DST (2018)

[20160805]

Your argument can easily be invalidated by the fact that I eat supper at 17:30 and go to bed at 21:00.  I do very little outside the house late in the evening, especially weeknight evenings, so having it be light as noon until late-thirty does absolutely nothing other than impede my sleep.  There's plenty of time for being outside and enjoying your life on Saturday and Sunday.

Even if Tokyo went to DST (just an hour shift, not a two-hour shift) the sun in Tokyo would set at 20:00 during the longest day of the year and it would be pitch dark before your 21:00 bedtime.  How would that impede your sleep?  My point is Tokyo doesn't currently have perfect sunrise/sunset times as you suggested, highlighted by the fact that even if Tokyo went on DST it would already be pitch dark before your abnormally early bedtime during the longest day of the year.  Meanwhile the sun on the longest day currently rises by 4:30AM in Tokyo.  Seeing that you go to bed by 9PM, you seem like an extreme early bird, but do you even get up by 4:30AM?  Short of someone who has a two-hour commute to their 7AM job I don't see many people being up at 4:30AM.  And if you have a two-hour commute to your job I have no sympathy for you... maybe it's time to re-evaluate your life.  You honestly believe the sunsets never extending beyond 7PM in Toyko is ideal (with 4:30AM sunrises to boot)?  You're living Bizarro world to me.

I wake up at 05:00.  My commute to and from work is about 7 minutes by car; even if I walked I could likely get to work in about an hour.  Tokyo on DST wouldn't be "pitch dark" by 21:00 on the longest day of the year; it would be about seven minutes before nautical dusk.

I do still like the idea of sunsets in the winter being in the 16:00 hour as that's what I'm used to and what seems to "set the mood" of winter best, so maybe we could compromise and move Tokyo forward half an hour year-round?  (21 Jun daylight 4:55-19:30, 21 Dec daylight 7:16-17:01)

Here's a map I just threw together last night depicting what I'd do with time zones:

I must be color blind. I see dark red, red, green, blue, and purple.

I see dark red, orange, green, blue, and purple; I made this map late at night and I have a program called "f.lux" that reduces the amount of blue light on my screen during the late evening and early morning hours, so it was hard for me to tell exactly what colours I was using other than a general idea.

Edit to add: I also didn't realise how similar Rapid City's sunrise/set times are to my own.

[hotdogPi]

I do still like the idea of sunsets in the winter being in the 16:00 hour

Keep in mind that you're in a small minority by saying that.

[Brandon]

Here's a map I just threw together last night depicting what I'd do with time zones:

I must be color blind. I see dark red, red, green, blue, and purple.

No, you're not.  I see the exact same colors.  That is distinctly not an orange.

[bm7]

I see dark red, orange, green, blue, and purple; I made this map late at night and I have a program called "f.lux" that reduces the amount of blue light on my screen during the late evening and early morning hours, so it was hard for me to tell exactly what colours I was using other than a general idea.

What settings do you have it on that makes the red look orange? Even on the darkest setting on flux it looks nearly the same color to me as it does during the day.

As for the map, why did you give eastern Maine it's own time zone? I don't feel like it'd be worth adding a new time zone to the US for such a small population.

[20160805]

I see dark red, orange, green, blue, and purple; I made this map late at night and I have a program called "f.lux" that reduces the amount of blue light on my screen during the late evening and early morning hours, so it was hard for me to tell exactly what colours I was using other than a general idea.

What settings do you have it on that makes the red look orange? Even on the darkest setting on flux it looks nearly the same color to me as it does during the day.

As for the map, why did you give eastern Maine it's own time zone? I don't feel like it'd be worth adding a new time zone to the US for such a small population.

My lowest setting is 1200K (reddish), IIRC, and my picking of that orange-red colour must have been overcompensation as I must have thought the true orange option was yellow.

And my reason for giving the eastern third of Maine its own time zone is so as to avoid extravagantly early sunrises - on GMT-5, Bangor would have an earliest sunrise of 3:48 and a 6:59 sunrise as late as 8 December, which also seems very early for that latitude.  Places on the east side of my line would have those times even earlier, hence why I moved them to Atlantic Time.

[tradephoric]

Well put together video about time zones and some info about DST at the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1kOkoma_hM

[jp the roadgeek]

I decided to dabble in artistry and create my own proposed time zone map.

[english si]

Do you go to bed literally right after 6-7PM dinner?  If you don't and you live in Tokyo, then any after dinner activities will be in darkness even during the longest day of the year.... not a big deal for some things but good luck playing a round of golf.

Who plays an after-dinner round of golf? They don't do it here, where you would get 3 hours of light after 7pm mid-summer.

[jeffandnicole]

It doesn't even provide any facts to back up the writer's stance that "daylight is wasted while Japan sleeps".  What time do the majority of people wake up and go to bed in Japan?

A fact was given in the piece that many (Japanese) are still at work in artificially lit offices when it is dark out at 8 pm.  If many are still working at 8 pm it's unlikely the workers can get home, relax, go to bed, and get up by 4:30 a.m. with the necessary amount of sleep to function the next day.  It's similar to how "˜some' Mexicans crossing over the southern border are good people... just a question of how much weight you want to put on the words "˜many' and "˜some'.   In the case of Mexicans crossing the border an extremely high number of them may be good people, and saying that "˜some' are good people is still not inaccurate (the word 'some' doesn't actually limit the number of individuals there can be).  Where am i going with this?  Oh yeah, if the media can brandish our President a racist by the way it interprets the word "˜some' I can argue that the Japanese people are in bed at 4:30 am. considering many of them are still working at 8 pm the night before.

Opinion pieces aren't usually vetted for their accuracy. So a letter writing saying "many" don't hold much weight. I would consider a million people to be many, but if Japan's workforce has 500 million people in offices, the million people is just a minute fraction of that.

Do you go to bed literally right after 6-7PM dinner?  If you don't and you live in Tokyo, then any after dinner activities will be in darkness even during the longest day of the year.... not a big deal for some things but good luck playing a round of golf.

Who plays an after-dinner round of golf? They don't do it here, where you would get 3 hours of light after 7pm mid-summer.

They don't here in the U.S. either. Those that do are playing a very discounted game of golf knowing they probably won't get 18 holes in. At some courses that allow people to get on the course after 5pm, they aren't permitted to rent a cart either as they're being put away for the night and thus the golfers are walking, slowing their game down even more.

[tradephoric]

It doesn't even provide any facts to back up the writer's stance that "daylight is wasted while Japan sleeps".  What time do the majority of people wake up and go to bed in Japan?

A fact was given in the piece that many (Japanese) are still at work in artificially lit offices when it is dark out at 8 pm.  If many are still working at 8 pm it's unlikely the workers can get home, relax, go to bed, and get up by 4:30 a.m. with the necessary amount of sleep to function the next day.  It's similar to how "˜some' Mexicans crossing over the southern border are good people... just a question of how much weight you want to put on the words "˜many' and "˜some'.   In the case of Mexicans crossing the border an extremely high number of them may be good people, and saying that "˜some' are good people is still not inaccurate (the word 'some' doesn't actually limit the number of individuals there can be).  Where am i going with this?  Oh yeah, if the media can brandish our President a racist by the way it interprets the word "˜some' I can argue that the Japanese people are in bed at 4:30 am. considering many of them are still working at 8 pm the night before.

Opinion pieces aren't usually vetted for their accuracy. So a letter writing saying "many" don't hold much weight. I would consider a million people to be many, but if Japan's workforce has 500 million people in offices, the million people is just a minute fraction of that.

Do you go to bed literally right after 6-7PM dinner?  If you don't and you live in Tokyo, then any after dinner activities will be in darkness even during the longest day of the year.... not a big deal for some things but good luck playing a round of golf.

Who plays an after-dinner round of golf? They don't do it here, where you would get 3 hours of light after 7pm mid-summer.

They don't here in the U.S. either. Those that do are playing a very discounted game of golf knowing they probably won't get 18 holes in. At some courses that allow people to get on the course after 5pm, they aren't permitted to rent a cart either as they're being put away for the night and thus the golfers are walking, slowing their game down even more.

I'm sure it depends where you live.  In Michigan there's enough daylight in the summer to be playing golf past 9PM... in New Jersey not so much.  I assure you that the golf courses are still busy and that the golf carts are available to ride past 5PM here in Michigan. 

[doorknob60]

I can get on board with CT being extended in the upper peninsula.  I can also get on board with CT for the entire state if Michigan goes to DST all year.  If the entire state were to go to CT and not go DST all year, I would have to seriously consider moving back to Texas.  I sometimes do consider moving back to Texas, but I have health needs and re establishing doctors and stuff in another state is more of a PITA than I want to deal with, in spite of the winters in Michigan.

So what you're basically saying is you want all of Michigan to be on GMT-5 (EST) year-round.  I can get on board with that.

Here's a map I just threw together last night depicting what I'd do with time zones:

Fuck off, that would put Boise 2 hours behind where it is now in the summer, putting sunrise at 4 AM and sunset at 7:30 PM on June 21st. Sounds like hell. Even if it was in the next time zone east (permanent MST) that would still be pretty bad. Of course, I am probably biased since I am not a morning person, but I think a strong majority of people that live here would dislike that.

[20160805]

^ Well, I could move the Pacific/Mountain border a bit east along the same longitude line as the Nevada/Utah border up to the Canadian border, although I'm sure not many people there are quite fans of the as-it-stands 08:18 sunrise on 1 January either.  When we're talking this high of a latitude, honestly it's a horse apiece: either you upset early birds, you upset night owls, or you move solar noon to midnight or something equally ridiculous and end up ticking everyone off equally.

[US 89]

The ideal Pacific-Mountain boundary based on longitude is 112.5 degrees west, which is just west of the I-15 population corridors in Utah and Idaho. Of course, I'm not sure if Idaho would be good with putting Pocatello/Idaho Falls and Boise in different time zones. But in that case, maybe all of Idaho could be moved to Pacific, with the possible exception of Franklin and Bear Lake Counties.

[tradephoric]

Big news coming out of the EU.  According to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Union is to propose ending twice-yearly clock changes and going to summer time year-round.  This comes after a poll was conducted of millions of EU citizens which found that 80% wanted to abolish the biannual time changes.

EU plans to abolish daylight saving time and make summer last forever
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/31/europe/eu-abolish-daylight-saving-time-intl/index.html

Clock changes: EU backs ending daylight saving time
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45366390

EU to recommend end to changing clocks twice a year
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/31/eu-recommend-member-states-abolish-daylight-saving-time

[SP Cook]

Europe question.  The time zone map looks fine, with one exception.  Spain. 

Spain is in the same time zone as most of Europe.  But Portugal is an hour behind.  Now, the interaction between Portugal and Spain is huge, and the border is just a line or a river.  The interaction between Spain and France is far less and the border is a mountain range.  This places Spain out of sync with its obvious partner, and pushes sun up sun down times way out of what goes on elsewhere.

Why would they not change the time zone at the Spanish-French border?

[20160805]

The ideal Pacific-Mountain boundary based on longitude is 112.5 degrees west, which is just west of the I-15 population corridors in Utah and Idaho. Of course, I'm not sure if Idaho would be good with putting Pocatello/Idaho Falls and Boise in different time zones. But in that case, maybe all of Idaho could be moved to Pacific, with the possible exception of Franklin and Bear Lake Counties.

Yup.  What would be wrong with moving the time zone boundaries to where they rightfully should be, and as a society not being as afraid of the 4:00 hour as we are?  There's no difference between sleeping from 21:00-4:00 and working from 7:00-15:00, and sleeping from 23:00-6:00 and working from 9:00-17:00.

I decided to dabble in artistry and create my own proposed time zone map.

I like this better than some other proposals (why would Florida want to be on Atlantic Time year-round?), though some of the time zones may have to be renamed (Central to Central-West, and Eastern to Central-East maybe?), and I'm sure not many high school students would enjoy winter sunrises during second period.

[vdeane]

I can't help but wonder if people who support year-round summer time were more likely to vote in the poll conducted.  The lowest level of engagement (outside of the UK, which is understandable since they likely won't be bound by this) appears to be Italy, one of the countries far enough south to actually have anything to lose by given up some morning sunshine in winter; many of the others are so far north that even switching the clocks will not make the sun rise before the morning commute is over.

Europe question.  The time zone map looks fine, with one exception.  Spain. 

Spain is in the same time zone as most of Europe.  But Portugal is an hour behind.  Now, the interaction between Portugal and Spain is huge, and the border is just a line or a river.  The interaction between Spain and France is far less and the border is a mountain range.  This places Spain out of sync with its obvious partner, and pushes sun up sun down times way out of what goes on elsewhere.

Why would they not change the time zone at the Spanish-French border?

France is out of its time zone too, though not to the same extreme.  There's been talk in Spain of switching their time zone back; maybe this will finally make that happen.  If they did, and France stayed in its current time zone, I wonder what Andorra would do.

[tradephoric]

I can't help but wonder if people who support year-round summer time were more likely to vote in the poll conducted.  The lowest level of engagement (outside of the UK, which is understandable since they likely won't be bound by this) appears to be Italy, one of the countries far enough south to actually have anything to lose by given up some morning sunshine in winter; many of the others are so far north that even switching the clocks will not make the sun rise before the morning commute is over.

One of the articles mentioned that each member state will be able to decide if they wish to stay on summer time or winter time year-round.  The focus seems to be on eliminating the biannual time changes in Europe and there will inevitably be debate if winter time or summer time is more appropriate for each member state.

The good news is Europe is seriously proposing dropping the biannual time changes.  State legislators in some of the most populous states here in America (ie. Florida and California) have already pushed for getting rid of the antiquated biannual time changes..  It's time for the federal government to take up the issue and follow Europe's lead.  While the media seems to have a visceral hatred for Trump, the fact that Europe has proposed getting rid of daylight saving time already should tamp down the negativity towards Trump and his administration proposing a similar change moving forward.

[vdeane]

I'd rather they do that as a coordinated thing with the time zone UTC offsets adjusted as needed rather than having it all done willy-nilly.  That would be chaos, plus having a permanent time zone labeled as "summer" is rather stupid IMO.

I still don't see how it's antiquated.  Sure, the energy savings is gone due to AC (actually, in Europe they might still have energy savings, since I think AC usage is less there, so lighting would still dominate energy usage), but there are other benefits, like having the compromise between evening daylight and having sunrise at a reasonable hour.

I think I forgot to mention the whole thing about effects on people's bodies and stuff.  I still don't get that.  I generally sleep 11-6 on week nights, 1 or 2-11 on Friday night, and 12 or 1-10 on Saturday night, so I would think that would cause any change for DST to be far less in comparison.

[jeffandnicole]

"It's time for the federal government to take up the issue and follow Europe's lead. "

That's funny...you seem completely hellbent on the US following Europe's lead in using roundabouts. Suddenly Europe is the greatest nation ever because of its DST consideration?

[english si]

Why would they not change the time zone at the Spanish-French border?

Because Facism, that's why. They haven't undone the Franco 'solidarity with Hitler' change from the 30s, just as the French, Belgians, Dutch (from UTC+0:20), etc haven't undone their similar changes after being invaded by the Nazis. France was going to return to WET on 18-Nov-45, but didn't.

Portugal would naturally be -1, as would Galicia.

I'd imagine that, when the EU abolishes changing clocks, this issue would be revisited properly. The plan is for each of the 27 member states (and I'm sure the Norway, Switzerland and the microstates will follow suit - either as made to by EEA rules, or for practicality purposes. The UK and Western Balkans wouldn't be as forced to drop clock changes by legal/peer pressure, but are likely to follow suit) to pick a time zone to follow all year.

Andorra would be more likely to go with Spain (well Catalonia, which might not want the same!), rather than France, if there's a difference. It could, for giggles, continue changing, being aligned with Spain in winter and France in summer!

[tradephoric]

"It's time for the federal government to take up the issue and follow Europe's lead. "

That's funny...you seem completely hellbent on the US following Europe's lead in using roundabouts. Suddenly Europe is the greatest nation ever because of its DST consideration?

It's just convenient that Europe is proposing eliminating the biannual time changes before America does.  The rest of the world has such a visceral hatred for Trump that anything his administration proposes would likely be seen as evil.  But if you have Angela Merkel opening her mouth about the matter before Trump, well you can't blame Trump if he jumps on board with the proposal too.  It wasn't his idea after all.  Maybe the elimination of the biannual time changes moving forward is what can bring Europe and America together.

Angela Merkel backs EU plot to ABOLISH daylight saving time
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1012492/EU-daylight-saving-time-angela-merkel-jean-claude-juncker-uk-switzerland

[kalvado]

"It's time for the federal government to take up the issue and follow Europe's lead. "

That's funny...you seem completely hellbent on the US following Europe's lead in using roundabouts. Suddenly Europe is the greatest nation ever because of its DST consideration?

It's just convenient that Europe is proposing eliminating the biannual time changes before America does.  The rest of the world has such a visceral hatred for Trump that anything his administration proposes would likely be seen as evil.  But if you have Angela Merkel opening her mouth about the matter before Trump, well you can't blame Trump if he jumps on board with the proposal too.  It wasn't his idea after all.  Maybe the elimination of the biannual time changes moving forward is what can bring Europe and America together.

Angela Merkel backs EU plot to ABOLISH daylight saving time
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1012492/EU-daylight-saving-time-angela-merkel-jean-claude-juncker-uk-switzerland

I can only wonder why a very technical decision has to be so political.
But I guess these are the times when, if POTUS sneezes once in front of the Congress, "bless you" vote can be "no" strictly along party lines after few days of debates.

[vdeane]

Scientific studies have shown that our current system of waking up in the dark is quite unhealthy.  Productivity would also likely be improved if we worked natural hours (relative to the sun) instead of extremely early ones.
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/snoozers-are-in-fact-losers

According to Roenneberg, poor sleep timing stresses our system so much that it is one of the reasons that night-shift workers often suffer higher-than-normal rates of cancer, potentially fatal heart conditions, and other chronic disease, like metabolic syndrome and diabetes. Another study, published earlier this year and focussing on medical-school performance, found that sleep timing, more than length or quality, affected how well students performed in class and on their preclinical board exams. It didn't really matter how long they had slept or whether they saw themselves as morning people or not; what made a difference was when they actually went to bed–and when they woke up. It's bad to sleep too little; it's also bad, and maybe even worse, to wake up when it's dark.

Fortunately, the effects of sleep inertia and social jetlag seem to be reversible. When Wright asked a group of young adults to embark on a weeklong camping trip, he discovered a striking pattern: before the week was out, the negative sleep patterns that he'd previously observed disappeared. In the days leading up to the trip, he had noted that the subjects' bodies would begin releasing the sleep hormone melatonin about two hours prior to sleep, around 10:30 p.m. A decrease in the hormone, on the other hand, took place after wake-up, around 8 a.m. After the camping trip, those patterns had changed significantly. Now the melatonin levels increased around sunset–and decreased just after sunrise, an average of fifty minutes before wake-up time. In other words, not only did the time outside, in the absence of artificial light and alarm clocks, make it easier for people to fall asleep, it made it easier for them to wake up: the subjects' sleep rhythms would start preparing for wake-up just after sunrise, so that by the time they got up, they were far more awake than they would have otherwise been. The sleep inertia was largely gone.

Wright concluded that much of our early morning grogginess is a result of displaced melatonin–of the fact that, under current social-jetlag conditions, the hormone typically dissipates two hours after waking, as opposed to while we're still asleep. If we could just synchronize our sleep more closely with natural light patterns, it would become far easier to wake up. It wouldn't be unprecedented. In the early nineteenth century, the United States had a hundred and forty-four separate time zones. Cities set their own local time, typically so that noon would correspond to the moment the sun reached its apex in the sky; when it was noon in Manhattan, it was five till in Philadelphia. But on November 18, 1883, the country settled on four standard time zones; railroads and interstate commerce had made the prior arrangement impractical. By 1884, the entire globe would be divided into twenty-four time zones. Reverting to hyperlocal time zones might seem like it could lead to a terrible loss of productivity. But who knows what could happen if people started work without a two-hour lag, during which their cognitive abilities are only shadows of their full selves?

Theodore Roethke had the right idea when he wrote his famous line "I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow."  We do wake to a sleep of sorts: a state of not-quite-alertness, more akin to a sleepwalker's unconscious autopilot than the vigilance and care we'd most like to associate with our own thinking. And taking our waking slow, without the jar of an alarm and with the rhythms of light and biology, may be our best defense against the thoughtlessness of a sleep-addled brain, a way to insure that, when we do wake fully, we are making the most of what our minds have to offer.

Also, I'd appreciate it if we could stop needlessly inserting Trump into the DST thread.

[tradephoric]

Also, I'd appreciate it if we could stop needlessly inserting Trump into the DST thread.

The next shoe to drop in this saga is the Trump administration coming out with their own proposal to eliminate the biannual time changes in America (by extending DST year-round).  The pace of this discussion will likely gain strength in this country once the DST issue is voted on in California in the November midterms.  Once you have Florida and California both proposing year-round DST, it would be hard for the federal government to ignore this issue (especially considering the European Union is proposing to abolish DST).  It's completely appropriate to insert Trump's name into this discussion, seeing he's going to be the one shaping the DST conversation in this country moving forward.