> When you’re in standard time, the sun at noon is, in most places, right above your head—you’re really aligned. When you’re in your daylight saving time for eight months of the year, you’re an hour off, and you're getting not enough light in the morning and too much light at night.
This seeems silly. "Noon" is a made-up thing, there is nothing in your body that "knows" it's supposed to be when the sun is right over head -- which by the way will be an hour off anyway from the eastern to the western edge of a time zone. There is nothing in your body that says you have to start "work" at 9am.
In the winter, in most of the USA, certainly the northernmost half, you are getting not enough light in the morning AND zero light 'at night' either way -- there are only so many hours of light to go around no matter where you put the clock. In the summer, at the same locations, you're getting plenty of light in both morning and night.
Having grown up in Detroit area (western edge of timezone) and then lived in Chicago (eastern edge of next timezone over), that makes as much of a difference as DST does, does it mean that people in one of those places "things are just off-kilter" regardless of DST? Which one? Or both? If this guy thinks noon with sun directly overhead is so important, he should presumably be advocating for many more timezones, perhaps with 20 minute offsets? But that still wont' actually change "how much light" we get, the sun and the earth's physical relationship that effects how much light is in a given day at a given location and date doesn't care what the clock says.
> I personally am an advocate for permanent standard. The reason I am is because I look at light as really important for our well-being, our mood and our sleep. Getting enough light, especially in the winter, is critical.
I have lived in several places in the USA, in every one I both wake up and go to sleep in darkness in winter. So I am getting all the light there is to get, either way. No DST change would change that, unless you change it so it is getting light before I wake up or after I go to sleep! Now, how much light I can get when I'm not stuck inside during work hours can change -- but it's permanent DST that would maximize the light available when both awake and not during standard business hours, which is exactly why people like it, because they want to get more light when not at work.
There's lots to say about DST, but this professor seems to have some odd theories about the "natural" state of the completely socially constructed clock time.