FInally!
British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time
191–200 of 583 posts
Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time
#192I'm in BC. The astro-nerd in me would have preferred to see permanent Standard Time instead of a permanent +1 offset. Instinctively, I think morning light is important to our biology for a daily reset and the solar cue of "high noon" is also a real thing. I'm sure I've read that sleep health experts have historically supported a change to permanent Standard Time, not DST. I respect there are economic arguments for pe…
About 50% of people want permanent standard time, 50% want permanent DST, 50% want to keep time changes. Doesn't add up? That's the point.
Everyone finds arguments that suits them. Some will quote "sleep experts", others will mention economic reasons, others will talk about road safety, each one with studies proving their point, peer-reviewed for the most sophisticated.
My take is that we are all different, and whatever you choose, some people will be better off, others will be worse off. There is a high chance that that variety is an evolutionary advantage, at least it was for our ancestors, as a group where everyone is sleeping at the same time is more vulnerable. Not great for office hours though.
Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Average school start/end times in BC are 8:30 AM and 3 PM. Standard time in Vancouver puts sunrise/sunset at 8AM/415PM at winter solstice for standard time. That's 30 minutes of daylight before school and 75 minutes after school. IOW, kids are more likely to be walking in the dark in the morning, even with standard time. Switching to daylight time will switch sunrise/sunset to 9AM/515PM, guaranteeing kids will be wal…
if it ends up being an issue, then the schools could just change start time?
But that's the whole thing.
Why change the clocks when we could change the definition of school time, business hours, liquor/gambling licensing hours, construction noise hours, etc? Just use standard time and then base our society around the physics of the sun.
Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't you just get up at a different time if you prefer different sunlight?
Will all jobs, schools, stores, etc also change their working hours?
Usually there are several hours of reasonable buffer in the morning. We're only talking about moving wakeup time by one hour here.
Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the world tends to prefer to not be too far from the center of the timezone (where solar noon matches solar time in standard time). Geographic and political boundaries make it so that often it's more red. The extremes of north and south tend not to care as much because it doesn't matter as much. https://andywoodruff.com/blog/where-to-hate-daylight-saving-...
I don't think that explains it. The "red" offenders are basically Russia, China?, Sudan, Argentina and Alaska. The only "green" offender is Greenland, which is still large enough to enough red to justify it. I get China, it aligns with the population density. Sudan likely wants to have the same time as Somalia and Ethiopia. Why Argentina? Why Alaska? And why does Russia basically have zones that range from +2 to the…
I'd have to dig to try to find out what the date on this would be.
Russia is telling since they changed their timezones in 2016. I'm going to note that timezones are also a political identity too. https://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/russia-new-time-zones.... For a map https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Difference_between_l... and the Wiki article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Russia#Russian_Federat...
China is aligned with Beijing and the rest of the country follows from when noon in Beijing is.
Sudan's history is in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Sudan
Argentina is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Argentina - My speculation would be that Argentina (the east coast especially) wanted to be economically synchronized with the coastal cities of eastern Brazil. Buenos Aires and São Paulo being on the same timezone makes it easier for the two of them to do business.
Alaska used to have four timezones. In 1983, they were consolidated into two timezones - Aleutian and Alaska. Being in -9 rather than -10 brings Anchorage closer to the Pacific west coast in its business day with the note that it doesn't matter too much when solar noon is if sun is up for 22 hours or 5 hours.
Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll correct myself: it sounds good for about 5 seconds before you think about it and realize it's an unworkable idea which creates more problems than it solves.
I have all my clocks set to UTC. Works for me
Good for you. I am currently living in Japan, and I don't want sunrise to happen at 21:00, noon at 3:00, and sunset at 9:00.
Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time
#197I am so jealous. I hope the entire West Coast can follow this example.
Indeed. Very much hoping WA hops on board. I know we stalled after 2019 but I wish we'd just hop on board.
Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Notably Washington state legislated the same change to DST years ago (instead of standard time, the morons!) but the federal government never approved the switch. AFAIK it's still pending. I remain unclear what authority the federal government has over such a matter and why Washington (or any other) state has opted to respect it. What are they going to do if a state just ignores them and switches their clocks? Someti…
I read elsewhere this may be partial reason why BC forged ahead. As Canada/US relationship is on the rocks and BC stopped waiting for the US to change.
Nailed it. It's been ~5 years, and the odds of coordinating with the US grow smaller by the month.
Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time
#199Reminder that a few hundred years ago when clocks were oddities we didn't have to deal with any of this madness because everybody used True Solar Time as a sundial would read it. What time do kids go to school? After the sun rises. Simple. Now that we have clocks it suddenly becomes difficult to schedule simple things like sending kids to school in sunlight.
While true, I'm not sure what your point is? Centuries ago, everyone got up at sunrise to tend to the farm because the farm needed tending at sunrise. These days, organizations like schools and grocery stores need to coordinate with hundreds to thousands of people daily, and "angle of sun in the sky" is nowhere near precise enough. Let alone phone calls and instant messages that travel across many timezones.
I'm merely saying that the mass adoption of clock time for planning daily routines was an industrialist conspiracy to get people working when by natural right they should be sleeping.
We could easily have software presenting time to us as true solar time. We're not limited to gears and levers anymore, our "clocks" now have GPS and can trivially calculate solar time with that. Doing this one off is easy. The problem is society at large still trying to make plans like when to start work shifts or school hours based on a system of time that flies wildly out of synch with Earth's natural rhythms throughout the year.
Massive self-own for humanity.
Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (against fresh drivers) How many people roll out of bed, rush out the door and jump in the car before they're actually awake? In my circles, that would be a larger percentage that of those that get up with plenty of time to wake up. I'm not sure any time of the day is safer regarding attentive drivers. Especially if we're going to consider idiots on their phones while driving.
There is still a typical morning routine of an hour. How long do people need to wake up? If they are chronically tired is this going to get better through out the day?
Personally, I need multiple hours. I'm not the type to open my eyes, jump out of bed, and hit the floor running. I'm more the type of "fuck, why am I awake?" but then at the end of the day if there's stuff to do, I can be up for a while. So I'm much better at night than in the morning. Even if I'm my keyboard at 10am, I'm still not up to speed. My best comes later in the day. I think part of that is I've worked for places for so long that I was in meetings all day, and never got to do my actual job until late in the day when everyone else was winding down.