The return to Standard Time: hate it hate it hate it
So, why turn the clocks back to Standard Time in the fall? After all, that’s when we really need to save—or rather, to extend—the daylight.
Yes, I know. In winter the “savings” comes in the morning, so that early risers and especially all those schoolchildren don’t have to get up and wait for the bus in the dark. But when the afternoons are already so short—especially in these northern latitudes—it’s a bite when, right after Halloween, we get the added treat of afternoons ending almost before they begin.
Yeah, that’s an exaggeration—but night falls way too early nonetheless. And then it gets dark earlier and earlier as the days get colder and colder, with the solstice arriving just before Christmas.
And yet you may be surprised to discover (as I was some years ago) that the winter solstice, which occurs between December 20th and 23rd and is the shortest day of the year, does not feature the earliest sunset of the year. That event occurs at variable times but usually a few weeks earlier, depending on where one lives. The days continue to get shorter after that because the sunrises get later at a faster clip than the sunsets do.
I would be plenty happy if we just stayed on Daylight Saving Time year round. Nevertheless, there’s something to be said for sunsets. Very much to be said for sunsets.
Therefore, as a little turn-back-the-clocks gift to you, I offer the following video. The music isn’t quite my cup of tea, but you might want to go to the big-screen version at You Tube to get the full flavor of the glorious visuals:
Neo, I STRONGLY agree with you on this issue.
I know it’s supposed to be for ‘farmers’ or whatever.
I say we pick a time and STAY with it.
Why do I feel so strongly?
Being in the computer field for 20 years, I see how many pointless and countless hours is spent on time correction issues.
Most systems are automatic now but yet not because people push the time change up recently.
Issues of ‘time’ and computers is a big thing. There is a better way to spend those resources.
It’s like taxes being so complicated that people have to purchase accounting time. That is a net negative to our economy to have to have so many resources spending time just for taxes and tax accounting.
If taxes were so simple you could do it on a post card, all the people who did that job could be ‘creating’ or ‘building’ or providing ‘services’ that benefit us in some other way.
The French economist who taught the broken window theory of economics showed that when a shop’s window is broken it is not a benefit to the community to have that shop owner pay a glass person, etc. The money could’ve gone to research and development, his own employees, to something that builds up (not rebuilds).
Anyway, I digress as I usually do. I have to get back to my tile project. I’m in the finishing stages (grouting) of tiling my fireplace. It used to be fake rock (which was SOOO ugly).
I, too, prefer to stay on DST year round. I get tired of this having to change the clocks, the vcr’s, watches, etc. Just leave it as is and live with the cycles of nature.
I’m in favor of standard time year-round. It’s closest to nature. DST was a creation of government.
What I don’t like is that it’s dark when I leave home in the morning and dark when I leave for home at night. I’d like to see what the world looks like at least once a day, y’know?
Standard Time is best. No need to “save” daylight. Much more cozy and romantic when the lights are dimmed. It’s nice when you can put a period, and simply end the day, when it should be ended….at 5 pm. I like the idea of a cut-off point. Time always flies when you are having fun. If time stands still, and the day never ends…….how much fun can you really be having ?
You want time to pass….and to see the day end. The sooner the better.
Maxine-
I have to go with neo and above comments.
My birthday is Summer Solstice — and the longest day of the year! And I LOVE it!
Before I “retired” (still do freelance) I hated going to work in the dark morning and by the time I left it was dark, too. I rarely took a lunch break, and rarer still out of the office, so it was like never having daylight. Yuck!
I would be plenty happy if we just stayed on Daylight Saving Time year round.
Sing it, Sistah!
I hate this switching back and forth. However, the good folks over at The Corner posted a little story that reminded me there is some good in everything:
Back in 1999, terrorists on the daylight-saving West Bank built several time bombs, delivered to co-conspirators in Israel and scheduled to explode at a set time. Problem was, Israel had just switched back to standard time, so the only people injured were the terrorists themselves when the bomb detonated an hour earlier than they expected and killed them all.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDE0ZjA2YjcxMGNmN2I1NzJkNzhiNDFhYWU2NDVkNTY=
I agree with you, but sometimes I wonder why we don’t go the other way. It’s still hot here – 84 today – and we would make good use of the extended evening daylight. So I wonder why we don’t spring doubly ahead in fall. Do double daylight time, like England did during the war.
I seem to be in the minority here. 8)
I think it’s pretty anachronistic, myself… 😉
I’m with ricki – stay with standard time year-round. Let the clock be correlated with solar position, as it should be.
According to this:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html?n=179&month=11&year=2008&obj=sun&afl=-11&day=1
The latest sunrise would be at the end of December, at 8:20am (in New York City). That means that a lot of kids would start school before sunrise. That seems rather ridiculous. Our body reacts to sunrise and sunset, and it affects our stamina during the day, so we can’t just ignore it like that.
I’m going to have to disagree on this one. I am one of those people who feels like today is a holiday. It’s the day I get to start going into work an hour later every day! Woo hoo!!! It’s a day that puts a smile on my face every time it comes around. My problem is that I tend to stay up a bit too late and so getting up gets harder and harder until, suddenly, it doesn’t! Yay!
I agree, why keep switching back and forth? Oh, wait—why not just turn it back one last time and not turn it forward ever again? Shouldn’t noon be when the sun is the highest and midnight in the middle of the night? The whole thing is an industrial era nonsense.
I’ve never understood why the schools and whoever else supposedly requires this can’t just adjust; i.e., as of 11/1 we’ll begin our winter schedule and school will now begin at 8:30 instead of 7:30 or whatever. (The farmers, I totally don’t get — can’t they get up and milk the cows or feed the chickens or reap the sorghum etc. whenever they feel like it?)
I drive on semi-rural roads to work. There really are kids at risk in the dark, unfortunately, who are out waiting for busses along those roads. I hate the switch but accept the rationale.
I’m with the “Standard Time year round” crowd. DST is a pain, especially after living in AZ for 18 years where they stay on MST year round. Remembering to change clocks is a pain and probably costs a small fortune in productivity and missed work every year.
If it was DST all year around, how would that be any different than standard time all year around?
It’s all relative.
I am tired of the government “borrowing” (stealing, really) things from me to give them back to me at a later date without any interest.
While I am thrilled to get my hour back, they’ve had it for 8 months (rather than the 6 I grew up with) and I am only getting an hour back!
I should be getting, at least, an hour and ten minutes.
But I’d be happier with the government not touching my hour in the first place.
As for you folks arguing that you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark and the government should do something about this?
You are part of the problem.
So what’s the problem with just shifting all time zones east one measure? Eastern becomes Atlantic, Central becomes Eastern, Mountain [aka Twilight Zone – ever see an announcement telling you Mountain Time?] becomes Central, and Pacific becomes the new Mountain Zone.
Oh, and let’s remember that the zones were a creation to support standardization for the railroads as each town and village had a different measure. Made printed time schedules somewhat impossible. I think we move more by other means than railroad these days and can standardize for other reasons.
Neo squared,
Visiting relatives in England over the years and venturing to Scotland a couple of times to play golf. I was amazed – during the summer it is full light at about 4AM and doesn’t get dark until about 10:30 PM. Conversely in the winter it is getting dark at 3:30 PM and not getting light until about 8:30 AM. Personally I don’t mind daylight savings time.
Everyone is forgetting the real reason for Daylight Savings Times, and the constant tinkering with them — it allows the legislature to Do Something.
Doing Something is much more important to an elected official than doing the right thing, especially when doing the right thing means doing nothing, and leaving things alone. Better to pass laws that show you are Doing Something, so that your constituents can admire your legislation.
If Doing Something causes problems, better still. That is a feature, not a bug. It gives you an opportunity to Do Something the next legislative session to fix the something you did this time around.
After all, when the only tool you have is a shovel, the only way to get out of a hole with it is to keep digging.
I’ve been in favor of double-daylight time. When Haloween comes, set the clocks ahead *another* hour.
As to why do it at all — I’ve heard the theory that if Congress said everybody will get up an hour earlier there would be revolution, but for some reason fooling with the clock itself is ok (though my farming Aunt always refused to change her clocks from “God’s time”).
Totally agree with you. I hate winter time. I’m all about not changing our clocks, as long as we stick with summer time all year long.
The reason we don’t have Daylight Saving Time in the winter is because there is no daylight to save. In the summer, you get 16 to 17 hours of daylight — the Sun rises around 4 and sets around 8. But precious few people are awake at 4, so we just move our clocks so the Sun rises at 5 and sets at 9. Pretty much everybody can enjoy sunshine from 8 to 9.
In the winter, you get only 8 or 9 hours of sunlight — rises around 8, sets around 4. Sure, we could move our clocks so the Sun didn’t set until 9. But then it would’nt rise until Noon or later.
Can’t save something that doesn’t exist in the first place.
brilliant! — have the schools change start times. that would really help parents who need to drive their children to school.
oh and why don’t those darn farmers just milk their cows whenever — who cares that the cows need a regular routine.
and remembering to change the clocks — oh so difficult.
i also have a bridge to sell to the folks who believe that terrorists blew themselves up when they didn’t remember the switch in time — what, did the israelis change their timers for them and forget to tell them?
more neocon brilliance displayed all over this board
How about in the spring, we move our clocks forward 30 minutes and never bother with this time switching again.
(PS. There is a huge hidden cost in changing times. It affects payroll, record keeping in the transportation industry and other places where how to handle the change is logically unclear.)
Maybe, when Obama is elected, the sun will shine all the time.
Finally!
I just about live for the week after the “fall back.” If someone ran on a platform of moving 8am back an hour every month, I’d vote for him for whatever position he was running for. Mr. Obama, it’s not too late for you to get my vote.
The dairies hated DST when it first came out, because housewives wanted their bottled milk at the same time they had it before, and the cows didn’t understand that humans think clocks mean something. Farmers get up really early and work around the daylight; in my experience, they don’t care much about times of day. This was one of the reasons for public schools, incidentally — teaching those sloppy farming kids how to behave in a manner conducive to factories running on a schedule.
I say we all go by some single standard time (say, whatever time it is in Kansas City, defining noon as the sun’s highest position on the longest day of the year) and convince ourselves that times aren’t important, because they are totally arbitrary. The only issue would be scheduling live events such as football, and the considerations would just sound different (instead of “it’ll only be 4pm in LA” it’s “it’ll be four hours before sunset and most people would be at work, in LA.”)
Seriously – what benefits come from having New York be exactly four hours ahead of LA? Why should Ohio go with the same time as NY instead of, say, Chicago? Why call a time 6am, when 6am means nothing except “six hours after that other arbitrary time that means nothing”?
Plus future generations can say stuff like “when I was your age, I had to get up at six in the morning to get to school, and spend an hour in traffic EACH WAY” while their children are taught at home in a vague mostly-time-ambivalent utopia and can get up whenever it feels right to them, woot. Who’s with me?
I was in Ensenada over the weekend where they do not tinker with the time so I almost missed my appointement at Hussong’s. Very confusing but I did prevail and was able to enjoy my yearly Dos Equis and few shooters of Patron tequilla.
I’m miffed that this year’s change to Darkness Savings Time didn’t come in time to give us an extra hour on Halloween!
you standard time lovers can get up at 4:30 in the AM and enjoy all that wasted sunlight. not me. too dayum early.