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The Time Wars Have Begun.
President-Elect Trump has put his weight behind ending Daylight Saving Time. Pretty much everyone likes the idea, but immediately the perma-DST vs. Noon-Is-Noon factions drew up battle lines.
I’m not here to litigate that battle, it’s tiresome; all the points have been made elsewhere and basically come down to if 9-5 or 8-4 (solar time) is what our civilization should stick with, and what we should call them, for the sake of the children and for having some evening daylight after work.
Instead I propose that schools and businesses start using “sundial time”.
They’d open at, for example, one hour after dawn and be open 8 or 9 hours. Retail stores, bars, and other businesses that rely on evening business could base their workday around sunset, closing at (let’s say) three or five hours after sundown.
Their door signs could be IOT smart displays, automatically coordinating with a virtual sundial based on their GPS coordinates, with translation into noon-based time. Smartphones could show these times pretty easily, via a settings switch.
We even have the Latin abbreviations AL (ante lucem), PL (post lucem), AV (ante vesperum), and PV (post vesperum) ready to go.
The major plus would be health, as instead of one hour jumps in spring and fall causing heart attacks, times would adjust only minutes each day, steadily.
Would you be opposed to this in your city/town, and would you be more or less opposed if your political rivals suggested this? Do you have any priors re which political tribes would hold which opinions?
Are you PDST or NIN and a night owl or early bird, and do you think that influenced your other answers and arguments? (For transparency, I’m a Noon-Is-Nooner night owl.)
This comes up every year around clock change time and perma-DST people and noon is noon people are equally moronic. The mere existence of this debate is proof that time changes are needed. Seriously, if you can't handle two time changes a year maximally coordinated to minimize inconvenience, then you should never be allowed to get on an airplane again in your life. Or stay up past your bedtime. Or sleep in. Or do anything else that results in any mild disruption to your precious sleep schedule.
Losing an hour of sleep on a weekend is something I can deal with once a year. But as a white-collar worker who gets up at normal o'clock, waking up in the dark is something I do not want to deal with on a regular basis, as it is noticeable harder to get going in the morning when it's still dark. I currently have to deal with this maybe a few weeks out of the year. Permanent DST would have me deal with it from the end of October until mid-March, and I really don't want to fucking deal with that. Conversely, if we eliminated DST altogether it would mean I'd forfeit the glorious hour between 8 and 9 in the summertime when it's warm and still light enough to do things outside in exchange for... it getting light a 4 am. To those early birds who think that it getting light a 4 is just as good as it staying light until 9, you either do not have a job, a family, or other real-world obligations. The average person isn't getting up at 3:30 am to sneak a round of golf in before heading to the office. For those of us who don't get out of work until 5 pm or later, that extra hour in the evening is a godsend.
So can we stop this perpetual bitching? Time changes were implemented for a reason, and people who think we'd be better off without them have never actually lived in a world without them. The benefits are all theoretical. When permanent DST was implemented during the 1970s, the program was cancelled within a year because people couldn't abide the first winter. And very few people want to end summer evenings early. This has to be the stupidest debate in American political discourse; just leave things where they are.
Dude nobody gives a shit about how early or late it gets light. It's not a big deal. Changing clocks, on the other hand, is an inconvenience for everyone and it messes with time calculation as the Count rightly pointed out. If you're going to call people "moronic" you best bring an argument better than this weaksauce "oh no it'll be dark when I get up for work" shit.
Nobody is saying that changing clocks is the biggest inconvenience in the world. The point is that there's no corresponding benefit, so why keep it?
I have no idea how to bridge the fact that this is the exact opposite of my intuition and experience. I couldn't possibly give a shit less about the clock changing. I travel pretty often and my clocks change by more than an hour without it being a big deal. Working hours starting while it's still dark out, on the other hand, actually sucks and this seems completely obvious to me. I'm baffled by people that feel differently. Getting up when it's dark sucks.
Yeah I dunno man. It probably goes without saying, but I'm equally baffled that there are people who genuinely care whether the sun is up when they get up. I believe you, I just can't understand it on a visceral level. Maybe it's the difference between morning people and night owls? I find waking up to be kind of unpleasant no matter what the light is like, so I guess maybe if I didn't feel that way I would notice more of a difference. Not sure though.
It’s not just that it’s dark but also how long it stays dark. Where I live sunrise between dec and Jan is somewhere 7:10-7:30.
My children get up for school at 6:45 and we drop off around 7:40 and school starts at 8. It starts getting light somewhere around 1/2 hr before actual sunrise so this basically means that dawn is just cracking or will be soon when they get up in the winter. If we went dst all year, it would mean school started in the dark. ‘Just start school an hour later’ doesn’t really work since it’s timed to start before the workday, also getting out an hour later means getting home in the dark.
If the argument is to push work hours as well, at this point you are making the argument against dst all year long, since you’re effectively countering it with a shifted schedule.
It’s not really about whether the sun cracks through your window and touches your face as you wake up. It’s about coordinating even the slightest amount of social complexity to maximize both winter and summer differences
You seem, probably unconsciously, to be using arguments as soldiers here.
As things stand, your kids are already getting home in the dark, so that’s not a good argument to oppose any changes to the DST status quo.
In many parts of the country, it’s just not possible to have sunlight both before and after the work/school day. DST and choice of time zone have nothing to do with it.
It's not an argument as a soldier, it's a stupid mistake of math on my part. Shifting both the time and the school day an hour wouldn't change the fact that my kids don't get home in the dark, you are right.
But the broader point stands: pushing both the school day and the time and my work an hour, undermine the argument for DST all year long. as it effectively negates it. My arguments are:
Personally, I find the idea of standard time year round much more palletable
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Right but I don't see why "start school in the dark" is something you put out there like it's an obvious nonstarter. That seems perfectly fine. Ditto for getting home in the dark. The state of the sun when I'm going about my day doesn't matter to me in the slightest, and I fail to understand why it matters to some people here.
Just registering for the sake of completeness that I find sunlight in the morning hugely important. Sunlight is one of the most cheerful and vitalising stimuli we have, tied directly into a bunch of our natural circuits.
I think there may be a genetic or cultural component - it’s much more common in Asia to treat the Sun as an enemy. In my last office there was a running war between the European employees who wanted the blinds open and the Asians who wanted them all shut.
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