway. And Eastern Time should extend to the Mississippi River. And the thirteen colonies northward should switch to Atlantic Time.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 06 2019, @07:19PM (4 children)
Should, sure... now, convince 200 million people to agree - on anything, really, much less something they have to do twice a year that affects when they roll out of bed and how late the sun stays up after work.
How about we eliminate DST and demand flexible work and school hours, so we can change when we go to work in the morning and come home in the afternoon? This B.S. of having the roads jammed to a standstill from 7am through 9am, and virtually empty until 4pm through 6pm is an utter waste of resources. If "work" had core hours from 10am until 3pm, Tuesday through Thursday, and people could put in their weekly 40 as they choose around those, not only would they work happier and more productive, they'd also have 50% of their working time not peppered with meetings.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @07:24PM
Depends on the job, of course. Most places I've worked, are flexible a few hours either way.
I've just casually come in at 5am or 11am, whatever feels best, and worked my 8.
But my job isn't 'public facing'. You're in a different bind if you're serving the public.... eg, if the store is only open 9 to 6.
The other problem is, lots of folks want to be home to see their kids. That means, they want to leave work close to when school is out.... so for this sort, you can shift a bit, but...
And lastly, the social aspect. People want weekends off, because friends have weekends off. They want nights off, because friends have them off....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @08:36PM (2 children)
now, convince 200 million people to agree - on anything
What's the other 127 million, chopped liver?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday April 07 2019, @03:04AM
Lemme guess: not at the voting age or in prisons? (large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @09:59PM
Ineligible to vote. Perhaps not a citizen, or of voting age, or registered to vote, or lost their right to vote due to a conviction. There are probably a few other possibilities as well.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 06 2019, @07:03PM (6 children)
This. It's bad enough at the end of summer when the sun is rising around 7:15AM here - if we continue DST throughout winter, we'll be arriving at the office at 8:30AM IN THE DARK. Bad for the biological clock, bad for accident rates, bad for actual productivity at work, but the restaurants and shops love it, so guess what we'll be getting?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @08:18PM
Meh. I work from home so ya'll can fight this out. I'll work when and if I want to, TYVM.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Saturday April 06 2019, @08:19PM (2 children)
> we'll be arriving at the office at 8:30AM IN THE DARK
Well ... It's a matter of choice. When the actual day is shorter than 9 hours (Seattle will see that more than San Diego), most people will either arrive or leave in the dark.
Do you feel safer driving in the dark surrounded with sleepy people, or tired people ?
I personally prefer to leave the office when there still is some sun. Others are allowed a different opinion.
Of course, once again, humans are truly the dumbest species.
Most of us could work when it's dark, and get enjoy the whole day's worth of sun (except for those needing lots of sleep).
We're also stupid enough to have decided to work as long in winter as we do in summer, when a shorter winter work day would be better for those allergic to driving in the dark, and a shorter summer work day would be better for those living where that's the only time to enjoy the outdoors (they'd work longer in winter when being outside is really bad).
TL; DR. Our whole time management sucks.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 06 2019, @10:53PM
Funny thing: our company has "summer hours" to accommodate time off with family when the kids are out of school. The theory goes: you work 9x4 + 4, so half-day on Fridays in the summer - and it sort of takes advantage of the longer summer days, too.
In practice, the exempts often work from home anyway, and the whole concept of 40 per week is a pretty loose thing - if every moment spent on company endeavors were accounted for, some weeks run 60+. If every coffee break, offsite lunch, social meeting, and water-cooler break were accounted for, most weeks run 25-, especially among those who do not work from home most of the time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday April 07 2019, @01:14AM
I don't think that's actually true. You do need to sleep sometime. Maybe you could work when it's dark and enjoy the whole day during short days in winter at higher latitudes, but most people need 7-8 hours of sleep at some point to function well.
Also, not aligning your sleep schedule roughly to sunlight really screws with most people, even despite the amount of artificial light we now have. For years I tended toward unstable sleep schedules (I'm naturally a bit of a "night owl" and will tend to drift toward late nights and getting up mid-morning), because flexible work schedules sometimes allowed it. And it made me feel awful. Eventually, I returned to a pretty standard time of getting up around sunrise or a little later most mornings, and I felt a lot better. For a year at another point, I drifted back toward instability with shifting schedules, and again, I felt awful, gained weight, didn't do well despite feeling like I could sleep when I wanted. I stopped that again and have been on a regular schedule for some years...
Obviously everyone is different, but studies show those who work night shifts tend to have a lot more sleep disorders. My mother worked night shifts for many years, and then she tried to be awake to spend time with her family during the day, and it eventually completed destroyed her body's sleep clock. Now she's been retired for quite a few years, and she is miserable most nights -- falling asleep at odd hours, getting up at odd hours, sometimes suffering from insomnia, sometimes needing to lie down early.
So, no, I really don't think most humans would be happy doing what you suggest. I did have a friend years ago with an early-bird type of sleep disorder, where she always awoke around 2am and wanted to do work right away. And she had a job that allowed her to work at home or mostly adopt the schedule she wanted, so she'd work during the night and be done by late morning every day.
For someone like her, maybe your plan would work. Except she was always exhausted by mid-afternoon, and never had a social life because even eating dinner with friends was often past her bedtime. There's no optimal solution.
(Score: 1) by sorpigal on Sunday April 07 2019, @11:08AM (1 child)
Nonsense. Once the clocks stop changing why would you slavishly stick to a clock time that makes no sense? Step 1: Adopt UTC as your zone. Step 2: Pick a local time in terms of daylight that it makes sense to open your business, find the related hour, and declare that as your open time. Who cares if the *clock* says 10AM or 4PM, or whatever? That's just a time passage tracking mechanism; it has nothing to do with the position of the sun.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday April 07 2019, @01:56PM
Social conformity. Conservative management who places value on presenteeism, seeing bright cleanly shaven faces in their desks with colorful neckties at 8am every day.
The old guard are retiring now, and the norms are changing to something that seems more rational to my (born in the 60s) generation now, but there are holdouts, younger management types who climbed the ladder by internalizing the values of their bosses. It seems especially hard to break the old norms with immigrant workers - they may not be able to speak/understand the language as well, some of them may struggle with the technical aspects of the work, but they all seem to highly value that which they can do as well as anyone: showing up on schedule.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Saturday April 06 2019, @11:23PM (4 children)
I like where you're going. Too bad we divvied up the day into 24 hours. Time for metric time! There has been thought that way, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_time [wikipedia.org] but I'm not so sure about that.
I say: 100 time zones, using 100 Mours per day. A mour would be 14.4 current minutes. 10 decimours per mour would give 1.44 minutes per decimour (86.4 seconds). 10 centimours per decimour would be 8.64 seconds per centimour, and the millimour (also called "mecond") would be 0.864 seconds.
It'll cause chaos and confusion, give people lots to do, and in 100 years they'll thank us.
And I'm not sure if I'm serious or not. 50 time zones would be ideal, but not as metric...
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:07AM (1 child)
I like the idea of metric time, but changing the length of the second would be a major pain. How about we slow the rotation of the planet until your idea of metric time fits with a standard second?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday April 07 2019, @05:44AM
Earth is slowing- I'll just wait it out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @03:11AM (1 child)
With a few backwater countries still measuring the distances in miles, sizes in inches and feet, temperature in Fahrenheit a.s.o. I fear your proposal will go the way of the dodo.
Next one, are you going to propose measuring the angles in radians?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday April 07 2019, @05:22AM
Gradians.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @06:54PM (5 children)
Permanent DST? Not bad. But I've found that ignoring the time altogether is even better. For a couple of months I've done an experiment whereby I've slept and woke when I felt like it. As a result I've counted two fewer "days" than what the calendar shows, insomnia is a thing of the past, I wake up feeling mostly alive rather than entirely zombie-like, and spend less time in bed overall. The only problem is that there is no correlation between my schedule and the outside world. (whatever, the outside world sucks anyway)
(Score: 2) by NPC-131072 on Saturday April 06 2019, @07:19PM (1 child)
Keep fighting brother. Time is a white supremacist construct. [thenewamerican.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @11:10PM
The whites will conquer you. Again. After all, it is their time.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @11:23PM (1 child)
I tried this a long time ago and noticed my body went on a 25 hr schedule. I would go to bed an hour later every night and sleep a normal 7 to 8 hrs. Was one of the most productive periods in my life.
(Score: 1) by sorpigal on Sunday April 07 2019, @11:11AM
Sounds like you would make a good Martian: the day is about 40 minutes longer there.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday April 06 2019, @11:28PM
I agree 100%. It seems intuitively obvious to me. And much of the employment I've held has had strict work schedules, even though there is no good reason to force me to be on a schedule. Moreover, studies have shown people to be way more productive, far fewer mistakes, and much happier and healthier when allowed to sleep and wake based on their body's needs.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Codesmith on Saturday April 06 2019, @06:56PM (8 children)
I 'm really not sure this is the best solution.
Here's a sunrise/sunset graph set to the new time.
https://ptaff.ca/soleil/?l1pays=USA&l1etat=Oregon&l2pays=&l2etat=&l1cityname=Portland,+Oregon,+USA&l1ltd=45&l1ltm=31&l1lts=5&l1ltx=N&l1lgd=122&l1lgm=40&l1lgs=33&l1lgx=W&l1tz=-7.0&l1dst=&l2cityname=&l2ltd=&l2ltm=&l2lts=&l2ltx=N&l2lgd=&l2lgm=&l2lgs=&l2lgx=E&l2tz=0.0&l2dst=&year=2019&month=04&day=06&lang=en_CA&go=Show+the+graph! [ptaff.ca]
Changing time twice a year can be a pain, sure, but this will now have kids heading to school in the dark. I just looked up bus scheduling for school kids in Medford (Abraham Lincon Elementary School) and they start their pickups at ~07:00. That's going to be quite dark for November through the end of February. My kids have been out of school for many a year now, but I'm not sure that I'd be happy with them walking/busing to schools 1 to 2 hours before sunrise.
Switching to permanent standard time would pretty much resolve this, but summer evenings would hit sunset at 20:00.
Such is life in the mid-high latitudes
Pro utilitate hominum.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 06 2019, @07:13PM (7 children)
Our school bus pickup is at 5:50AM, so it's either dark, or really really dark, depending on the time of year.
It has been shown that kids don't actually learn anything when you throw them out of bed in the dark and sit them down at a desk, but school isn't really about learning, is it?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Codesmith on Saturday April 06 2019, @07:26PM (3 children)
As a educator (of sorts) decended from educators, school, especially elementary school is primarily about socialization. Basic educational processes are good to teach as well, but if you want lifelong learners, you have to let them learn to interact, then learn to learn.
My father was a counsellor in the secondary system with a core focus on managing intake and in-school operations and he felt that as long as you had Grade 8s entering the school who could: work with peers, read, write enough to be understood, perform the basic math skills and above all, enjoy learning new things, they would be successful students and then successful adults.
Success is not measured by academic performance for all, success is finding a niche you fit into and enjoy.
And yes, starting any schooling before 09:00 is a waste of everybodies time, but school operations are managed like businesses. That is the biggest problem.
Pro utilitate hominum.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday April 06 2019, @09:45PM (1 child)
That's nice. But when are they going to learn to interact with people outside their narrow cohort aside from a few teachers and parents? One thing about working a job under an employer is you get exposure to very different people, particularly in public-facing jobs.
A huge problem with school is that it is socially isolated - it is rare to interact with students more than two years away from you (I rarely did except in some summer programs) much less the general public. And there's this growing movement towards young adults avoiding employment (and the non profit equivalents) which means some people have avoided exposure to society for more than two decades by the time they get out of college.
I guess my complaint here is that when all else fails, public education advocates resort to socialization as the excuse for having public schools with the rigid conditions they have. All I can say, is that if socialization is your primary educational product, and as with most schools, students haven't interacted with people far outside their age cohort through to graduation, then there's something wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @03:14AM
Yeah, because everybody needs a master.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:22AM
While running schools like businesses may be a problem, I really don't think it's the main reason for early morning school. Starting school before 9am definitely makes sense because anyone with a small child likely knows that little kids (on average) tend to rise early with the sun -- assuming, of course, that they don't stay up late watching screens.
What's stupid in many schools is that limited numbers of buses mean they have to run at different times for different levels, and the stupid part of that is that teenagers in high school often end up being the ones picked up at 6am (despite the copious evidence showing adolescents tend to have late sleep schedules on average), while the little kids who have been bouncing of their parents' beds since 6am don't get picked up until a couple hours later.
Swap those, and you'd actually have a schedule that makes a little sense. But most schools don't do it... And you know why? No, it has little to do with running as a "business." It's because of sports, which generally influence way too may decisions about education.
Seriously, ask a high school principal some time why you can't start school later. I've taught in such schools, and I have asked. It's because after-school sports meets often already pull kids out of afternoon classes a bit early -- so postpone start time by an hour or two, and sports kids would miss half a school day.
It's really disturbing how much sports influences money spent on education, how schools are run, what their schedules are, etc. in the U.S. You want to fix school schedules? Start by asking what the priorities are....
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday April 06 2019, @11:34PM (1 child)
5:50AM? Wow that's INSANE!! Fortunately I've been reading serious sane talk about opening schools 1 hour later- mainly because kids aren't getting enough sleep, therefore not learning. And it would obviate the need for the stupid clock changes.
Years ago I also read somewhere that most juvenile crime is committed between 3 and 6 PM- after school, and before parents get home. So letting school start later and get out later would be a win-win.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday April 07 2019, @02:14AM
Our county runs double shifts with the buses - High School starts at 7, if you're on a long route you get picked up before 6 - then those same buses go back out and pick up Middle School kids so they can start at 9-9:30.
It's the same kind of cost cutting thinking that starts lunch at 10:30 for some kids, rolling through 1:00pm for others, just so you can have one tiny cafeteria serve 3000 kids on a mega-campus.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08 2019, @07:57PM
It's also shown that going to bed earlier results in more sleep and less impact of getting up "early" the next day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @07:05PM (1 child)
FYI here is the sunrise data for Portland Oregon:
Winter solstice: Sunrise: 7:47 AM PST, Sunset: 4:29 PM PST, Duration: 8:42
Summer Solstice: Sunrise: 5:21 AM PDT, Sunset: 9:03 PM PDT, Duration: 15:41
So, under DST all year long, the sun won't rise until 8:47 in the morning and set until 5:30.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday April 06 2019, @11:38PM
So kids get extra daylight after school. Great.
(Score: 1) by liberza on Saturday April 06 2019, @07:15PM (8 children)
Get rid of all timezones and everyone just use UTC
(Score: 2) by Codesmith on Saturday April 06 2019, @07:28PM (3 children)
Why not have every locale use local solar time?
Seriously, with the prevalence of computing devices (and smartphones) we could easily allow every location to have their own solar noon.
Pro utilitate hominum.
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Saturday April 06 2019, @08:04PM (1 child)
I'm fairly certain people don't actually care about where the sun is at noon, but rather where it is when they start or end work.
The problem then becomes everyone not starting and ending work at the same time anyway.
I propose that there is no solution to what timezone to use as long as everyone has a different schedule they have/want to keep.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:14AM
Before time zones, 12 Noon as when the sun reached it peak, Some towns has a small connon fire at noon, by using a magitfier and placing it correctly over the fuse / black power.
This method worked well until, the railroad came town. Yup, the railroad. Using single tracks between towns means both ends need to know that a train is schedule. If each town had a different clock east and west, there was no safe way to determie the tracks were clear. Also cost a lot of of local schedules. :)
The railroad got together in Chicago to settle on time zones to sequencize the clocks. Made running a railroad cheaper.
Now it is say that good old Ben Franklin also proposed daylight saving time. But agian this before time zones, it would have just changed when 12 noon was locally giving more "usable" hours.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday April 08 2019, @02:23PM
So your laptop and router have built-in GPS or cellular receivers? Because personally I still have TONS of computing devices which have no method to get their current location accurately enough for that. And I don't particularly want them to either...
There's also the issue of making having some kind of computer mandatory for just knowing the time in a nearby city. That's downright absurd.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @08:21PM (1 child)
Fuck that. I'd have to reset the time on my microwave and my coffee maker. Not.gonna.happen.
(Score: 1) by sorpigal on Sunday April 07 2019, @11:17AM
Yeah but you'd only have to do it *once* and then never again (and new devices would come pre-configured with the right zone).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @09:20PM (1 child)
Why even use numbers. Just make rename every hour like " ( FU C K T H i S Sh it !
(Score: 1) by sorpigal on Sunday April 07 2019, @11:23AM
It's useful to be able to track time intervals within a day "A 1 hour meeting starting at 11 ends at 12, so I can plan lunch for 12:15 and start my next activity by 13:00". Having these numbers linked to the position of the sun is not essential; if I changed my position on the planet, kept the same zone, and offset all the numbers by (say) 6, then I would have the same daylight as someone in Greenwich but I'd use different numbers. It would be weird at first but you'd quickly grow used to e.g. "noon" being at 06:00 on the clock. As a bonus coordinating with the London office would get easier because nobody would need to do date conversion math when setting up conference calls.
</serious-answers-to-joke-questions>
Cue jokes about "one hour" meetings never actually lasting that little time.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday April 06 2019, @09:16PM (2 children)
Since I live at a latitude that causes the length of day to vary with the seasons, having the sun set much, much later in the summer (when the weather is nice and warm) is a boon to me.
During the winter, I don't care very much as it's cold and I engage in less outdoor activity.
Then again, it's all about what you're used to. When I've visited places near the equator, I always found the roughly equal day/night cycle a little disconcerting for the first couple days.
I don't live in Oregon. As such, I don't care. If that's what Oregonians want, then more power to 'em.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:17AM (1 child)
you may be the happiest if you move above the Arctic Circle and vacation in the Winter months to below the Antarctic Cricle.. very long day light hours.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday April 07 2019, @01:12AM
Wow! I never thought of that. You're a genius!
Gotta go! Need to start packing.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:31AM
I don't care which time they choose, just quit changing the fucking clocks twice a year. That is stupid.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:56AM (1 child)
From TFS:
Okay, let's have some straight talk here. I know the standard nerd perspective on all this is that DST is silly. And I somewhat agree. That said, everybody on both sides of this issue exaggerates the claims in their favor.
For a moment, let me play devil's advocate, because I think many people don't think this stuff through.
First, "increase of injury and deaths" sounds dire. And yes, I've seen the studies that show increased traffic accidents, etc. during the week or so of adjustment. BUT, I've never seen a study comparing those (relatively minor) increases to the effect of a permanent DST as proposed here, which basically means a huge number of people are driving to work in the dark and schoolchildren are riding their bus in the dark, etc. What's the bigger effect -- a week of grogginess while people adjust, or several months of darkness where people without their coffee have to navigate traffic? I know where I'd place my bet.
You know, we did try this before. Back in the early 1970s during the Energy Crisis, there was permanent DST over the winter at least one year. And traffic casualties went up. More importantly, I'm pretty sure the reason it was halted because there were significantly more schoolchildren fatalities as kids were walking to school and walking to bus stops in the dark, and they got hit. (Yes, I know several comments point out kids already do this at times -- but with permanent DST, even more will do it and for longer parts of the year.)
I'm not saying this is a fatal flaw (no pun intended) in the argument for permanent DST, but let's not pretend that the week of grogginess during transition is just going to magically disappear with no other potential impact of shifting to permanent DST.
So some might then propose standard time all year, and I don't have a major issue with that, though it does end up wasting a lot of good summer daylight recreational time in the evenings for a lot of people. I do have a major beef with those who argue that every business and organization should just adjust as they wish for the summer hours. Yes, some businesses already do it.
But take a moment and imagine the problems that begin to ensue if you don't move to DST for summer. One of the major driving recreational forces in the U.S. is sports. Kids play lots of sports. Stop DST, and sports games lose an hour for play after school. Now, you might say -- "Schools could just shift their schedules by an hour if they wanted!" And same for businesses, etc.
But then you run into parents whose work doesn't change for summer hours, but their kids schedules change for summer sports... and that mismatch creates numerous scheduling problems. And if businesses actually took the advice that some people have and adopt summer hours if they want, now a parent has to remember -- does the bank observe summer hours, but the dry cleaner doesn't, and oh, Timmy's soccer game is now effectively an hour earlier, and I can't get out of work because I have a meeting scheduled during out normal "don't change for summer" hours.
I'm not trying to exaggerate these problems, which will be worked out in the real world. I'm pointing out that permanent DST is stupid and potentially will be more dangerous than the limited transition effects all the DST haters complain about. And those who blithely just say, "If you really want to make use of summer evening time, your company or school or whatever can just shift its hours" tend to underestimate the complexities that could introduce. Right now, we have a coordinated shift that allows most people to get extra daylight time in the evening for recreation in the summer. And I, for one, appreciate that. But I also don't hate switching my clocks enough to have to drive to work in the dark for several months.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday April 07 2019, @07:27PM
There was certainly a lot of hand wringing and pearl clutching about it, but I have never seen any statistics to back that up. Further, in Oregon, many kids go to school in the dark with or without DST. Somehow standard time darkness is less dangerous than daylight saving darkness??!?
Do clocks set ahead emit 'darkons'? If we collect the darkons, can we achieve a negative energy density high enough to make warp drive work? ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08 2019, @06:22AM
'nuff said.