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US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

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Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#231

Such a terrible idea compared to permanent standard time. There is plenty of light during the summer, so there's no need to optimize for that. The winter is when daylight is scarce, so that's what should be optimized for.

Personally, I have wanted more daylight in the evening hundreds of times in my life, at least. It's the obvious result of average workdays ending at 5 or 6 (or later) and our "free time" being restricted to a sliver of daylight much of the year. But how often have I wanted more daylight in the morning? Basically never.

As a late riser, I have never had a good time getting up before the sun. If you woke me before sunup and asked how much I would pay you to let me sleep until dawn, I would probably try to sell you sell my own mother for the privilege, if it were permanent.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#232
post #162

I love this. I'd even go as far as to support permanent double daylight saving time. Let's get those daylight hours in the evening where they can do some good!

So more dark hours in the morning when it's more dangerous.

Dusk is the most dangerous time to drive, and driving is the most dangerous thing most of us ever do. Standard time guarantees most rush hours, meaning most of our driving, will occur during part of dusk. Permanent daylight saving reduces the amount of rush hours that occur during dusk.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#233
The country of Elbonia passes the bill for the "moon bashing act" and permanently forward the clock by _12_ hours (and not just a laughable one hour), after Elbonien scientists discovered that the cost savings for street lighting alone is equivalent to half of their gross domestic product.

... and i will adjust my clock dynamically, so i'm never too late again.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#234

This means permanently EDT/CDT/MDT/PDT? Or would EST/CST/MST/PST all be shifted by +01:00? I am also curious if Canada or other countries would follow suit.

Ontario has already passed a bill saying that it will make DST permanent if 1) Quebec and 2) New York State make it permanent

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#235

This means permanently EDT/CDT/MDT/PDT? Or would EST/CST/MST/PST all be shifted by +01:00? I am also curious if Canada or other countries would follow suit.

The bill (which you can read here, it's super short: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623...) adjusts EST/CST/MST/PST etc to be +01:00. If you dig into the bill it's referencing, it defines US timezones based on UTC so this is just adjusting the time +1 hour based on that original bill.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#236
Thank god. Every change causes hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in damages.

Case in point-- my pool cleaning pump that was supposed to run for This is in spite of prior years effort to fix this specific issue.

This same kind of dysfunction is repeated all across the country from homes to industry. Thousands of tiny cuts, significant increases in automotive accidents, and a measurable increase in all-cause mortality even excluding the auto accidents.

After this is activated the next damage producing time meddling to fix is leap seconds: Without leapseconds it'll take 4000 years for solar time to drift an hour -- and if people still exist care about solar time agreement with some arbitrary clock numbers at that point they can simply adjust all the timezone definitions by an hour at that point and be good again for thousands of additional years.

Like the DST changes leapseconds cause an enormous amount of disruption and failure and as more of our electronic systems depend on precise synchronization the amount of disruption is only increasing.

While the displacement of leapseconds is shorter, they are more rare than DST changes so systems are less likely to be tested against against them. In particular, we haven't had a negative leapsecond before but they're possible and one will almost certainly happen in the not-distant future if we continue to apply them.

Unlike DST whos times are perfectly predictable except for politics, leapseconds also have to be signaled shortly before they apply. This creates a massive amount of additional complexity and avenues for error and security vulnerabilities. With the development of solid state atomic clocks we could reasonably expect to see affordable timing devices that never need to be set in our lifetimes, -- but they couldn't keep accurate time in a world that used leapseconds.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#237

Does this mean that I will no longer be able to smugly remind people that there is only one 's' in "daylight saving time"? It was really the only reason I could see for keeping the biannual time change around.

Don't worry. You still have hot water heaters.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#238
I live in Indiana, where we didn't change time at all until ...was it about 10 years ago? I forget. We were EST year round It was wonderful not to have to deal with DST.

But then we started observing DST and ...glory be, we had sunlight in summer until after 9 pm! That was quite a revelation, and very welcome.

So I'm all for permanent DST. Or putting Indiana in the Central time zone and observing permanent Standard Time.

But that ignores the people on the other side of the Eastern time zone who have a very different experience with when the sun is out.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#239

Can someone explain why they actually care about this? I always see such strong opinions on it but really, why does it matter to you? Most clocks are digital and change automatically these days and otherwise changing your clocks twice a year is such a minor inconvenience. And whether or not the light should be preferred in the morning or vending is probably a pretty even split. Maybe it’s better to get rid of it (I d…

It's not really about the the hassle of changing clocks, or even really about the shift itself, though it is annoying and completely arbitrary. While the time shift itself does matter if you know people in locations that do not observe any DST (like Arizona), its mostly just about the time of day when its light out.

I have yet to meet anyone in my circle who prefers standard time (lighter in the morning) over daylight savings time (lighter in the evening). Admittedly, its a small samples size, mostly made up of engineers who tend to start work later and end later. But there are also many teachers and parents who operate on the asinine schedule of schools which require children to be present and learning as early as 7:30am.

Personally, I am never awake before the sun, whether in summer or winter, so I am much happier when the sun stays up later in my day. When the clock shifts back in the winter, it gets dark by around 4:30 or 5pm, and I find myself not wanting to work as late into the day. In the spring, when the clock shifts forward, I immediately start working later without any specific effort; it just happens naturally.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#240

This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. There's a reason why "Standard Time" is called that. Now the words "Midday" and "Midnight" are meaningless. The measurement of time is a science, and science should not be decided by politicians. This seems trivial, but if this, then what next? Edit: I'm getting a lot of replies saying that "midday" isn't precisely the middle of the day, and therefore I am wrong, but even s…

Midday and Midnight are not meaningless and have never been based on the numbers of the clock. Those are terms for "about halfway between sunrise and sunset" and "about half way between sunset and sunrise" respectively.

The measurement of elapsed time is a science. The time of day however is a number that represents how far along you are in one rotation of the planet, relative to an arbitrary 0 position +/- an offset.

The arbitrary 0 position has always been political.

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