Daylight Savings Time

[3113]

Phooey! I hate "springing" forward and losing that precious hour...and I just don't see the point. Can't we be on one time schedule year round? Who benefits from this nonsense?

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Gardeners who have to go to work. That extra hour of light in the late afternoon/evening is precious.

 

[Cleardiamond]

blah.. good call...

thanks for reminding me

 

[sr71plt]

Gardeners who have to go to work. That extra hour of light in the late afternoon/evening is precious.

Why can't they just adjust themselves with the season--without adjusting all of us? In times gone by, it might have had a point with opening times of stores and such being narrow, but store hours are much broader now. I don't see the point either. The farmer isn't even any large proportion of the work force anymore.

 

[TE999]

Phooey! I hate "springing" forward and losing that precious hour...and I just don't see the point. Can't we be on one time schedule year round? Who benefits from this nonsense?

DST was started in WWII as a way of coaxing more production out of workers in defense plants. Hello! The war's been over now 65 years. Enough of this time change crap.

 

[Darkniciad]

The popular new argument to maintain this annoying ritual is that it's the "green" thing to do, supposedly saving energy.

Up until a couple of years ago, I didn't have to deal with this crap. Then, the numbskulls in Indianapolis lost their frikkin' minds and put us in the same archaic boat with everyone else.

 

[stephen55]

DST was started in WWII as a way of coaxing more production out of workers in defense plants. Hello! The war's been over now 65 years. Enough of this time change crap.

Hold on now!!

When you live as far north as I do, an earlier spring morning is like a really good cuppa tea.

It's kinda nice to get up to sunshine, now iddn' it?

Leave DST alone, thank you very much...

 

[Guest]

deleted

 

[3113]

Hello! The war's been over now 65 years.

How unpatriotic of you! Do you want the Krauts to win?

When you live as far north as I do, an earlier spring morning is like a really good cuppa tea.

We're perfectly happy to let you far northerners wake up an hour early, say, 5am rather than 6am? But why does it have to say 6am instead of 5am for you to wake up early and get more sunlight?

And doesn't daylight last like twenty hours that far north? You've got plenty of daylight at weird hours. You don't need to change the clock to get more!

 

[oggbashan]

The UK is considering double Summer Time, a whole two hours difference from GMT. It was used in WWII.

Scots are not amused because it will mean more morning darkness for them every winter.

Og

 

[LettersFromTatyana]

I love springing forward! Going to work in the dark is bad enough, but leaving work in the dark? That's terrible.

Add people who live on the eastern edge of time zones to people who love DST. EST is totally different in Michigan and Maine; in the latter, the sun sets before 5 in the winter. When I lived New England, we hated non-DST time.

For the record, DST started in WWI, stopped, and then started again in WWII. You can read all about DST, crazy Puritans, clocks, railroads, and timezones in this recent Times editorial.

And it was never about farmers. If you don't like it... blame Germany. They were the first adopters, to save on coal in WWI.

 

[EmeraldKitten]

I have mixed feelings about it.

I actually like this time change better, even though you lose an hour. Yay daylight!
I hate the fall one because it's dark. lol. There is only one day a week I leave work when it's still light out.

I don't think we 'need' to do it anymore, but which time is the correct one?
Cuz if we'd stay on the 'fall back' time all the time, I think I'd rather it keep changing, lol.

 

[Owlwhisper]

.....

 

[PennLady]

Given that DST was adopted (around WWI, I think), then discarded, then adopted again, then made permanent, I'm sure we'd all adjust if it was a year-round issue. I've heard various arguments for maintaining the current system (on/off), and it had to do with farmers, etc. I'm not sure I buy it. It was extended a few years ago (thank you Rep Markey, D-MA, Energy Act of 2004 or 5) so that's why we're March/Nov now and not Apr/Oct. I believe the original (and still underlying) issue was to reduce energy consumption.

I'd like to see it permanent; I just think it's kind of silly.

 

[jomar]

hahaha, I forgot about it...was wondering how it got so late so fast (clock on the dvr updates automatically).

 

[sr71plt]

Hold on now!!

When you live as far north as I do, an earlier spring morning is like a really good cuppa tea.

It's kinda nice to get up to sunshine, now iddn' it?

Leave DST alone, thank you very much...

No one's stopping you from getting up with the sun on your own volition. Me, I'm not a morning person even under standard time.

 

[3113]

No one's stopping you from getting up with the sun on your own volition. Me, I'm not a morning person even under standard time.

Here! Here! I'm on owl time nor lark. I wanna sleep in.

 

[3113]

I believe the original (and still underlying) issue was to reduce energy consumption.

I'd like to see it permanent; I just think it's kind of silly.

Hey, I'm all for reducing energy consumption--if it actually does that. But I'm in agreement. Why make it on-off if it saves energy when "on"? And, okay, I presume it won't save energy if people have to get up in the dark and turn on lights and so "off"--but if that's what we're after, why not match it to the equinoxes? Why stretch it to November if it's not going to do any good once the days start getting shorter?

 

[mynameisben]

I think everything about clocks and timekeeping is pure insanity. What sense does 24 hours in a day make? Or 60 minutes, or 60 seconds? It may have made sense centuries ago when the king of England's foot was 12 inches long, but the whole world has gone metric now. Everything, that is, except for our clocks.

There should be 100 hours in a day, not 24. (Since most people get paid by the hour, this should be a highly popular change!) There should be 100 minutes in an hour, and 100 seconds in a minute. And while we're at it, we should re-map the earth and do away with the cockamamie 360 degrees, 60 minutes, 60 seconds bullshit, once and for all. A 100-degree circle works fine for me. People who work with degrees, minutes, and seconds professionally waste time every day converting to decimal degrees. Most of these folks are surveyors getting paid by your tax dollars, and they usually get the math wrong, anyway. Metricate the damn angles and clocks already! Why continue making the unnecessary necessary?

Daylight Saving Time can suck my butt. What savings are we getting out of all this enforced jet-lagging and losing of an hour of sleep? Who are we kidding, saying we're squeezing an extra hour of daylight out of the sun when we surrender that hour back in the fall anyway?

The greener earth argument is full of it, too. Staying the course is the most energy efficient way to go. You don't get better gas mileage by speeding your car up and slowing down. Constancy is what maximizes energy efficiency. Cycling of energy is what destroys. A light bulb may be designed to last a thousand hours, but you can burn it out in a single day if you keep flicking the light switch on and off like a maniac

Daylight Saving Time is just like flicking a light switch on and off, twice a year. We're playing with fire -- that's all we're doing -- on a foolhardy, celestial scale. The Sun is a giant nuclear reactor, larger than all the nuclear reactors on Earth combined! Unlike the highly engineered, testaments to reliability and safety here on Earth, the Sun is a completely unregulated and uncontained nuclear reactor, whose radiative flux has been detected extending out into space 93 million miles and beyond. Now, the idiots in charge of governments around the world want to continue imposing biannual heat-up and cool-down cycles on this supermassive nuclear reactor? The Sun is not a light bulb. When the Sun burns out, we're all going to be in deep, cosmic doo-doo. And CFL's aren't gonna save us either.

I lost an hour of sleep last night for no good reason. Please excuse me if I sounded a little cranky.

 

[TheeGoatPig]

I wish I had known it was switching over last night. I went to bed too late and almost overslept for my kung fu lesson this morning. Next year I am just taking a day off from my lesson to save me the trouble...

 

[RoyceConnors]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time

Here's the low down on DST and why it needs to go.

 

[stephen55]

I wish I had known it was switching over last night. I went to bed too late and almost overslept for my kung fu lesson this morning. Next year I am just taking a day off from my lesson to save me the trouble...

It was last night?

Damn....

 

[HeyAll]

I actually prefer this time slot because at 12pm, it still looks early outside. It's more relaxing when you go yout during the day because it feels like you have more time to handle your buisness.


The very worst are the sunny days in Nov/Dec. When it's 12pm, it looks like it's 3pm and the sunlight is orange.

 

[Handley_Page]

Quite why the UK is even thinking about DST (or BST, as we call it), is a complete mystery to me. Obviously there will be a few problems for a country the size of the US, but little ol' England ? no.

just start the day an hour earlier!

 

[Weird Harold]

Quite why the UK is even thinking about DST (or BST, as we call it), is a complete mystery to me. Obviously there will be a few problems for a country the size of the US, but little ol' England ? no.

just start the day an hour earlier!

Doesn't the UK have a lot of laws that are hard-coded to specific times of the day?

I'm thinking of Pub hours specifically, but I seem to recall things like pharmacies and banks also have legislated hours. Asking a bloke to to go to work an hour early and then wait an extra hour before the pubs open is asking a lot.