Looking for everyone's opinion on this.
Mine. I basically started me life as a farmer when I was 4 years old and helping me dad and me mom. Us farmers ALWAYS measure the "day" as "sunup" to "sundown," not some stupid fucking timepiece known as a clock (or watch). Even today, some 40 years later of not being a farmer, I still measure a "day" as being from "sunup" to "sundown" and "night" is from "sundown" to "sunup". My feelings is that Daylight Saving Time (DST) should be utterly eradicated and made illegal under penalty of death.
The next time it rolls around, we should just set the clocks 30 minutes ahead or back, depending upon when it is done, then leave the clocks alone. Man has survived without the need for DST for hundreds of thousands of years. We can get by without it now.
The USDOE (Department of Energy) states that by using DST, we save about 5 to 8 percent on our energy costs during the summer months here in the US. I say it is bullshit. A class I was in studying GIS did a study and showed it is actually only about 1 to 2 percent, making DST a useless function.
Just wondering what y'all thought.
rmfr
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Re: "Do we need it?"
In a word: Nope.
(Now to go actually read the OP.)
After reading the OP, I will now elaborate and say that I think DST is one of the stupiderested ideas ever. I detest the whole practice. Totally useless concept, as far as I'm concerned. Pisses me off every time we have to make the change.
Alert the media!
Not half as daft as not fixing the date of Easter.....
Ideally, the working day should be malleable, changing with the seasons.
Just as Tin-Man said:
I tend to disagree...…..
I have little evidence to back my prejudice ….. but I think it would be worth while to arrange a proper study ...…
after all it would be a pity to have to explain to workers made redundant that their company was tipped over the edge by the extra costs of heating and lighting factories and workshops in the colder darker days of winter...…
also the effects of putting more traffic onto rush hour roads in low light periods need looking at....how many extra accidents ?
And I suspect the adverse effects of stopping the clock change would increase the further north you go.... areas of northern Canada ,Alaska ,Norway ,Sweden would be condemned to near perpetual darkness...… because .? ……… some people can't be bothered to change their clocks
I've just done a very cursory check on Wiki.... and it appears that there are many and varied arguments on both sides..... but "generally" it would seem that the further from the equator you are the more benefits you get....
No … keep the clock change....
(Edited to clarify my stance)
In New Zealand it worked fine, because it's one country with one time zone. We saved power because it stayed light longer in the evening. Now I live in Queensland, Australia. There are several states across several time zones. Some have daylight saving. Queensland doesn't. But Telstra, the biggest telecoms company, still doesn't understand that. So twice a year it resets everybody's mobile phones backwards or forwards an hour at 2am and then takes days to fix the mix-up.
Yep, her in Western Australia we are 2 hours behind New South Wales and Queensland an hour and a half behind Adelaide and Darwin, 2 hours behind Hobart in Tasmania...then in comes DST
2 hours behind Brisbane, 3 Hours behind Sydney, 2 and a half hours behind Adelaide and Darwin, 3 hours behind Hobart....and they want us to have DST in Western Australia so as to uncomplicate matters!
It has been voted down twice after a five year experiment and still they try to bring it in...
Anyplace below the equator doesn't count, anyway.
HI, Old Man! I've missed you. How come you don't curse, anymore? What the fuck is your problem?
@ MB
I curse just fine...when the recipient or subject fucking deserve it or I feel like highlighting important information to drill some fucking sense into some dim $#%s head.
Otherwise, as it says in my profile, I am a sweet, good natured old chap with nary a hard word for anybody.
Old Man, and you're kissable with those big smoochy lips. Don't forget that.
@Magnificent Beast: Anyplace below the equator doesn't count, anyway.
Couldn't agree more. But do you know which way is up?
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After reading MB's reply, I was waiting for that map to show up.
rmfr
Rocky Mountain Feline Rescue
Algebe, I just love that map. It still amazes me that there are college kids who think the US map is what is viewed from the moon.
!!!! thanks
While I knew the view of the planet from outside of it, say the moon, would result in a view of whichever side of the mostly spherical planet happened to be facing the moon at the time.
I have forgotten that "north" being up on the map and south being "down" is completely arbitrary. A decision like borne of popular vote where the buyers of maps would have the bulk of the target buyers general location "on top, front and center" with everything else being on the sides or below back in the infancy of map making, before map makers made the orientation of their global maps roughly similar to avoid confusion.
And here's a map centered on New Zealand. Let's call this planet Waterworld.
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I like that, it looks so peaceful.
Totally correct. However, in my works, I have created maps where North was towards where West would "normally" be, or to the East, even towards South. It all depended upon the map I was asked to create. It also depended upon whether the map was in "landscape" or "portrait" style, or was "square." One thing I learned in one cartography class is, "It matters not how you orientate the map, but you ALWAYS need to indicate the orientation of the map.
Seven things ALWAYS required on a map: Orientation, Scale, Title, Legend, Authorship, Boundary, Source(s). I always remember this by the acronym OSTLABS.
rmfr
We don't need it.
Edit
I believe DST started in England during WW1. It worked there apparently because they won the war. In any case I have always thought it was a pointless exercise.
It was introduced here in Oz to conserve energy resources and give people more time to concentrate on their tans after work. I doubt it saves energy. People just get home earlier to turn on their air condtioners and electric fans, music systems and observe the age old ritual of having the television on while no one is watching it. The tans are turning into skin cancers.
To save daylight you need only get everyone up earlier by just setting the entire daily schedule back an hour and leaving it. Not as effective in winter but its better than stuffing about in NSW wondering what time Old Man is having his breakfast.
Why the ACT, NSW, Victoria and SA need to torture the other states in Oz doesn't make sense unless you enjoy that sort of thing.
If God had intended daylight saving he would have fucked around with planetary movements and orbits so that we didn't have to.
^edited because I only just got up and still only half awake.
Up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, sunrise and sunset in June is 5:04 AM and 10:07 PM. In December it is 8:48 AM and 4:16 PM. DST makes a huge difference up north.
It makes sense where the difference in the lengths of days are so extreme.
But don't feel so bad, in Newfoundland their clock is a half hour ahead (or behind, depending on your persepective).
I have not read the other posts but I remember why DLST was enacted. Children were going to school and coming home in the dark. The laws were passed to protect school children from being run over by cars on their way to school in the morning or coming home in the evening. I remember a time before DLST and standing at the bus stop in the dark. DLST was enacted in my area of the country in 1967. I recall the time before and the time after. I think DLST is very useful. I would not change it or do away with it.
@Thread
In this modern time of high speed internet, nearly instantaneous global communication that can even feature video conferencing in high detail. A time with artificial lighting, the ability to engage in a wide variety of activity that nighttime used to mostly preclude, (even things such as entertainment) The day/night cycle has lost a lot of meaning and relevance.
Unfortunately, our bodies built on millions and millions of years evolution that always had the constant huge impacting nature of day night cycle does not just go away. Precise time keeping is also a new phenomenon, it was not until the 20th century did most people have access to precise time measurement, right around the same time did our access to night time activity beyond sheltering in place with our closest "tribe", for the most part become a thing.
These two above mentioned realities clash in a major way. Our physical bodies are amazingly adaptable, but there are upper limits. DST is sort of a lousy soggy band aid fix for some of the major issues that come up with the new modern reality of time keeping and access to new activity that takes place when the sun goes down. In a lot of ways modern night time activity with all its artificial light and millions of years of nature and evolution are irreconcilable.
Evolution built us physically to have a loose schedule of being active during daylight hours, and mostly inactive at night, sheltering in place and sleeping. A powerful indicator of one's overall mood, wellbeing and happiness is how closely the person follows the more natural day/night cycles, with a person that works night shifts, and *tries* to sleep during the day being on the extreme end of more likely to be depressed or lower overall health/wellbeing. A sudden enforced 1 hour change in an already fragile and non ideal sleep/activity schedule already damaged by dissociation of the day night schedule can be very damaging. We tend to be creatures of habit, habits that are supposed be around the day night and seasonal schedule, not precise time measurement schedule.
In my teen years I used to have a terrible sleeping patterns, did not sleep well, all kinds of issues. I spent a month outside camping on a wilderness trip, no watches or timepieces allowed, within a few days, I was easily waking up at dawn, not even very tired. Within a week or 2 I easily fell asleep and slept soundly, even on essentially uneven dirt and rock with a small thin pad. And woke up at dawn (was in June so 5 am or so) without even thinking it was "early" or being tired. Our tents were simple sturdy tarps and rope, we slept shoulder to shoulder, I remember one night (we were in the mountains) it snowed, did not even notice until I woke up at dawn that there was icicles of partially melted snow on the hair at the top of my head that was outside of the sleeping bag, I still slept like a baby. (We did have good sleeping bags!)
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Looking at overall energy costs and usage, I imagine DST's effect is a drop of water in the ocean. The real conversation here is about peak load on the grid.
When does that happen? In the summer months in the lower 48th in the middle of day to the early afternoon, when air conditioning units are all running, for many places in the US. A problem being help solved by solar, hey thats time for (pun intended!) solar units to shine. And grids charging different rates for different times of the day. All the huge supercomputing farms (mainly crypto currency mining these days) frequently will operate off peak hours to have cheaper rates so they can stay competitive in the razor thin margins left over from electricity costs.
Eh.. I rambled on, oh well.
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As have I. The best and most restful sleeps I have ever had was when we went camping with only tents. Like you, no watches, no clocks, no phones, nothing from the "modern world" at that time. As always, my "farmer" timekeeping came right back as if it were never gone.
We should do as the peoples do on my fantasy world of Onaviu. Provided they are not in the higher latitudes > 25° N/S, the first hour of the day begins just as the sun peeps over the horizon. Mid-Day, or noon, will occur at the 7th hour (since Onaviu's day is 28 hours). Sunset will be at 14th hour. Mid-Night will occur at the 21st hour. Day's End/New Day will begin on the 28th/1st hour. That is how our clocks should be adjusted. If 0800hrs is desired to be close to mid-morning, then our clocks should automatically adjust themselves in accordance to when sunrise is. When sunrise occurs, the clocks automatically set themselves at 0600 hrs. Thus, 0800hrs can be near mid-morning which occurs at 0900hrs. It would not be too difficult with today's technology to build clocks that can do this. And I do not give a god damned rat's ass how this would fuck up the financial world or not. In fact, I don't give a damn how this would fuck anybody up. We should all be returned to the "farmers" timekeeping method.
And yes, I understand about the children going to school in the dark and coming home in the dark. Fuck that whiney-ass bullshit. Even with DST as it is now, there is still a month's worth of time, in both Autumn and Spring, when this happens. If we were to make clocks/watches self-adjusting in accordance to "sunrise," then this bullshit would never happen. Our children would always be going to school and coming home in the daylights regardless of the season. The only places where this would not work are those places near, at, and above the Subpolar Circles.
As said we should just eradicate DST under penalty of death, build clocks/watches that are self-adjusting, returning us to the more natural "sunup to sundown" and "sundown to sunup" day/night cycles.
As LogicFTW says, this truly no longer matters especially with three to four workshifts everywhere, the Internet and WWW, it truly no longer matters. However, as I pointed out, no matter the day or the season, it would mean our children would always be going to and from schools in the daylight. There would be some exceptions, but they would be so exceptionally rare.
rmfr
And before y'all point out the obvious.
Yes as our clocks and watches automatically reset themselves with 0600hrs = sunrise, that would mean the previous day would be either less than 24 hours (as the time of daylight lengthens between the winter to summer Solstices) or more than 24 hours (as the time of daylight shortens between the summer to winter Solstices). However, think on this. Even though this would occur, it still balance out as we transgress from year to year.
rmfr
I do love to hear the horrid stories from people who forgot to wind back/wind forward. Some are really sad, but some are just hilarious. Nobody is safe from making an ass out of themselves with DST.
Shouldn't there be a carnival when the time changes? Like Fat Tuesday. Some heathen ritual based on astronomy and beer and sausages.
Well I know it makes computer programming a nightmare. So much so that often a different scheme for calculating time is used. And remember Y2K? Well this scheme has a similar problem in 2038. So you kids enjoy that Easter egg we left for you!
Awww, Nylar, thank you for calling me a "kid"!!!
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