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End Daylight Savings

petitions.whitehouse.gov

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Re: End Daylight Savings

#21

Post by Someone »

codex wrote: post #14
repsilat wrote: post #3

One real problem with daylight savings is that it goes the wrong way. The idea was that in the winter there would be fewer hours with the sun up, and it made sense to put those hours in a more useful part of the day. When daylight savings was introduced, that "more useful part of the day" was earlier in the day. That doesn't hold today, though - as TFA says, most people work indoors under artificial lighting, and shi…

DST doesn't shift daylight hours earlier in the day; rather, it ensures that the sun rises at approximately the same time every morning, regardless of season.

Time of sunrise various much more than an hour once you are far enough away from the equator. For example, http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.php gives over 2 hours for Texas, over 3 hours for New York and almost 4 hours for Washington.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#23

Post by [deleted] »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #16
zanny wrote: post #13

While we are at it, can we get rid of time zones and switch the world to UTC? I get that it is a jarring idea to not be getting up at 8am anywhere in the world, but for international travel, computing, shipping, etc not having to constantly adjust dates and times across arbitrary lines of longitude would be such a boon. I don't get why people inherently need 6am to be the early morning, 12pm being "high noon", and 6p…

This is a hugely bad idea. You'd still need a system to keep track of local relative time of day. For example, let's say you need to schedule a phone call with someone in another part of the world, how do you determine what time you should call? There are many, many other similar problems. How do you encode all of that information? It turns out, you'll need something almost as complex as the time zones we have today.…

[deleted]

Re: End Daylight Savings

#24

Post by chris_j »

zanny wrote: post #13

While we are at it, can we get rid of time zones and switch the world to UTC? I get that it is a jarring idea to not be getting up at 8am anywhere in the world, but for international travel, computing, shipping, etc not having to constantly adjust dates and times across arbitrary lines of longitude would be such a boon. I don't get why people inherently need 6am to be the early morning, 12pm being "high noon", and 6p…

Ironically, this idea would make international travel more difficult in some respects because, when travelling to what today is in a different timezone, you would have to memorise a different set of times for when to get up, go to and from work, when to eat meals etc.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#25

Post by anigbrowl »

zanny wrote: post #13

While we are at it, can we get rid of time zones and switch the world to UTC? I get that it is a jarring idea to not be getting up at 8am anywhere in the world, but for international travel, computing, shipping, etc not having to constantly adjust dates and times across arbitrary lines of longitude would be such a boon. I don't get why people inherently need 6am to be the early morning, 12pm being "high noon", and 6p…

Time and navigation are intimately connected. I can work out my direction during daylight hours by observing the sun and knowing the time. I have no desire to do a longitudinal conversion every time I think about the position of the sun in the sky.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#26

Post by anigbrowl »

[deleted] wrote: post #23
InclinedPlane wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a hugely bad idea. You'd still need a system to keep track of local relative time of day. For example, let's say you need to schedule a phone call with someone in another part of the world, how do you determine what time you should call? There are many, many other similar problems. How do you encode all of that information? It turns out, you'll need something almost as complex as the time zones we have today.…

[deleted]

I don't.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#27

Post by codex »

Someone wrote: post #21
codex wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DST doesn't shift daylight hours earlier in the day; rather, it ensures that the sun rises at approximately the same time every morning, regardless of season.

Time of sunrise various much more than an hour once you are far enough away from the equator. For example, http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.php gives over 2 hours for Texas, over 3 hours for New York and almost 4 hours for Washington.

Yes, hence the "approximately." The current system is a compromise; you can't go slewing the time continuously across latitudes and day of year, at least not yet, but you can't shock people with three hour jumps, either. I for one would welcome two dimensional time zones and continuous slewing. In an era of smart timekeeping, anything is possible.

Re: End Daylight Savings

#28

Post by [deleted] »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #16
zanny wrote: post #13

While we are at it, can we get rid of time zones and switch the world to UTC? I get that it is a jarring idea to not be getting up at 8am anywhere in the world, but for international travel, computing, shipping, etc not having to constantly adjust dates and times across arbitrary lines of longitude would be such a boon. I don't get why people inherently need 6am to be the early morning, 12pm being "high noon", and 6p…

This is a hugely bad idea. You'd still need a system to keep track of local relative time of day. For example, let's say you need to schedule a phone call with someone in another part of the world, how do you determine what time you should call? There are many, many other similar problems. How do you encode all of that information? It turns out, you'll need something almost as complex as the time zones we have today.…

[deleted]

Re: End Daylight Savings

#29

Post by codex »

In an era of smart timekeeping, I would much prefer the opposite: minute DST adjustments every single day to ensure that sunrise is always at the same time of day, everywhere. This is how we evolved, after all: to awake with the sun.

This would imply two dimensional time zones (one per state?) with a non-trivial conversion function between zones. Once everyone's watch is GPS and Internet enabled this should be straightforward.

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