Daylight Saving Time

[elsmere241]

One idea I've seen floating around would be to combine Pacific and Mountain time zones into "Western time", which would be UTC-7 year-round (Pacific Daylight/Mountain Standard).  Eastern would absorb Central and be UTC-5 year-round (Central Daylight/Eastern Standard).  It might mean tweaking the boundary between the two in some places.

[Pete from Boston]

In the spirit of tolerance, we should all honor the personal choices of every individual to choose his or her own time zone regardless of their geography.

I'll be using the Saudi reset-at-dawn system.

[oscar]

One idea I've seen floating around would be to combine Pacific and Mountain time zones into "Western time", which would be UTC-7 year-round (Pacific Daylight/Mountain Standard).  Eastern would absorb Central and be UTC-5 year-round (Central Daylight/Eastern Standard).  It might mean tweaking the boundary between the two in some places.

That'd mean a two-hour time difference between western and eastern Nebraska, or anywhere else along the Mountain/Central boundary.

[elsmere241]

In the spirit of tolerance, we should all honor the personal choices of every individual to choose his or her own time zone regardless of their geography.

I'll be using the Saudi reset-at-dawn system.

I thought they reset at dusk.

[jeffandnicole]

A friend sent this to me.  It's today's lesson in "How to play with numbers":

How much money does Daylight Saving Time cost the U.S. economy in lost productivity?

http://www.govtech.com/question-of-the-day/Question-of-the-Day-for-03102015.html?elqaid=25973&elqat=1&elqTrackId=1D37FE575F4ACB4CA88C4926E0A654E1

When you click through and see the accompanying reports, it acknowledges Hawaii & Arizona as not playing the DST game...but then excludes them from the results.  Those two states would be a good control group, especially if they could say heart attacks didn't go up or internet usage didn't rise.

[1995hoo]

In the spirit of tolerance, we should all honor the personal choices of every individual to choose his or her own time zone regardless of their geography.

I'll be using the Saudi reset-at-dawn system.

Sounds like the time Kramer felt DST wasn't arriving soon enough and turned his watch ahead on his own.

[texaskdog]

I wouldn't be surprised if much of the complaining about DST comes from early birds who don't understand that "but you can just get up earlier if you want your daylight" isn't a valid argument.  Personally, as someone who would sleep in to 11 every day if given the chance, I welcome the "extra" daylight.

I wouldn't be surprised if much of the support for DST comes from late risers who don't understand that "but you can just get up later if you want your daylight" isn't a valid argument.  Personally, as someone who has to be at work at the reasonable hour of 8 am, I welcome the "extra" daylight in the morning.

(The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our sun, but in ourselves.)

Why waste all your daylight at work?  In my perfect world we'd all work when it was dark out and the majority of people would have free time when it was light out.  When I work 2-11 it was great in the winter, I had daylight hours free.

[kkt]

In the spirit of tolerance, we should all honor the personal choices of every individual to choose his or her own time zone regardless of their geography.

I'll be using the Saudi reset-at-dawn system.

I thought they reset at dusk.

From Saudi Aramco World,
https://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/196902/dinner.at.when.htm

The basis of all time keeping in Saudi Arabia used to be Arabic time, the traditional method of telling the hour. Geared to the sun, it was very simple: every day at sunset you simply adjusted your watch to 12 o'clock–12 midnight, that is. If everybody had done it, there would have been no problem.

But then, unfortunately, some nameless foreigner introduced western sun time. This, in its way, was also simple. Every day at sunset, you set your watch to read 6 o'clock instead of 12 o'clock. Western sun time was probably devised so members of the foreign community could keep some sort of relationship with the time zones of their home countries although local wits say it was because the British Embassy couldn't bear the thought of serving afternoon tea at 11 o'clock.

and this interesting bit:

Arabic time probably has its roots in the common and most logical system of timekeeping used most places in the world until about AD 1600. In those days, daytime was divided into 12 equal parts, and nightime also into 12 equal parts. Depending on the season, hours used in the daytime were either longer or shorter than hours used during the night. The sundials and astrolabes used as timekeepers were calibrated to divide into 12 regardless of the seasons. Thus, the same sundial could divide both a long summer daylight period and a short winter day equally into 12. The "day" was made up of 24 hours and began at sunset. Twelve hours of darkness preceded 12 hours of daylight, although the hours in the daytime were not the same length as the nighttime hours.

[elsmere241]

One idea I've seen floating around would be to combine Pacific and Mountain time zones into "Western time", which would be UTC-7 year-round (Pacific Daylight/Mountain Standard).  Eastern would absorb Central and be UTC-5 year-round (Central Daylight/Eastern Standard).  It might mean tweaking the boundary between the two in some places.

That'd mean a two-hour time difference between western and eastern Nebraska, or anywhere else along the Mountain/Central boundary.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/daylight-saving-time-is-terrible-heres-a-simple-plan-to-fix-it/281075/?utm_source=btn-facebook-ctrl2

Oops - I misread the article.  Western time would be UTC-6, or Mountain Daylight.

This year, Americans on Eastern Standard Time should set their clocks back one hour (like normal), Americans on Central and Rocky Mountain time do nothing, and Americans on Pacific time should set their clocks forward one hour. After that we won't change our clocks again–no more daylight saving. This will result in just two time zones for the continental United States. The east and west coasts will only be one hour apart. Anyone who lives on one coast and does business with the other can imagine the uncountable benefits of living in a two-time-zone nation (excluding Alaska and Hawaii).

[Pete from Boston]

In the spirit of tolerance, we should all honor the personal choices of every individual to choose his or her own time zone regardless of their geography.

I'll be using the Saudi reset-at-dawn system.

I thought they reset at dusk.

Sorry, that's what I meant.  I'm in a fragile mental state due to the harsh stress of coping with the time change that we also did every other year without any serious issue.

[sandiaman]

As we speak, the legislature in New Mexico is debating  getting rid of  Mountain Daylight Time   and  replacing it with Central Standard Time.  Nearly everybody  here detests  changing  times twice a year, so  it might very well pass into law, it's a nonpartisan  issue.  We  would be like Arizona and keep one time  throughout the  year.

[Billy F 1988]

Seriously. Are certain people just bitching about DST for the sake of bitching or is there a legitimate point being made? I don't see a point being made from how I can tell.

[vdeane]

I wouldn't be surprised if much of the complaining about DST comes from early birds who don't understand that "but you can just get up earlier if you want your daylight" isn't a valid argument.  Personally, as someone who would sleep in to 11 every day if given the chance, I welcome the "extra" daylight.

I wouldn't be surprised if much of the support for DST comes from late risers who don't understand that "but you can just get up later if you want your daylight" isn't a valid argument.  Personally, as someone who has to be at work at the reasonable hour of 8 am, I welcome the "extra" daylight in the morning.

(The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our sun, but in ourselves.)

I can't think of anyone who works a standard shift who would be asleep for the end of the daylight (unlike with the start).  Personally, I like natural light, and don't like having it all wasted at work where I'm in a building illuminated by fluorescent all day long (though at least it isn't incandescent).

[Pete from Boston]

It's not wasted, trust me.  I'm out using it.

[Pete from Boston]

Seriously. Are certain people just bitching about DST for the sake of bitching or is there a legitimate point being made? I don't see a point being made from how I can tell.

You should read the comments sections of the inevitable newspaper columns about this that run EVERY SINGLE TIME CHANGE.  They are pretty much exactly those here.  It makes me feel like DST was invented to distract us from engaging in debate on issues of real importance before the internet took over that job.

[Duke87]

I wouldn't be surprised if much of the complaining about DST comes from early birds who don't understand that "but you can just get up earlier if you want your daylight" isn't a valid argument.  Personally, as someone who would sleep in to 11 every day if given the chance, I welcome the "extra" daylight.

More to the point here is what's driving whom. "11 AM", or any number assigned to a particular time of day, is a construction of society that has no meaning to our natural circadian rhythms. And yet, because of how we live our lives, we obsess over what number is on the clock to the point where this has more impact on when we sleep than what the sun is doing.

In a world without clocks, no one would have this problem. You would wake up according to where the sun was and that would naturally gradually shift over the course of the year. But because we have imposed these artificial clocks upon ourselves, we keep forcing our sleep schedules to constantly bend in ways that are unnatural in order to synchronize with the artificial clock.


When I wake up is largely dictated by when I go to sleep. This is usually at about 1-2 AM, simply because of habit. I am not always 100% happy with this habit, especially in winter I find myself wishing I could wake up sooner to maximize my exposure to daylight. But doing that would require shifting habits to go to bed sooner. Which is rather difficult when you have people in your life who sometimes want to be out into the wee hours of the morning and will give you grief if you try to tell them you want to be in bed earlier than that, and a flexible work schedule that doesn't care if you wake up late and therefore gives you no reason to not do so.

The flipside to this, of course, is people whose jobs or school require they get up early and therefore are waking up in the dark rather than sleeping away sunlight.

So the best thing to do then is perhaps to examine what forces are driving our schedules and seek to shift things if we are made to wake up too early or too late, if at all possible.

[texaskdog]

Seriously. Are certain people just bitching about DST for the sake of bitching or is there a legitimate point being made? I don't see a point being made from how I can tell.

You should read the comments sections of the inevitable newspaper columns about this that run EVERY SINGLE TIME CHANGE.  They are pretty much exactly those here.  It makes me feel like DST was invented to distract us from engaging in debate on issues of real importance before the internet took over that job.

Sounds like a South Park episode.  Everyone will be worried/confused while something major is going on.

[1995hoo]

In the spirit of tolerance, we should all honor the personal choices of every individual to choose his or her own time zone regardless of their geography.

I'll be using the Saudi reset-at-dawn system.

I just remembered I have an app that tells me the current date and time under the French Republican Calendar (an utterly useless app, to be sure, but mildly amusing from time to time when I deal with French people). Now that one REALLY underscores how time is a human construct.

As I type this, the current date at my location in the French Republican Calendar is 19 Ventôse an CCXXIII and the current time is 9:36–note there are ten hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour, and 100 seconds in a minute. It freaks some people out if you tell them it's 8:73.

[kkt]

I just remembered I have an app that tells me the current date and time under the French Republican Calendar (an utterly useless app, to be sure, but mildly amusing from time to time when I deal with French people). Now that one REALLY underscores how time is a human construct.

As I type this, the current date at my location in the French Republican Calendar is 19 Ventôse an CCXXIII and the current time is 9:36–note there are ten hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour, and 100 seconds in a minute. It freaks some people out if you tell them it's 8:73.

current Julian day number and fraction of a day: 2457092.48056

Not completely useless, the day number is used by astronomers.  The fraction of a day, not so often.

[english si]

Seriously. Are certain people just bitching about DST for the sake of bitching or is there a legitimate point being made? I don't see a point being made from how I can tell.

DST gripes are mostly not about DST per se, but how our artificial social time (when society chooses to do something, rather than the arbitrary number on the clock) relates to the natural solar time. Similar questions occur when discussing whether, say, NM should be on Mountain or Central Time or whether Western Europe (esp GB, France, Spain) should be on London or Berlin time (WET or CET).

Summer time is not an issue from May to August, when its fairly pointless as there's plenty of daytime to go around anyway. September-October and March-April, however there are issues as there's enough daylight for both ends of the working day to have some daylight, but which end deserves more light? Are we usefully using the daylight between 6-7am or would it be more useful between 6-7pm. Some think 'no' as they are asleep, some think 'no' as they are awake (and don't want to do something before work, like errands that they do after work and then complain that its too dark for the leisure activity they wanted to do). Some think 'yes' as they are asleep but they need that daylight sleep to finish their sleep cycle, some think 'yes' because they do something with it.

Can we transcend the vagaries of our physical location in the universe, the material nature of our bodies? Can we live our lives led by arbitrary numbers that we made up, rather than the day/night cycle that exists? That is the philosophical difference between Modernity and Post-Modernity, and so an important question for us in the transition between the two Ages. In fact, this question (while it could also be phrased as the seemingly inane 'How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?') of the interaction between the material and mystical, body and brain, is perhaps the most important philosophical question ever.

As agricultural people, we tended to work fewer hours in winter and more in the summer to compensate for the changing amounts of light throughout the year. As industrialised people we have tried to transcend the seasons - perhaps that hasn't worked.

I just remembered I have an app that tells me the current date and time under the French Republican Calendar (an utterly useless app, to be sure, but mildly amusing from time to time when I deal with French people). Now that one REALLY underscores how time is a human construct.

Actually, the French Republican Calendar underscores how time isn't a human construct, only how we measure it is - it totally collapsed as a system. If the clock/calender was just something arbitrary, then it wouldn't have mattered (it was the calender that killed it with its 10 day week).

Arguably, for sure, what number is on the clock is meaningless. But we give those numbers meaning. And while where what number is where in the day/night periods is totally meaningless, when we give the number '8' the meaning of 'start work', it does matter where it is in the day/night ebb and flow as our awake/sleep pattern is linked to that day/night pattern. Do we want to work at the end of the day, or the beginning? When do we wake up in relation to dawn? When do we go to bed in relation to dusk?

These questions were roughly sorted - the work day was near, but not quite at, the beginning of the day and the middle of the work day was after (solar) noon, starting two-three hours after equinox dawn and ending an hour before. We've always been a species that is awake from around dawn to sometime after dusk. As such, our moves in the last 100 years to make our social day start earlier with respect to the sun than they did before (not just the shifting of timezones and DST, but the earlier start times) seem silly.

[texaskdog]

I slept until 11 am Sunday.  I have no right to complain about "losing an hour"

[1995hoo]

....

I just remembered I have an app that tells me the current date and time under the French Republican Calendar (an utterly useless app, to be sure, but mildly amusing from time to time when I deal with French people). Now that one REALLY underscores how time is a human construct.

Actually, the French Republican Calendar underscores how time isn't a human construct, only how we measure it is - it totally collapsed as a system. If the clock/calender was just something arbitrary, then it wouldn't have mattered (it was the calender that killed it with its 10 day week).

Arguably, for sure, what number is on the clock is meaningless. But we give those numbers meaning. ....

That's what I meant by "human construct." It's indisputable (except maybe to people who utterly fear and despise science?) that the Earth makes a complete rotation on its axis at a particular interval and that it makes a complete revolution around the Sun at another particular interval. What you call those intervals, and indeed what significance you ascribe to them, is the "human construct." That is, there's nothing to say you couldn't define what we think of as a "year" as consisting of two orbits around the Sun (though I don't know why you'd do that). Our concepts of the length of a year and the number of days in the year are pretty reasonable ones based on the periods of revolution and rotation. What I meant by a "human construct" is how you divide those periods further.

There's nothing inherently "necessary" about dividing a day into 24 hours, or a year into the months we're used to using–indeed, I think there's a good argument that the months as we're used to them are arbitrary and unnecessary complicated. The "Shire Calendar" discussed in the appendices to The Return of the King showed a lot of logic through the use of a "blank day" not assigned to a standard weekday, which allowed every month to be the same length and eliminated the issue of every year starting on a different day of the week. The French Republican Calendar's use of the five Sansculottides/les jours complémentaires (six in leap year) was a stab at this sort of thing but not quite the same. Of course in the real world there are some major religious objections from people who feel there's something sacred about the concept of a seven-day week. The French Republican Calendar did away with the seven-day week in favor of the ten-day décade (this is one of the things that made it unpopular because it meant fewer days off work) and, as noted in my prior post, divided the day into 10 hours of 100 minutes each, with a minute consisting of 100 seconds. As I type this sentence at 9:21 EDT, the time under the Republican Calendar is 3:89!

People who dislike DST as being illogical ought to support calendar reform efforts that would even out the months and have a standard calendar for every year (say, every year starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday, including leap years). Of course this would be potentially confusing for people whose birthdays or anniversaries change dates, but the same thing happened with the shift to the Gregorian calendar and everyone eventually adjusted OK. (Thomas Jefferson's birthday was April 2, 1743, Old Style, and he insisted on that date appearing on his grave marker, yet for some reason the University of Virginia observes Founder's Day on April 13, which was his birthday New Style. George Washington's birthday was February 11, 1731, Old Style, but until the Monday holiday law, the US government observed his birthday on February 22 because the New Style date was February 22, 1732.)

One way to see for yourself that how we define time, including the time of day, is a human construct is to watch animals. Animals clearly have some sense of time. Animals who are creatures of routine, say for being fed, will show up at or near the same "time" (from a human standpoint) every day, though obviously they have no idea that we consider it 5:30 or whatever. But they also don't know we set the clocks ahead last Sunday and for a while after the "time change" there's a very good chance they'll show up at the "wrong" time. There's a feral cat who visits our deck every day looking for food. All winter she's shown up around 5:30 PM. This week she's been showing up at 6:30. Of course that's the "same time" if you don't know the clocks were set ahead (5:30 EST is 6:30 EDT). We first saw the cat last July and I don't remember how she adjusted last November when the clocks went back.

Here's the cat a few weeks ago....she runs away to our neighbors' deck if I so much as throw the bolt to unlock the door, but she comes back after I close the door. She seems to be terrified of any human contact, though she's happy to take food and is always looking in the window while eating, I guess to see where we are.

[texaskdog]

Some things just change over time.  Just because something has always been one way.  Businesses used to be closed or had short hours on Sunday and overnight, and now many are open those times.  Why does the sun have to be straight up at noon?  Who says? 

[J N Winkler]

Presumed length of the year under the Gregorian calendar is 365.2425 days, while actual length is 365.2422 days.  We paper over this difference by using intercalary "leap seconds," which is one reason some timekeeping devices will appear to drift from the actual time.  The DST change is a useful opportunity for resynchronizing old-tech devices (unlike, say, computer and smartphone clocks, which usually get their time over the Internet) so that they all change to the same minute at the top of the minute.  Even electronic devices like quartz wristwatches will show time drift due to temperature differences.

[english si]

Of course in the real world there are some major religious objections from people who feel there's something sacred about the concept of a seven-day week.

It wasn't that that got the French to change their minds - it was that humans are suited to 7 day work-rest cycles, not 10 day ones. They changed to decades for religious reasons, being religiously (and viciously) against even the hint of religion. But the decades were scrapped entirely after 10 years, even though the calendar remained for another 3, because the decades did not work. The Soviets (for similar religious reasons) tried similar overhauling the 7 day cycle, only to find out that the best results occur with 7 day cycles...

You can label/divide stuff how you want, but you cannot then change your schedule to match those divisions and labels if you do so ignoring the natural rhythms we have/have to put up with.

People who dislike DST as being illogical ought to support calendar reform efforts that would even out the months and have a standard calendar for every year (say, every year starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday, including leap years).

I'm sorry, that makes no logical sense as an argument...

One way to see for yourself that how we define time, including the time of day, is a human construct is to watch animals. Animals clearly have some sense of time. Animals who are creatures of routine, say for being fed, will show up at or near the same "time" (from a human standpoint) every day, though obviously they have no idea that we consider it 5:30 or whatever. But they also don't know we set the clocks ahead last Sunday and for a while after the "time change" there's a very good chance they'll show up at the "wrong" time.

Which suggests that animals are wired up to the earth's rotational position, which suggests that we are too...

Who says?

No one but the straw men of DST supporters who don't have a real argument for not having the sun straight up (or roughly so) at noon!