Daylight Saving Time: Should It Be Abolished? (VV #3)

[Mushet]

Yes. The government shouldn't be in charge of controlling the time. Let the free market decide what time it is.

I like taco vendors as much as the next guy, but I don't need them dictating to me that every hour is taco hour.

[Eahland]

Ether have daylight savings time or standard time .
But this switching back and forth is nuts .

Twice a year? I daresay all your electronic devices take care of it for you. So maybe you reset a couple of analog clocks. Big deal. I personally like long summer evenings.

This is rather disingenuous. The problem isn't setting actual clocks - all of mine except the one on my dash (which I ignore because it doesn't keep time well in any case) are NTP-synched anyway. The problem is changing the internal circadian cycle. Left to my own devices, I tend to run on Martian time, 24.5-hour days, anyway. Switching back to real time isn't a problem; I just let my cycle drift like it wants to anyway for a couple of days. But turning my cycle backwards for DST is hard. It's not a matter of just jumping into bed an hour earlier. That just means I lie in bed awake for an hour, and get to sleep at my usual time, and have to get up with an hour less sleep than I need. And it takes more than just a day to convince my circadian cycle that I need to go to sleep earlier. I'm always sleep-deprived for weeks after the spring switch. (I'm in the U.S., so we did it a few weeks ago, and I'm still not adjusted to it.) I am not alone in this. Accident and injury rates shoot up in the days following the DST switch.

And it's pointless. There are no significant energy savings from it. Maybe there were once, but increasingly people don't use that shifted daylight after work or school to do things outside. Their TVs and computers use the same amount of power whether it's light or dark outside. Studies of the recent U.S. extension of DST showed no actual savings, and it cost billions to implement. Woo, there was a winning idea.

And it makes a mockery of the very concept of timekeeping.

It's nice that you like to get up earlier and go to bed earlier in the summer. Hey, maybe you could do that on your own without messing with everyone else's sleep.

[AiliailiA]

Studies of the recent U.S. extension of DST showed no actual savings, and it cost billions to implement.

Studies eh? I like studies ...

[Wisconsin9]

Please expand on your opinion. Please say something like "it should be left up to the states" so I don't have to admit that I agree with United Russian Soviet States about something.

It doesn't really matter very much.

It's killing people and has no particular benefits.

[AiliailiA]

Twice a year? I daresay all your electronic devices take care of it for you. So maybe you reset a couple of analog clocks. Big deal. I personally like long summer evenings.

Then maybe DST should be the new standard. Moving clocks forward in the springtime causes more traffic accidents and bad decisions in workplaces brought upon by additional sleep deprivation for the week following the shift (the first Monday back to work is especially bad). This is what happens when you take people who are already sleep deprived and give them one less hour of sleep.

Also, it sucks to go from waking up with the sun coming up to waking up in the dark when you're just starting to get hopeful about the season.

Last time there was a thread about this, I wrote up a proposal to change the time gradually, each day throughout the year.

But then I kept writing, and kept drinking, and tried to make time-zones continuous too. As one travelled West, one's watch would slow down or even go in reverse (depending on how fast one travelled, and latitude). And one's timekeeping device would run fast as one went East.

Because I enjoy making up such things, particularly when I'm drunk, I kept writing. And of course drinking. The realization that travelling East or West at high latitudes changes timezone sooner than travelling East or West at low latitudes, led me to also propose that the daylight-saving should be calibrated to latitude. The basic idea is that the sun comes up at the same time (say 6 am) everywhere outside the Arctic and Antarctic circle, and everything else (including the sun being at its highest at noon, people on opposite sides of the street agreeing on the time, etc) gives way to that.

It's one of those things that just needed a final polish and check over for spelling before being posted. It was still sitting there on my screen when I woke the computer up the next day ... not posted. Maybe I'll publish it some day, in Ailiailia's Big Book of Bad Ideas.

[Infected Mushroom]

Give me 5 hours back for my timezone (Pacific time)...

then abolish it permanently.

Please.

[AiliailiA]

Give me 5 hours back for my timezone (Pacific time)...

then abolish it permanently.

Please.

If you go to UTC, you'll get more than that! 8 hours I think (depends on whether you have DST currently).

Just to sweeten the deal, let's all go to Tonga Time. Everyone but the Tongans would get some extra time. Up to 25 hours of it!

[Infected Mushroom]

Give me 5 hours back for my timezone (Pacific time)...

then abolish it permanently.

Please.

If you go to UTC, you'll get more than that! 8 hours I think (depends on whether you have DST currently).

Just to sweeten the deal, let's all go to Tonga Time. Everyone but the Tongans would get some extra time. Up to 25 hours of it!

if only i could have a cause of action in time theft against the government...

I lost an hour of study time this year due to the silly government policy...

[Olthar]

It serves no purpose anymore. Get rid of it.

[AiliailiA]

If you go to UTC, you'll get more than that! 8 hours I think (depends on whether you have DST currently).

Just to sweeten the deal, let's all go to Tonga Time. Everyone but the Tongans would get some extra time. Up to 25 hours of it!

if only i could have a cause of action in time theft against the government...

I lost an hour of study time this year due to the silly government policy...

Oh right. You want more time. I offer you a proposal to give you 8 or 21 hours more time, and you start bitching about 1 hour of time "the government" stole from you.

You don't have cause of action. You signed up to that course in full knowledge that the clocks would be reset part-way through it. Failure to manage your own study time is YOUR failure.

Idiotic misappropriations of blame like that, make me wonder whether you deserve any further education at all.

[SJT]

If we're going to still use the imperial system and Fahrenheit, we should at least abolish this madness.

Hell yes, let's m'fing burn its ass until it disintegrates. It wastes energy, causes accidents, makes people give less of a f*ck overall, and reminds us that we're still in a state of "war". Personally I think that the US government should let states in separate time zones decide, or just switch the zones based on longitude.

Also, we should start organizing individual county, or even state "protests" and have entire communities refuse to observe DST. Then maybe the government will listen and stop ignoring the few million signatures DST petitions have had.

[Pope Joan]

Let's set things up so that we get lots of evening sunlight.

Fight obesity; go take a stroll, or go cycling. In safety, when it's still daylight.

Go roaming in the gloaming.

[Infected Mushroom]

if only i could have a cause of action in time theft against the government...

I lost an hour of study time this year due to the silly government policy...

Oh right. You want more time. I offer you a proposal to give you 8 or 21 hours more time, and you start bitching about 1 hour of time "the government" stole from you.

You don't have cause of action. You signed up to that course in full knowledge that the clocks would be reset part-way through it. Failure to manage your own study time is YOUR failure.

Idiotic misappropriations of blame like that, make me wonder whether you deserve any further education at all.

Careful now.

[Naushantiya]

It should most definitely be abolished.

Vive la Révolution.

Why?

good luck trying to ask them to type more than 3 words

as for me idk so idc

india never had it

[AiliailiA]

Oh right. You want more time. I offer you a proposal to give you 8 or 21 hours more time, and you start bitching about 1 hour of time "the government" stole from you.

You don't have cause of action. You signed up to that course in full knowledge that the clocks would be reset part-way through it. Failure to manage your own study time is YOUR failure.

Idiotic misappropriations of blame like that, make me wonder whether you deserve any further education at all.

Careful now.

Meh. "Misappropriations" might have been the wrong word, I just wanted to use a really long one there.

It's hard to tell when you're serious. Do you really think it's the government's fault that you "lost" an hour of study time?

[Infected Mushroom]

Careful now.

Meh. "Misappropriations" might have been the wrong word, I just wanted to use a really long one there.

It's hard to tell when you're serious. Do you really think it's the government's fault that you "lost" an hour of study time?

I think the But For causation is clear. But for the government's implementation of Daylight, I would have had an extra hour this year. This is time theft. Sure, they'll return the time eventually but its still a form of misappropriation.

[Kalosia]

I live on a tropical island where DST doesn't exist, and frankly, we're all confused why it is even thing, and why it should be.

The sunrise and sunset hours fluctuate here too a bit, so if we can handle that, then I'm pretty sure y'all should be able to too.

[AiliailiA]

Meh. "Misappropriations" might have been the wrong word, I just wanted to use a really long one there.

It's hard to tell when you're serious. Do you really think it's the government's fault that you "lost" an hour of study time?

I think the But For causation is clear. But for the government's implementation of Daylight, I would have had an extra hour this year. This is time theft. Sure, they'll return the time eventually but its still a form of misappropriation.

Whether it's stolen from you then returned later, or loaned to you then taken back, depends on whether your academic year is the calendar year or the high school year.

Not knowing which applies to you, I couldn't say.