DST (2018)

[webny99]

I cut it fantastically close by waking up at 1pm, leaving the house by 1:50pm, and arriving at work at 2:30, and that's about the best I can do.

Yikes. I guess I'm more efficient than I thought. I've awoken at 7:00 and made it to work by 7:30 or shortly thereafter*. Generally speaking, though, I like to be up by 6:00 and on the road by 6:30, which isn't infeasible, considering I'm not a real breakfast person and prefer buying something on the way in rather than killing time at home eating.

*This involved an extraordinary (and probably borderline unsafe) amount of speeding, and my commute is only eleven miles.

[kkt]

My alarm goes off at 6:15 AM.  I get out of bed at 6:35.  Shower, sunscreen, roust the young person, dress, tea, breakfast, roust the young person again, brush teeth, collect apple for snack, put on jacket and shoes, share with young person plans for afternoon and evening, out the door about 8:10, arrive at work at 8:25.  Doesn't sound very efficient, I guess.  Work 8:30-5:30 with an hour for lunch.

[kphoger]

If you're working a 40 hour work week, 9 - 5 is technically illegal.  That's 8 hours a day.  Federal and State Laws require at least a 30 minute lunch period.

Even if you don't actually take a lunch, they're required to schedule it.

This is not true.  There is no federal law stipulating any break time.  Under federal law, your company could work you 24/7 if they wanted to, as long as they (a) paid you overtime and (b) paid you for any paid breaks they had already promised you of their own volition (that is, if they offer paid breaks and then refuse to pay you for one of those breaks, then they're in violation of the law).  Most states also have no laws on the books about lunch breaks; Kansas is one of those states.  Some other states (Illinois, perhaps, I can't remember offhand) require a scheduled break for government employees but not private sector workers.  A few out there actually require it for everybody, but those states are the clear minority.

[tradephoric]

State bill proposes Daylight Saving Time in Tennessee...all the time
http://www.wrcbtv.com/story/37373059/state-bill-proposes-daylight-saving-time-in-tennesseeall-the-time

This article seems to contradict itself about 4 times.  The headline says a state bill proposes DST in Tennessee... all the time.  Then it says Tennessee would join Hawaii and most of Arizona as states that would remain on Daylight Saving Time throughout the year (even though Hawaii and Arizona remain on Standard Time throughout the year).  Then it says a state lawmaker has introduced a bill to exempt Tennessee from Daylight Saving Time.  Then that same state lawmaker, Rick Tillis, states "I've done a couple of polls and both have run right around 89 percent to stop changing the clocks, stay on Daylight Saving Time year-round".   

I'm so confused what Tennessee is planning now.  Are people from Tennessee just meant to be confusing people meant to confuse us? 

[kalvado]

State bill proposes Daylight Saving Time in Tennessee...all the time
http://www.wrcbtv.com/story/37373059/state-bill-proposes-daylight-saving-time-in-tennesseeall-the-time

This article seems to contradict itself about 4 times.  The headline says a state bill proposes DST in Tennessee... all the time.  Then it says Tennessee would join Hawaii and most of Arizona as states that would remain on Daylight Saving Time throughout the year (even though Hawaii and Arizona remain on Standard Time throughout the year).  Then it says a state lawmaker has introduced a bill to exempt Tennessee from Daylight Saving Time.  Then that same state lawmaker, Rick Tillis, states "I've done a couple of polls and both have run right around 89 percent to stop changing the clocks, stay on Daylight Saving Time year-round".   

I'm so confused what Tennessee is planning now.  Are people from Tennessee just meant to be confusing people meant to confuse us?

http://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default.aspx?BillNumber=HB1881
http://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default.aspx?BillNumber=SB1849
" As introduced, establishes daylight savings time as the standard time in Tennessee. "

[MikeTheActuary]

I'm having a hard time imagining how one could go from rolling out of bed to getting to work in just an hour.

Most days, my commute is about 5 feet (30 feet if you count a stop in the bathroom). 

When I do go into the office, I can be at my desk in about an hour after getting up, if I need to:  45 minutes to shave, shower, dress, and munch upon a breakfast bar; and 15 minutes to walk from the hotel and ride the elevator up.  Normally, I allow 90 minutes, for a more civilized morning routine.

[webny99]

I'm so confused what Tennessee is planning now.  Are people from Tennessee just meant to be confusing people meant to confuse us?

Which is most confusing?
(a) The above post
(b) Tennessee
(c) This thread
(d) DST

After some deliberation, I think I'll go with (a) 

[kphoger]

If you're working a 40 hour work week, 9 - 5 is technically illegal.  That's 8 hours a day.  Federal and State Laws require at least a 30 minute lunch period.

Even if you don't actually take a lunch, they're required to schedule it.

This is not true.  There is no federal law stipulating any break time.  Under federal law, your company could work you 24/7 if they wanted to, as long as they (a) paid you overtime and (b) paid you for any paid breaks they had already promised you of their own volition (that is, if they offer paid breaks and then refuse to pay you for one of those breaks, then they're in violation of the law).  Most states also have no laws on the books about lunch breaks; Kansas is one of those states.  Some other states (Illinois, perhaps, I can't remember offhand) require a scheduled break for government employees but not private sector workers.  A few out there actually require it for everybody, but those states are the clear minority.

Just FYI...

New Jersey requires a 30-minute break after 5 hours worked, but only for minors.  There is no such requirement for workers 18 and up.

Illinois requires a 20-minute break after 5 hours worked as long as the shift is at least 7½ hours long.  For minors, it goes up to 30 minutes for any shift over 5 hours long.

Kansas has no laws requiring a lunch break be offered.

You can find a list of such state laws here.  The US Department of Labor website clearly states "the FLSA does not require ... meal or rest periods."



ETA – Found a more useful link for state regs, with a handy-dandy map:  US Dept of Labor - Wage & Hour Division.  Grey states have no state reg about lunch breaks.

[Scott5114]

I cut it fantastically close by waking up at 1pm, leaving the house by 1:50pm, and arriving at work at 2:30, and that's about the best I can do.

Yikes. I guess I'm more efficient than I thought. I've awoken at 7:00 and made it to work by 7:30 or shortly thereafter*. Generally speaking, though, I like to be up by 6:00 and on the road by 6:30, which isn't infeasible, considering I'm not a real breakfast person and prefer buying something on the way in rather than killing time at home eating.

*This involved an extraordinary (and probably borderline unsafe) amount of speeding, and my commute is only eleven miles.

I am fantastically inefficient at waking up–I take about 20 minutes of "bootup" time before I can even function as a person. Most of this time is usually spent inhaling a Mountain Dew while attempting to parse what the President did while I was asleep, reading incoming emails, etc.

[english si]

I am fantastically inefficient at waking up–I take about 20 minutes of "bootup" time before I can even function as a person.

Ah, but in Tradephoric's totally hypothetical world where everyone works 9-5 and can wake up instantly at dawn, rather than needing at least some post-dawn sleep before the sun resets your body clock, that gives you 40 minutes to get to work...

...which should be plenty of time - if you live further away then Tradephoric says you deserve to get up in the dark for that, just so he can eat dinner outside in mid-winter without artificial light. 

I too need the boot up time to function properly. I need 20-30 minutes at some point in the morning, where there's quiet and I'm not being disturbed. I can rush get-up and go and do something, but then I need to recharge at some point in the morning. It never helped as a teen that my mum made me eat breakfast before I went to school - or perhaps it did as it gave me a quiet place to sit for 20-30 minutes (that I wouldn't have been allowed otherwise) as that was how long it took me to eat a bowl of cereal in the morning: because I wasn't hungry merely half an hour after I woke up, especially not for carbs (and there's good medical reason for that - cortisol the hormone that wakes you up, causes the body to resist insulin - the hormone that breaks down carbs. And cereal is basically the worst kind of breakfast for that). Getting breakfast on the go is better for me, not least as its easier to have something more protein-based (though that tends to be bread-wrapped here, and I don't do stodgy forms of bread well whatever time of day), but really I'd rather have a sit down (we've lost that culture, especially in white collar jobs, unless staying overnight in a hotel) high-protein breakfast at around 9am, or nothing.

[MNHighwayMan]

I am fantastically inefficient at waking up–I take about 20 minutes of "bootup" time before I can even function as a person.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one. Most people know not to bother me for about the first half an hour after I wake up, because I get cranky very easily if overstimulated during that time. It's like only the most primitive functions of my brain are operating, and they're almost entirely dedicated to using the bathroom and finding something to eat, then sitting in silence.

[J N Winkler]

I usually budget two hours plus reasonable driving time before morning commitments.  This gives me enough time for a cup of coffee (brewed from 100% arabica ground coffee--usually Colombian--in a moka pot), an email/Web forum/news website check, a bowl of oatmeal (one cup oatmeal, two cups 1% milk, 2:24 in 1200-W microwave), one-fourth of a juice glass of orange juice to kill coffee breath, some water, a bowel movement (normally the only one in the day), and a shower.

At this stage in my life, it does not really make a difference to my alertness throughout the day whether I get up just before sunrise or up to a few hours afterward.  This is far eclipsed by the short-term effects of a sudden move to an earlier waking schedule--having to get up even an hour earlier than my usual waking time causes problems, which is one reason I would be happy if we got rid of DST-related time changes.

Upthread, I said a person could dispense with an alarm clock if he or she established how much sleep he or she needed and set his or her bedtime accordingly.  What I should have also said, but did not, is that this approach depends on a steady schedule to work well.  A person who does not stick to the same sleeping schedule 7 days a week but instead relies on the weekends to sleep in will have a hard time breaking dependency on an alarm clock even if he or she budgets the same amount of time for sleeping each night.

I am also a fan of negotiating appointment sex with a willing intimate partner.  Spontaneity doesn't mean much if one or both partners is sleep-deprived, or is in the position of having to trade sleeping time for sex.

[english si]

Upthread, I said a person could dispense with an alarm clock if he or she established how much sleep he or she needed and set his or her bedtime accordingly.

And upthread I explained that doesn't work for me and why it doesn't. I'm sure others here are similar to me, just as others can do what you can do - then again, as you point out - even you can't do this: its only as it becomes a habit to sleep certain hours that you can and when that changes, you can't cope.

It's a biological condition that we need sunlight to produce the hormones, etc that wake you up, not some scheduling failure that can be fixed with better discipline!

Yes, of course, using the weekends to catch up is a bad habit - but for most of us its one forced on us by having to wake up well before our bodies want to during the week and spending it sleep deprived, especially in winter. And even if we got into the habit of sleeping the same hours at weekends as in the week, we'd still need alarm clocks because the problem isn't routine, but biology.

[kphoger]

Spontaneity doesn't mean much if one or both partners is sleep-deprived, or is in the position of having to trade sleeping time for sex.

It can also lead to the unfortunate consequence that you're no longer sleepy afterward and actually have a harder time getting to sleep than if you had foregone the sex.

(you knew someone had to chime in on this)

[20160805]

I usually budget two hours plus reasonable driving time before morning commitments.  This gives me enough time for a cup of coffee (brewed from 100% arabica ground coffee--usually Colombian--in a moka pot), an email/Web forum/news website check, a bowl of oatmeal (one cup oatmeal, two cups 1% milk, 2:24 in 1200-W microwave), one-fourth of a juice glass of orange juice to kill coffee breath, some water, a bowel movement (normally the only one in the day), and a shower.

At this stage in my life, it does not really make a difference to my alertness throughout the day whether I get up just before sunrise or up to a few hours afterward.  This is far eclipsed by the short-term effects of a sudden move to an earlier waking schedule--having to get up even an hour earlier than my usual waking time causes problems, which is one reason I would be happy if we got rid of DST-related time changes.

Upthread, I said a person could dispense with an alarm clock if he or she established how much sleep he or she needed and set his or her bedtime accordingly.  What I should have also said, but did not, is that this approach depends on a steady schedule to work well.  A person who does not stick to the same sleeping schedule 7 days a week but instead relies on the weekends to sleep in will have a hard time breaking dependency on an alarm clock even if he or she budgets the same amount of time for sleeping each night.

I am also a fan of negotiating appointment sex with a willing intimate partner.  Spontaneity doesn't mean much if one or both partners is sleep-deprived, or is in the position of having to trade sleeping time for sex.

I love how dropping a deuce is a scheduled part of your day. 

[kphoger]

I usually budget two hours plus reasonable driving time before morning commitments.  This gives me enough time for a cup of coffee (brewed from 100% arabica ground coffee--usually Colombian--in a moka pot), an email/Web forum/news website check, a bowl of oatmeal (one cup oatmeal, two cups 1% milk, 2:24 in 1200-W microwave), one-fourth of a juice glass of orange juice to kill coffee breath, some water, a bowel movement (normally the only one in the day), and a shower.

At this stage in my life, it does not really make a difference to my alertness throughout the day whether I get up just before sunrise or up to a few hours afterward.  This is far eclipsed by the short-term effects of a sudden move to an earlier waking schedule--having to get up even an hour earlier than my usual waking time causes problems, which is one reason I would be happy if we got rid of DST-related time changes.

Upthread, I said a person could dispense with an alarm clock if he or she established how much sleep he or she needed and set his or her bedtime accordingly.  What I should have also said, but did not, is that this approach depends on a steady schedule to work well.  A person who does not stick to the same sleeping schedule 7 days a week but instead relies on the weekends to sleep in will have a hard time breaking dependency on an alarm clock even if he or she budgets the same amount of time for sleeping each night.

I am also a fan of negotiating appointment sex with a willing intimate partner.  Spontaneity doesn't mean much if one or both partners is sleep-deprived, or is in the position of having to trade sleeping time for sex.

I love how dropping a deuce is a scheduled part of your day. 

I love how you drink sugar instead of brushing your teeth to kill bad breath.

[webny99]

I usually budget two hours plus reasonable driving time before morning commitments.  This gives me enough time for a cup of coffee (brewed from 100% arabica ground coffee--usually Colombian--in a moka pot), an email/Web forum/news website check, a bowl of oatmeal (one cup oatmeal, two cups 1% milk, 2:24 in 1200-W microwave), one-fourth of a juice glass of orange juice to kill coffee breath, some water, a bowel movement (normally the only one in the day), and a shower.

Since everyone is "loving" components of this post: I'm just impressed with the detail. I could not get my mornings structured down to a science like that. I'm not particularly fond of structure, so I wouldn't want that anyways, but it is impressive nonetheless.

And no, I cannot even attempt to schedule a specific time for bowel movements 

[MNHighwayMan]

And no, I cannot even attempt to schedule a specific time for bowel movements 

Me neither, but if I can, I like to do them at work:

Boss makes a dollar,
I make a dime.
That's why I shit
on company time.

[tradephoric]

Delaying Middle School and High School Start Times Promotes Student Health and Performance: An American Academy of Sleep Medicine Position Statement

During adolescence, internal circadian rhythms and biological sleep drive change to result in later sleep and wake times. As a result of these changes, early middle school and high school start times curtail sleep, hamper a student's preparedness to learn, negatively impact physical and mental health, and impair driving safety. Furthermore, a growing body of evidence shows that delaying school start times positively impacts student achievement, health, and safety. Public awareness of the hazards of early school start times and the benefits of later start times are largely unappreciated. As a result, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine is calling on communities, school boards, and educational institutions to implement start times of 8:30 AM or later for middle schools and high schools to ensure that every student arrives at school healthy, awake, alert, and ready to learn.

http://jcsm.aasm.org/viewabstract.aspx?pid=30998

School start times of 7AM-7:30AM seem to be common for middle school and high schools throughout the country.  If school start times were shifted later to match the American Academy of Sleep Medicine Position, then the debate of "going to school in dark" argument would be a non-starter.  Other research has suggested that high school students should start school as late as 11AM.  Maybe 11AM is extreme, but pushing all school start times later by an hour if the nation adopts permanent daylight savings time, that doesn't sound too extreme. 

[english si]

pushing all school start times later by an hour if the nation adopts permanent daylight savings time, that doesn't sound too extreme.

It's arguably extreme to do anything less than that, given the science here.

In winter, starting an hour later is cancelled out by the clocks being an hour ahead of where they are with the current schedule - as such, while not helping, at least it doesn't hinder as keeping the status quo time would!

Glad to see you are engaging with the science, though.

[kalvado]

pushing all school start times later by an hour if the nation adopts permanent daylight savings time, that doesn't sound too extreme.

It's arguably extreme to do anything less than that, given the science here.

In winter, starting an hour later is cancelled out by the clocks being an hour ahead of where they are with the current schedule - as such, while not helping, at least it doesn't hinder as keeping the status quo time would!

Glad to see you are engaging with the science, though.

I am not sure if you're familiar with (pretty crazy) logistics of school bus operation in US. And changing that would either require significant spending (more buses, more drivers); or would get an extreme opposition from parents.

[J N Winkler]

And upthread I explained that doesn't work for me and why it doesn't. I'm sure others here are similar to me, just as others can do what you can do - then again, as you point out - even you can't do this: its only as it becomes a habit to sleep certain hours that you can and when that changes, you can't cope.

I agree there are people for whom the alarm-clock-free lifestyle doesn't work, such as those whose ability to adhere to a consistent sleep pattern has been destroyed by meningitis.  However, the health benefits of a full night's rest every night are such that I believe it is worth a try.

I did have to change my sleep pattern last week when I had to report for jury duty.  I had no difficulty getting up on time after the first night.  However, I was carrying a sleep deficit going into the second night and overslept, thus forcing me to rush a bit more in the morning than I would have liked.  I arrived just barely on time in the courthouse only to find a crowd waiting for elevators in the ground-floor lobby.  I feared being found in contempt for being late, so I didn't feel I had time to wait for the next free elevator.  I took the stairs (two steps at a time) to the tenth-floor courtroom for my assigned trial.  I started losing my wind around the sixth floor; another juror ended up also climbing the stairs part of the way and told me she could hear my breathing from five floors away.

Things were a bit easier the third night, but it was not until after the fourth night that my colon finally caught up with the new schedule.

Many years ago, as an undergraduate, I did use a bed-shaker alarm but discovered I usually woke up before it went off if I had gone to bed at a reasonable hour the previous evening.  I normally budgeted eight hours for sleep and this is about half an hour longer than five times the normal REM sleep cycle length of 1 1/2 hours.  On the other hand, if I had stayed up very late working on an assignment due the next day (often as a result of procrastination), chances were good that I would sleep through the bed shaking, and they got even better after a previous night of inadequate sleep.

This experience persuaded me to dispense with alarms altogether, though for one-day commitments requiring me to get up earlier than normal, I have cheated by setting my internal alarm (what a friend calls "power of will") so that I awaken at the end of the last full REM cycle before the time I need to get out of bed, as long as I have had enough sleep the previous night.

It's a biological condition that we need sunlight to produce the hormones, etc that wake you up, not some scheduling failure that can be fixed with better discipline!

Getting up early is often framed in moralistic terms, notably in the phrase commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin:  "Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."  However, I don't agree with this framing.  In terms of the health outcomes associated with various sleep patterns, being a night owl is not degenerate behavior provided one gets a full night's sleep between the late bedtime and the late rising time.  Meanwhile, ensuring that the amount of sleep between the early bedtime and the early rising time is adequate--the implied corollary of Franklin's proverb--is just as consistent with narcissism as it is with moral uprightness.

As for the lack of light signals to help regulate circadian rhythms, this is something that can be counterbalanced to an extent given the technologies now available for producing artificial light and screening ourselves from the sun.  The people who are least able to take advantage of such technical measures, and who are therefore at greatest risk of long-term health problems from an upside-down sleeping pattern, are neither early birds nor night owls but rather people who work at night and have to try to sleep during the day.

It can also lead to the unfortunate consequence that you're no longer sleepy afterward and actually have a harder time getting to sleep than if you had foregone the sex.

(you knew someone had to chime in on this)

I wondered if anyone would actually notice that paragraph.

I love how dropping a deuce is a scheduled part of your day. 

And no, I cannot even attempt to schedule a specific time for bowel movements 

From the standpoint of good quality of life, the ideal stool is consistently timed (the medically acceptable range is one every three days to three every day, though some consider the sweet spot to be between once a day and once after every meal), has water content between 65% and 75%, is easy to pass (defecating should be just as easy as urinating), and leaves a person feeling he or she has voided his or her bowels completely (no tenesmus).  For a fortunate few this is an effortless part of their day-to-day existence; others have to work at it; and still others, owing partly to colon disease, cannot achieve it no matter what they do.

I belong in the second group and rely partly on the laxative effect of coffee and partly on a diet moderately high in fiber (usually around 35 g a day, divided more or less evenly among meals and snacks, with a minimum of five servings from three different vegetables, and one apple before bed every night).  When I depart from the ideal, which thankfully is not often, it is generally in the direction of constipation rather than diarrhea.  Constipation is the norm in the US for many reasons, including our national diet being rich and low in fiber and far too many of us working excessively long hours.  As a result, we have a culture of magazines and other light reading material in bathrooms at home; moreover, when someone actually defecates in a public bathroom, two times out of three the resulting smell is of burnt coffee, which is characteristic of dense stools with low water content.

In my case, part of the motivation for moving bowels in the morning is also to use the shower as a vertical bidet.  Not having to rely exclusively on toilet paper helps keep skin irritation and underwear streaks to a minimum.

I love how you drink sugar instead of brushing your teeth to kill bad breath.

I learned the trick many years ago in Madrid, where a typical breakfast is a churro (made with potato flour rather than pastry dough as here, and so savory rather than sweet), a cup of cafe con leche, and a small glass of orange juice, albeit freshly squeezed using a Zumo juicing machine in the customer's field of view.

[20160805]

Delaying Middle School and High School Start Times Promotes Student Health and Performance: An American Academy of Sleep Medicine Position Statement

During adolescence, internal circadian rhythms and biological sleep drive change to result in later sleep and wake times. As a result of these changes, early middle school and high school start times curtail sleep, hamper a student's preparedness to learn, negatively impact physical and mental health, and impair driving safety. Furthermore, a growing body of evidence shows that delaying school start times positively impacts student achievement, health, and safety. Public awareness of the hazards of early school start times and the benefits of later start times are largely unappreciated. As a result, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine is calling on communities, school boards, and educational institutions to implement start times of 8:30 AM or later for middle schools and high schools to ensure that every student arrives at school healthy, awake, alert, and ready to learn.

http://jcsm.aasm.org/viewabstract.aspx?pid=30998

School start times of 7AM-7:30AM seem to be common for middle school and high schools throughout the country.  If school start times were shifted later to match the American Academy of Sleep Medicine Position, then the debate of "going to school in dark" argument would be a non-starter.  Other research has suggested that high school students should start school as late as 11AM.  Maybe 11AM is extreme, but pushing all school start times later by an hour if the nation adopts permanent daylight savings time, that doesn't sound too extreme.

I've heard this too, but at least from my experience, not true.  When I was in high school, if I was given the freedom to pick my own wake/sleep hours without interference from other commitments such as school, it probably would have looked something like 06:00-22:00; the teenage shift was maybe an hour at best.

Furthermore, let's look at how my day would have gone if school did start at 11:00.  Forget school lunch; it's now school supper, served probably around 16:00.  The end of the school day wouldn't be until 19:00, which is the start of my "late evening".  Transportation to school in the morning would be an issue, forcing me to take the bus until I learned to drive, and besides, when you've got something to do starting in the morning, the hours prior to that are relegated to getting ready for the day, sitting around the house, etc., leaving five to six hours of time in the morning to be completely wasted, and at night there's no time to get anything done either because it's already late-thirty by the time the bus drops me back off at home.

In short, bad idea; my high school's 07:25-14:56 hours were just fine.  Middle school (07:25-14:46) was even sweeter; I loved being able to get out of there and back into my own house before 15:00 (the transition from early to late afternoon)!

[hbelkins]

From the standpoint of good quality of life, the ideal stool is consistently timed (the medically acceptable range is one every three days to three every day, though some consider the sweet spot to be between once a day and once after every meal), has water content between 65% and 75%, is easy to pass (defecating should be just as easy as urinating), and leaves a person feeling he or she has voided his or her bowels completely (no tenesmus).  For a fortunate few this is an effortless part of their day-to-day existence; others have to work at it; and still others, owing partly to colon disease, cannot achieve it no matter what they do.

I belong in the second group and rely partly on the laxative effect of coffee and partly on a diet moderately high in fiber (usually around 35 g a day, divided more or less evenly among meals and snacks, with a minimum of five servings from three different vegetables, and one apple before bed every night).  When I depart from the ideal, which thankfully is not often, it is generally in the direction of constipation rather than diarrhea.  Constipation is the norm in the US for many reasons, including our national diet being rich and low in fiber and far too many of us working excessively long hours.  As a result, we have a culture of magazines and other light reading material in bathrooms at home; moreover, when someone actually defecates in a public bathroom, two times out of three the resulting smell is of burnt coffee, which is characteristic of dense stools with low water content.

In my case, part of the motivation for moving bowels in the morning is also to use the shower as a vertical bidet.  Not having to rely exclusively on toilet paper helps keep skin irritation and underwear streaks to a minimum.

I'll just leave this here...

https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=12813.msg309754#msg309754

[MNHighwayMan]

Why in the world are we discussing defecation in a thread about DST?

That said, the thing I hate the most is when I just get out of the shower, and then I get the urge.