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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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You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here.
(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.