x1000. We pretend it's another time because the government tells us to. What the ever-loving hell. Every spring, when the feds steal an hour of hard-won daylight from my morning, it is like a kick in the gut.
my ex worked in shifts, you can imagine how happy we were when the time change in spring and he had to work an hour longer, and then in fall, when he was in another time table and he did not get off an hour earlier.
Here in the US several people say it is because of kids having to wait for the bus in the dark. Heck, we went to school by foot or on bicycles in Belgium and both the going and the coming in the dark. Kids nowadays are totally spoiled. What will they do when they have to go to work in the dark!
They have to wait on the bus in the dark either way. In standard time, it’s in the evenings that it is dark when they get off the bus. In the spring forward time change, they are waiting for the bus in the dark in the morning. That is a stupid excuse
absolutely. And then , what is so hard to stand in the half-dark in the driveway of their own home anyway? I think it is much better to have it in the morning. They get home at 3,40 now and still have some light to play outside. Usually it are only the children of the Mexican families that play though. I suppose the others are just getting behind their computers LOL
No thanks. When I sneak home early in the morning from a summer night of debauchery, I prefer to do it in darkness, not under a glowing sky hearing the birds chirping.
Apart from ending your comment with an insult, you also start your comment with a logical FAIL of understanding a perfectly fitting metaphor. What is WRONG with you ?
Would you be so kind as to point out what you call my 'logical FAIL'? I can't see it and I suspect that you are simply unable to understand my point. I could be wrong so I'm giving you the opportunity to prove me so.
The 'insult' is the only conclusion to be drawn from Bruno's clearly supportive quote of the stupid old 'native American'. Whites don't think the blanket is longer; we merely increase the usable portion by shifting what is unused to where it is needed so producing more, thus being more successful and therefore able to take over lands in which the 'natives' have done nothing for thousands of years but live in savagery.
“ DST is insidious for its contagious properties and because it remains just below the threshold of serious annoyance required to animate opposition. It is nevertheless a noxious exercise in social engineering that nobody should have to put up with.”
Which is why we must protest wearing masks, mandated vaccines, "hate speech", and any other "noxious exercise in social engineering that nobody should have to put up with".
The persistence of daylight savings time is evidence that even simple things cannot be remedied by government. Except for Arizona, where apparently some kind of metaphysical vortex near Sedona has protected them from this foolishness.
It's not so much the vortex (though it does seem to have the power to attract weirdos to Sedona) as the fact that we don't want any extra daylight during the summer!
In the times when we had sun dials instead of clocks ,we knew what time it was ,except when it rained .By changing time around with clocks ,the whole solar system may get confused and start running backwards ,thanks to the politicians .
"Juneteenth" is actually worse, being built on half truths. But it was a wonderful way for Biden to distract from the fact that the last place in America that abolished slavery and freed slaves was his home state of Delaware, six months after "Juneteenth".
In due course, I'm sure every "marginalized" group will successfully lobby for more federal holidays. I'm told we're now celebrating "Transgender Awareness Month." As if we're UNAWARE of transgenderism.
As for the post office, few people would notice if it disappeared. I buy one packet of postage stamps each year--and use them only for mailing birthday cards.
This is an extremely valid point. Thanks for sharing. I've actually never worked anywhere where I get paid holidays lol. It didn't take long to decide that self-employment was a better deal.
Thanks for sharing the link. I'm passing it on to others.
1. I live near an Ace Hardware, operated for 60+ years by one family. It's closed on Easter Sunday, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Year's Day.
2. My calendar tells me that Columbus Day is now also known as "Indigenous People's Day."
3. In New England, there's a weather phenomenon in autumn when after a few weeks of chilly weather, there are two or three days of warm weather. It's was generally called "Indian Summer." My friends & I have (tongue-in-cheek) begun to call it "Indigenous People's Summer."
The thing about all the made up holidays in America is that they are neatly spread throughout the year so there’s a three day weekend every month. In The Netherlands we are stuck with a bunch of religious holidays in the spring that no one even remembers the significance of and no other holidays the rest of the year until Christmas. Oh and if Christmas falls on a weekend, you don’t even get a day off!
A weekend Christmas in the US generally becomes a "Monday Holiday," and results in office histrionics over who gets to use a "vacation day" on the Friday preceding the three-day weekend.
Also in the US, Presidents Day--formerly Washington's Birthday--is the Official Buy-A-New-Car Weekend, when car dealers try to move the previous model-year cars off the lot.
To my knowledge, Hallmark has not created greeting cards for this event.
It's odd that Southern US states even need daylight savings time. The closer a jurisdiction lies to the equator the less the variation of daylight hours throughout the year.
I like the footnote. I’m a fan of summer time, I’d actually prefer the we set the clocks ahead 2 hours and keep it that way. I do a lot of work in the garden and it will soon be dark at 5:30 which makes it difficult to do much during the week with my work schedule. And yes, I garden all winter - a benefit of living in Florida.
Just don't comply! Select what time you want it to be and very quickly you will make the mental adjustments to work out where other people are on their timescale. It's easier than you may think.
If we can put the political time injustice aside for a while I like to tell you something that may cheer you up .Yesterday me and my wife spend a night in the famous Harrison hot springs hotel and any romantic events are as rare as hones politicians for me .But I had a dream that a Sasquatch lady kidnapt me as she thought I'm the most handsome ,compared to her old Sasquatch .Too bad I woke up ,but you never know when dreams can come true ,next time . So please friends if you feel depressed from changing time all the time come to the homeland territory of the Sasquatch ,you may not regret it .
Those who live in the south have no conception of what people experience in the north. Daylight until 5:30 in deep winter is an incredible luxury.
I refer you to Hawaii, which is on standard time year round, with daylight hours varying from around 11-1/2 to 12-1/2 hours. People there simply get up early to take advantage of the daylight when they have it. I’m afraid I don’t understand why that doesn’t seem to be an option among the permanent DST advocates.
Arizona and part of Indiana don't change either and I heard thes year, Alabama stopped changing too. Let us hope the light goes on into some people's heads - every year it turns out, there are way more accidents during the change period.
The accidents probably occur with people who are driving to or from work as the sun is on the horizon and are facing directly into the sun. I would just leave a little later to avoid that.
On the equinox’s the sun rises due east and sets due west. That’s a problem twice a year when the sun is just above the horizon. A problem that occurs year around is people that leave their high beams on.
The sun is just above the horizon twice every day. It's only a problem if you are driving towards it, and sometimes if you are driving in the opposite direction and it reflects from your car's rear view mirror.
If I was the dictator of the world I would totally change the time constantly, just at my whim. I might change the days of the week too, just for the lulz. Unfortunately for me, and fortunately for everyone else I doubt I’ll ever be dictator of Earth.
When I was growing up and someone would ask why the clocks get changed the answer would always be "for the farmers."
This doesn't make any sense since a farmer can get up whenever he wants to work on his farm regardless of what the clock says.
"For the farmers" was just a thought terminating cliche and another example of societal stupidity that generations go their whole lives without questioning.
It actually causes all manner of problems for farmers. Just one example: Because a lot of farm labour is now done by staff on fixed eight-hour schedules, it means that there are considerable problems milking cows for a solid week after the time changes.
Also, babies tend to wake up and need feeding at set times. When you get a baby relatively set on a fixed schedule and then a 6 a.m. wakeup time becomes 5 a.m., it is intensely annoying. It takes weeks for a baby to be readjusted and then it's time to change again. Young children are the same problem. No one cares because it's just mothers who are impacted, not men who want to golf after work.
Preach. The clock changes are like getting hit with mild jet lag twice a year, without the fun of travel. It throws me off for a week as my circadian rhythm struggles to adapt, and I know I'm not the only one. As you say, there is no justification for it, and the justifications that are offered are absurd on their face.
Much of the problem originates with the highly artificial relationship we maintain with time, for example, the fixed 9 to 5 office schedule that makes no allowance for the variation in day length and energy levels with the seasons. We did not evolve to take our cues from time keeping devices, but from the natural rhythm of night, day, and season. It is only in the context of such artifice that bureaucrats could even conceive of an absurdity such as changing time by changing clocks.
Agreed. I hate DST for many reasons, one of which is it completely confuses the shit out of my dogs as to when dinner time is, by the time they finally get used to the schedule the clocks switch and I'm back to ground zero, yelling at my dogs that it's not time for dinner but according to their inner clocks it is dinner time; they must think I'm some lunatic tyrant who cannot tell what time it is. The other main reason for my hatred of DST is I live in the Chicago area and, thanks to DST, the sun sets at 4:30 starting in November when it really should be 5:30, 430 in the fucking afternoon and it's pitch dark outside. Really, this is one of the weapons used against the populace by the government, by throwing off everyone's circadian rhythm you sow mass confusion and low energy amongst the masses, along with depression so big pharma is making money off this as well, why else would it be kept in place? Not like the "government" to do things that, you know, actually benefit all of us.
I’ve been referring to it as “a bi-annual test of how well the mind control is working on the general populace” since my age was in single digits. I was…a strange kid.
The railroads (still a factor in Europe) imposed time zones. Relatively few air flights are within a single time zone, and airline customers still find time zones on their itineraries confusing.
Tell the ticketers. I haven't flown since TSA was imposed after 9-11 (despite no airplanes hitting the Twin Towers nor the Pentagram). They no longer print local times on tickets or arrival/departure boards? Those are not the same as the schedules pilots use.
Nope. Pilots use GMT - zulu time. The times posted for passengers and on tickets are local time. It's confusing as crap for passengers whose husbands are private pilots with their watches always set to zulu time using the 00:00 hrs. system.
Everyone has an opinion on DST. I agree that in modern life we maintain an artificial relationship with time. I have mixed feeling about the clock changes.
I have lived in 3 regions of the country in my adult life, Southern California, South Florida, and the MidAtlantic (near NYC and Philadelphia). I don’t know that there would be any issues for me if Southern California maintained standard time, but in South Florida, where they are proposing implementing DST all year, it is dark until 7am a good bit of the year. And in NJ where I live now, without DST, the sun would come up around 4 am in the summer (try sleeping until 5:30 when the birds are chirping at 4). I’ve never lived without the time change, but I do know I don’t want to be awakened by birds at 4am.
Mild jet lag! Yes! Exactly how I feel. Not horrible but very annoying. Argued with MIL about this once. She said you guys are always traveling, you should be used to it! Yes but in this case twice a year I didn’t even go anywhere! And it was most certainly not voluntary.
Quite right. Peter Hitchens has been consistently banging this drum for years (his 22 October MoS column mentioned it again). Worth checking out if you’ve not read his contributions on the subject. I agree with him also that, for the UK, the time should be GMT all year round, and not GMT+1.
Another point he's very good on (which our esteemed author makes only implicitly) is that DST is inherently more popular among people who get up late and stay up late (journalists, politicians) than the population as a whole. Hence its continued existence and indeed the push for 'permanent summer time,' when in fact certain people should just wake up earlier.
I get up late and stay up late but prefer winter time which is Standard time. (I think DST means Daylight Savings Time or the summer hours and that confuses people when they "vote" for their favorite time choice. They are "saving time" of morning light to use at night.)
I like darkness which is why I prefer to not be up during the daytime hours and look forward to winter and Standard Time returning when it gets dark earlier as it should naturally if the sun was at its peak at noon. It makes me happier, calmer, more relaxed, and lessens my migraine issues. So I'm all for a return to Standard Time permanently.
I think you've got it the wrong way around? DST makes mornings darker, not lighter.
E.g. if the clock says you've worked a 10pm-6am shift and it's summer 'time,' you're actually working 9pm-5am solar time so you get less sunlight, because you've started your night shift an hour earlier.
Exactly my point. With nightshift I need more darkness in the morning and more light in the afternoon. After 4-5pm there's 0 sunlight so it doesn't affect my start time.
The history of telling time, and what evolved into the modern notion of mean time and standard time zones is a long and interesting one. We humans are diurnal, we've evolved with a biological clock that is tied to the rising and setting of the sun, day and night.
Our notion of "noon" is when the sun is directly overhead (over the meridian). It's best to keep things as close to that as possible. Before about the mid 19th century, civil time was an entirely local thing. Clocks were set basically by the sun (lots of complications there with the notion of local mean time vs local apparent solar time). There were thus hundreds of "time zones" across the country.
You couldn't communicate much less travel fast enough for that to make any difference. Then came the telegraph and the railroads. This difference in local time became significant. There were a number of railroad disasters caused by different trains having their clocks and watches synchronized to different local times. The railroads realized they needed to synchronize their clocks. Thus "railroad time" was born. That eventually became the standard time zones, GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and all that.
Many were opposed to this. I remember reading an old article about "The tyranny of railroad time".
If you're interested in getting in to the weeds of the difference between apparent solar time and mean solar time, that difference is known as the "Equation of Time". It has been known since antiquity. Astronomers and navigators had to know this difference. For civil time on land, it didn't matter much, at last until accurate mechanical clocks were invented.
Anyway, coincidentally to this DST post, today, Nov. 3, happens to be a yearly maximum for the Equation of Time, at 16m 27s. That is the apparent sun is that far "ahead" of the mean sun. Today is thus the "earliest noon" relative to standard time of the year. Being a maximum, it's also one of only 4 days per year when the apparent solar day, the time being successive high noons is exactly 24 hours. This time varies from about 21 s less to about 30s more.
We may be able to tolerate the tyranny of railroad time. Thank you for raising solar noon and mean time. We must not ever have permanent summertime, imo, because it is the furthest from true time and thus perverse.
I can live with the tyranny of railroad time, although I like to know local mean time. As it was set up, with time zones centered on 15 degree meridians, any location would be no more than 30 minutes off from local mean time. The problem is the big discontinuity of a 1 hour jump across some arbitrary meridian 7.5 degrees either way of the center. With the old local time notion, that transition was smooth.
That jump is why time zone boundaries get crazy, with each local town and area wanting to be synchronized with whatever town/city they thought was best.
Here, at my longitude, I'm 28+ mins behind EST, about 30 mins. Local apparent noon thus varies over the year from roughly12:14PM to 12:44PM. Add DST in there, and that gets ridiculous. Today, noon is 1:14PM.
We are of like mind. To ask one to call 1:14pm "noon" is but a hop, skip and a jump from asking one to call all sorts of other things that which they aren't.
No, I love the late days in the summer and hate the darkness of the winter My bloodlines come from the British isles, I was made for longer nights. One can move to Ecuador if you want the same sunrise and sunset.
On any given day where you live, the day and night will have precisely the same duration from year to year, no matter what time of day is associated with any given part of it. (With very slight differences based on inclination precession, but that's a very slow process.) Wherever you are, on the Nth day of the year, there will be X hours and minutes of daylight, and Y hours and minutes of darkness, and that will not change based on whether someone declares sunrise to occur at 0500, 0600, or 0200.
Sure. You are correct but I don't want darkness at 730 pm in June. It's just window dressing but even little League games can be played later while the sun is still up.
yes, the issue is having to work or go to school or whatever at particular times. I can "get up earlier" but that doesn't give my more time after work, unless I can also go to work/school earlier.
What I find remarkable is the desire of so many to change things so that it suits them. They don’t care how difficult they make it for others, as long as they’re happy. It’s intensely selfish.
Agree. And 9/10 of them don’t have children. I was talking to a woman in the library this week and she said: how nice that you had an extra hour of fall break! I must have looked at her funny because she said: of course, you have an hour less in the spring. So I said: yeah they should just leave it on standard time now. Oh she said, but I love the long summer evenings! At which point, despite my true preference for standard time, I said: well I don’t care as long as they just pick one and leave it. Then she said: well I like change! Except that she doesn’t. She prefers to stay in her little cage and continue running on her little hamster wheel as if she is a natural born creature. At this point I was feeling a little sorry for her so I just meekly agreed when she said: it’s so nice we are all so different! This conversation ending platitude sounds nice, but when it comes down to it, someone else is determining how I live my life despite me wishing to live differently. And flaunting democracy while they are at it I might add. So who decides?? These are the same people who were perfectly fine scanning their little QR code to get into a restaurant and wondering why I was so bent out of shape about it. After all I could just go get injected and all my problems would be solved? It’s my choice, right? Either get with the program or don’t, but you are not allowed to point out the absurdity. 😑
gosh. the funny thing is that "the change" she likes is just a made up fantasy change. It's not like the SUN is any different. She could change her own schedule and go outside earlier in the summer if she wanted. She could make up a bunch of fantasy changes if she wanted to. I guess what she really likes is the government pushing her around, lol.
Changing the time arbitrarily twice a year doesn't "suit" animals, infants, small children, people with dementia and other thinking problems, etc. The sudden change wreaks havoc for any institution (schools, hospitals, etc.) or households with such people in it; households with pets, farms, zoos, kennels, etc. We are not talking about a small percentage of the population.
My solution is to never let myself think that. I force myself to think, "It is 9 now," of course that does remind me of "We have always been at war with Eurasia," or something like that.
Damn right it does nothing for farmers... right now I have to put my chickens out before dawn before I leave for work, a very dangerous situation for them. I can't wait for next weekend to fix this.
The reason I see pushed here a lot is that 'golf courses can stay open later'. Sorry to be a Scrooge, but golf, bah humbug. Who plays golf in winter at the 48th? I can't imagine the sun setting at 5:30 PM instead of 4:30 PM is going to generate any more income for local golf courses.
I wish it would be standard time all year, but it looks like our legislators are bone stupid...but we knew that, right?
I couldn’t like this post fast enough! Didn’t even read it, the title alone is sufficient.
x1000. We pretend it's another time because the government tells us to. What the ever-loving hell. Every spring, when the feds steal an hour of hard-won daylight from my morning, it is like a kick in the gut.
my ex worked in shifts, you can imagine how happy we were when the time change in spring and he had to work an hour longer, and then in fall, when he was in another time table and he did not get off an hour earlier.
Here in the US several people say it is because of kids having to wait for the bus in the dark. Heck, we went to school by foot or on bicycles in Belgium and both the going and the coming in the dark. Kids nowadays are totally spoiled. What will they do when they have to go to work in the dark!
They have to wait on the bus in the dark either way. In standard time, it’s in the evenings that it is dark when they get off the bus. In the spring forward time change, they are waiting for the bus in the dark in the morning. That is a stupid excuse
absolutely. And then , what is so hard to stand in the half-dark in the driveway of their own home anyway? I think it is much better to have it in the morning. They get home at 3,40 now and still have some light to play outside. Usually it are only the children of the Mexican families that play though. I suppose the others are just getting behind their computers LOL
We did that when I was a kid, (uphill, both ways, in the snow ;)
...for those coming out of college...go to (real) work, period.
DST was for farmers.
Obsolete.
They won’t go.
No thanks. When I sneak home early in the morning from a summer night of debauchery, I prefer to do it in darkness, not under a glowing sky hearing the birds chirping.
So sneak home while it's still dark, irrespective of the numbers on your watch...
LOL! I need a generous margin for error.
You didn’t choose debauchery, debauchery chose you. Godspeed Danno!
Me too!
When told about the daylight savings scheme, an old native american said
"Only the white man could think that by cutting a strip off the bottom of a blanket and sewing it on top, would the blanket become longer"
Edit: I heard this, no idea if it is factual or not. I think it's humorous and perfectly suits the article above.
If it made at least one person mad, I think it's a good quote ! :-)
My favorite expression.
Ironically, here in AZ, only the Navajo nation observes daylight savings.
innnnnnteresting
this is such a monumentally dumb comment it earns you a ban.
Apart from ending your comment with an insult, you also start your comment with a logical FAIL of understanding a perfectly fitting metaphor. What is WRONG with you ?
Would you be so kind as to point out what you call my 'logical FAIL'? I can't see it and I suspect that you are simply unable to understand my point. I could be wrong so I'm giving you the opportunity to prove me so.
The 'insult' is the only conclusion to be drawn from Bruno's clearly supportive quote of the stupid old 'native American'. Whites don't think the blanket is longer; we merely increase the usable portion by shifting what is unused to where it is needed so producing more, thus being more successful and therefore able to take over lands in which the 'natives' have done nothing for thousands of years but live in savagery.
Ian - again your comment is inane. Nothing you write makes any sense whatsoever.
Ian L, your comment doesn’t make a lick of sense. What the hell are you talking about?
I've never heard that. It's perfect.
Ha!
“ DST is insidious for its contagious properties and because it remains just below the threshold of serious annoyance required to animate opposition. It is nevertheless a noxious exercise in social engineering that nobody should have to put up with.”
Nailed it.
Which is why we must protest wearing masks, mandated vaccines, "hate speech", and any other "noxious exercise in social engineering that nobody should have to put up with".
The persistence of daylight savings time is evidence that even simple things cannot be remedied by government. Except for Arizona, where apparently some kind of metaphysical vortex near Sedona has protected them from this foolishness.
It's not so much the vortex (though it does seem to have the power to attract weirdos to Sedona) as the fact that we don't want any extra daylight during the summer!
Except for the Navajo reservations, which follow DST, making the clock changes across the state a kaleidoscope of madness.
In the times when we had sun dials instead of clocks ,we knew what time it was ,except when it rained .By changing time around with clocks ,the whole solar system may get confused and start running backwards ,thanks to the politicians .
What is this? Can it be so? But I am reliably told that the noble savages are the height of wisdom. Therefore you cannot be correct.
It's just our muleheadedness, same as what made us holdouts against MLK Day.
I'm still resisting MLK Day. I can recognize this contrived "holiday" when I realize the post office doesn't deliver mail.
Ditto for "Juneteenth."
I've been called a "racist" for less.
"Juneteenth" is actually worse, being built on half truths. But it was a wonderful way for Biden to distract from the fact that the last place in America that abolished slavery and freed slaves was his home state of Delaware, six months after "Juneteenth".
I'd be for turning every day of the year into a federal holiday. (And privatize the Post Office so that we can still get our mail!)
In due course, I'm sure every "marginalized" group will successfully lobby for more federal holidays. I'm told we're now celebrating "Transgender Awareness Month." As if we're UNAWARE of transgenderism.
As for the post office, few people would notice if it disappeared. I buy one packet of postage stamps each year--and use them only for mailing birthday cards.
You will notice that every one of the holidays "created" since 1960 or so are all days that our masters get off, but we do not.
https://henrybowman.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/the-kings-days-off/
This is an extremely valid point. Thanks for sharing. I've actually never worked anywhere where I get paid holidays lol. It didn't take long to decide that self-employment was a better deal.
Thanks for sharing the link. I'm passing it on to others.
1. I live near an Ace Hardware, operated for 60+ years by one family. It's closed on Easter Sunday, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Year's Day.
2. My calendar tells me that Columbus Day is now also known as "Indigenous People's Day."
3. In New England, there's a weather phenomenon in autumn when after a few weeks of chilly weather, there are two or three days of warm weather. It's was generally called "Indian Summer." My friends & I have (tongue-in-cheek) begun to call it "Indigenous People's Summer."
The thing about all the made up holidays in America is that they are neatly spread throughout the year so there’s a three day weekend every month. In The Netherlands we are stuck with a bunch of religious holidays in the spring that no one even remembers the significance of and no other holidays the rest of the year until Christmas. Oh and if Christmas falls on a weekend, you don’t even get a day off!
But Stephenie your government is working soo hard ,to give you more holidays ,by eliminating most of farming and livestock in the Netherlands .
Klaus Schwaab loves us the most! We are so close to owning nothing. No work--tomorrow or ever!!!!
Stephenie ,his real name is not Klaus ,it is Louse
A weekend Christmas in the US generally becomes a "Monday Holiday," and results in office histrionics over who gets to use a "vacation day" on the Friday preceding the three-day weekend.
Also in the US, Presidents Day--formerly Washington's Birthday--is the Official Buy-A-New-Car Weekend, when car dealers try to move the previous model-year cars off the lot.
To my knowledge, Hallmark has not created greeting cards for this event.
It's odd that Southern US states even need daylight savings time. The closer a jurisdiction lies to the equator the less the variation of daylight hours throughout the year.
one of the best things about Arizona!
I like the footnote. I’m a fan of summer time, I’d actually prefer the we set the clocks ahead 2 hours and keep it that way. I do a lot of work in the garden and it will soon be dark at 5:30 which makes it difficult to do much during the week with my work schedule. And yes, I garden all winter - a benefit of living in Florida.
It's really adjusting the clocks that is the problem, permanent summer time may make sense in many places.
I don't care which way they stop it, if they just stopped it.
Just don't comply! Select what time you want it to be and very quickly you will make the mental adjustments to work out where other people are on their timescale. It's easier than you may think.
That sounds grand.
The new generation is encouraged to choose their own gender and become a basket weaver, so why not choose our own time
If we can put the political time injustice aside for a while I like to tell you something that may cheer you up .Yesterday me and my wife spend a night in the famous Harrison hot springs hotel and any romantic events are as rare as hones politicians for me .But I had a dream that a Sasquatch lady kidnapt me as she thought I'm the most handsome ,compared to her old Sasquatch .Too bad I woke up ,but you never know when dreams can come true ,next time . So please friends if you feel depressed from changing time all the time come to the homeland territory of the Sasquatch ,you may not regret it .
Dear Ingrid get a stop watch .
And in many places, just in the U.S., it makes no sense at all.
I'll drink to that.
Those who live in the south have no conception of what people experience in the north. Daylight until 5:30 in deep winter is an incredible luxury.
I refer you to Hawaii, which is on standard time year round, with daylight hours varying from around 11-1/2 to 12-1/2 hours. People there simply get up early to take advantage of the daylight when they have it. I’m afraid I don’t understand why that doesn’t seem to be an option among the permanent DST advocates.
Arizona and part of Indiana don't change either and I heard thes year, Alabama stopped changing too. Let us hope the light goes on into some people's heads - every year it turns out, there are way more accidents during the change period.
The accidents probably occur with people who are driving to or from work as the sun is on the horizon and are facing directly into the sun. I would just leave a little later to avoid that.
On the equinox’s the sun rises due east and sets due west. That’s a problem twice a year when the sun is just above the horizon. A problem that occurs year around is people that leave their high beams on.
The sun is just above the horizon twice every day. It's only a problem if you are driving towards it, and sometimes if you are driving in the opposite direction and it reflects from your car's rear view mirror.
Just get up 2 hours earlier on your own and get your gardening done. Don’t force the rest of the world to live by your wants.
If I was the dictator of the world I would totally change the time constantly, just at my whim. I might change the days of the week too, just for the lulz. Unfortunately for me, and fortunately for everyone else I doubt I’ll ever be dictator of Earth.
Never stop dreaming!
Ask your work to advance your schedule a couple hours.
I trade the markets so my work is pegged to the NYSE schedule 😭😭😭
There are many that benefit with sunlight .But many also benefit in darkness ,like the ones that stole my car last winter .
The light in the summer goes to 10 oclock at night so I don't know why you would want to wrok longer in the heat.
Not much work to do in the summer, it’s too hot anyway. Stuff does just fine on it’s own.
When I was growing up and someone would ask why the clocks get changed the answer would always be "for the farmers."
This doesn't make any sense since a farmer can get up whenever he wants to work on his farm regardless of what the clock says.
"For the farmers" was just a thought terminating cliche and another example of societal stupidity that generations go their whole lives without questioning.
It actually causes all manner of problems for farmers. Just one example: Because a lot of farm labour is now done by staff on fixed eight-hour schedules, it means that there are considerable problems milking cows for a solid week after the time changes.
In my case, it means I have to tend my animals in the dark and put them to pasture at a time when predators are still active. I hate DST.
That's the best argument.
I am not a dairy farmer, but cows need to be milked on a set schedule.
There has never been a truly cogent argument for DST:
And, of course, the "spring ahead", seemingly leads to traffic mishaps...
Also, babies tend to wake up and need feeding at set times. When you get a baby relatively set on a fixed schedule and then a 6 a.m. wakeup time becomes 5 a.m., it is intensely annoying. It takes weeks for a baby to be readjusted and then it's time to change again. Young children are the same problem. No one cares because it's just mothers who are impacted, not men who want to golf after work.
Some farmers have day jobs. Cows don't like alteration of their milking schedules.
Preach. The clock changes are like getting hit with mild jet lag twice a year, without the fun of travel. It throws me off for a week as my circadian rhythm struggles to adapt, and I know I'm not the only one. As you say, there is no justification for it, and the justifications that are offered are absurd on their face.
Much of the problem originates with the highly artificial relationship we maintain with time, for example, the fixed 9 to 5 office schedule that makes no allowance for the variation in day length and energy levels with the seasons. We did not evolve to take our cues from time keeping devices, but from the natural rhythm of night, day, and season. It is only in the context of such artifice that bureaucrats could even conceive of an absurdity such as changing time by changing clocks.
Agreed. I hate DST for many reasons, one of which is it completely confuses the shit out of my dogs as to when dinner time is, by the time they finally get used to the schedule the clocks switch and I'm back to ground zero, yelling at my dogs that it's not time for dinner but according to their inner clocks it is dinner time; they must think I'm some lunatic tyrant who cannot tell what time it is. The other main reason for my hatred of DST is I live in the Chicago area and, thanks to DST, the sun sets at 4:30 starting in November when it really should be 5:30, 430 in the fucking afternoon and it's pitch dark outside. Really, this is one of the weapons used against the populace by the government, by throwing off everyone's circadian rhythm you sow mass confusion and low energy amongst the masses, along with depression so big pharma is making money off this as well, why else would it be kept in place? Not like the "government" to do things that, you know, actually benefit all of us.
I genuinely think this is why DST is so popular. Yet one more means of keeping the populace in a constant state of low level confusion.
I’ve been referring to it as “a bi-annual test of how well the mind control is working on the general populace” since my age was in single digits. I was…a strange kid.
The railroads (still a factor in Europe) imposed time zones. Relatively few air flights are within a single time zone, and airline customers still find time zones on their itineraries confusing.
air travel all runs zulu time (GMT)
Tell the ticketers. I haven't flown since TSA was imposed after 9-11 (despite no airplanes hitting the Twin Towers nor the Pentagram). They no longer print local times on tickets or arrival/departure boards? Those are not the same as the schedules pilots use.
Nope. Pilots use GMT - zulu time. The times posted for passengers and on tickets are local time. It's confusing as crap for passengers whose husbands are private pilots with their watches always set to zulu time using the 00:00 hrs. system.
Everyone has an opinion on DST. I agree that in modern life we maintain an artificial relationship with time. I have mixed feeling about the clock changes.
I have lived in 3 regions of the country in my adult life, Southern California, South Florida, and the MidAtlantic (near NYC and Philadelphia). I don’t know that there would be any issues for me if Southern California maintained standard time, but in South Florida, where they are proposing implementing DST all year, it is dark until 7am a good bit of the year. And in NJ where I live now, without DST, the sun would come up around 4 am in the summer (try sleeping until 5:30 when the birds are chirping at 4). I’ve never lived without the time change, but I do know I don’t want to be awakened by birds at 4am.
Mild jet lag! Yes! Exactly how I feel. Not horrible but very annoying. Argued with MIL about this once. She said you guys are always traveling, you should be used to it! Yes but in this case twice a year I didn’t even go anywhere! And it was most certainly not voluntary.
I feel, extremely strongly, that when DST is abolished, time should go back to being real, instead of being fake
If people want more daylight hours after work, why are we _lying about time_ when we could _change standard business hours_ instead?
indeed.
Well said!
Quite right. Peter Hitchens has been consistently banging this drum for years (his 22 October MoS column mentioned it again). Worth checking out if you’ve not read his contributions on the subject. I agree with him also that, for the UK, the time should be GMT all year round, and not GMT+1.
Another point he's very good on (which our esteemed author makes only implicitly) is that DST is inherently more popular among people who get up late and stay up late (journalists, politicians) than the population as a whole. Hence its continued existence and indeed the push for 'permanent summer time,' when in fact certain people should just wake up earlier.
I get up late and stay up late but prefer winter time which is Standard time. (I think DST means Daylight Savings Time or the summer hours and that confuses people when they "vote" for their favorite time choice. They are "saving time" of morning light to use at night.)
I like darkness which is why I prefer to not be up during the daytime hours and look forward to winter and Standard Time returning when it gets dark earlier as it should naturally if the sun was at its peak at noon. It makes me happier, calmer, more relaxed, and lessens my migraine issues. So I'm all for a return to Standard Time permanently.
Hear hear!!!
It is only the night owls that want this...and there are more of us than there are of them!!
I keep seeing 'golf courses can stay open later'. That certainly implies journos, politicians, lobbyists and other useless eaters.
Or maybe people work nightshifts and maybe they would like to see the daylight for an hour? I know they don't matter they should wake up earlier.
I think you've got it the wrong way around? DST makes mornings darker, not lighter.
E.g. if the clock says you've worked a 10pm-6am shift and it's summer 'time,' you're actually working 9pm-5am solar time so you get less sunlight, because you've started your night shift an hour earlier.
People confuse this all the time. I'm hoping the confusion wins me permanent Standard Time ;)
Exactly my point. With nightshift I need more darkness in the morning and more light in the afternoon. After 4-5pm there's 0 sunlight so it doesn't affect my start time.
Remember during the lockdowns, nobody knew what day it was, let alone what time it was. World wide disorientation. I vote no on time changes.
Low and behold! I Just Recieved an email survey from one of my state senators and was actually able to vote No : ) on time changes. Cool.
Lockdowns? Heavens no... I've never been to prison.
The history of telling time, and what evolved into the modern notion of mean time and standard time zones is a long and interesting one. We humans are diurnal, we've evolved with a biological clock that is tied to the rising and setting of the sun, day and night.
Our notion of "noon" is when the sun is directly overhead (over the meridian). It's best to keep things as close to that as possible. Before about the mid 19th century, civil time was an entirely local thing. Clocks were set basically by the sun (lots of complications there with the notion of local mean time vs local apparent solar time). There were thus hundreds of "time zones" across the country.
You couldn't communicate much less travel fast enough for that to make any difference. Then came the telegraph and the railroads. This difference in local time became significant. There were a number of railroad disasters caused by different trains having their clocks and watches synchronized to different local times. The railroads realized they needed to synchronize their clocks. Thus "railroad time" was born. That eventually became the standard time zones, GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and all that.
Many were opposed to this. I remember reading an old article about "The tyranny of railroad time".
If you're interested in getting in to the weeds of the difference between apparent solar time and mean solar time, that difference is known as the "Equation of Time". It has been known since antiquity. Astronomers and navigators had to know this difference. For civil time on land, it didn't matter much, at last until accurate mechanical clocks were invented.
Anyway, coincidentally to this DST post, today, Nov. 3, happens to be a yearly maximum for the Equation of Time, at 16m 27s. That is the apparent sun is that far "ahead" of the mean sun. Today is thus the "earliest noon" relative to standard time of the year. Being a maximum, it's also one of only 4 days per year when the apparent solar day, the time being successive high noons is exactly 24 hours. This time varies from about 21 s less to about 30s more.
We may be able to tolerate the tyranny of railroad time. Thank you for raising solar noon and mean time. We must not ever have permanent summertime, imo, because it is the furthest from true time and thus perverse.
I can live with the tyranny of railroad time, although I like to know local mean time. As it was set up, with time zones centered on 15 degree meridians, any location would be no more than 30 minutes off from local mean time. The problem is the big discontinuity of a 1 hour jump across some arbitrary meridian 7.5 degrees either way of the center. With the old local time notion, that transition was smooth.
That jump is why time zone boundaries get crazy, with each local town and area wanting to be synchronized with whatever town/city they thought was best.
Here, at my longitude, I'm 28+ mins behind EST, about 30 mins. Local apparent noon thus varies over the year from roughly12:14PM to 12:44PM. Add DST in there, and that gets ridiculous. Today, noon is 1:14PM.
We are of like mind. To ask one to call 1:14pm "noon" is but a hop, skip and a jump from asking one to call all sorts of other things that which they aren't.
Perverse! Perfect word.
Why, thank you. All the best.
We don't do this stupid stuff in Arizona, I hated it during the 24 years I lived in southern California.
No, I love the late days in the summer and hate the darkness of the winter My bloodlines come from the British isles, I was made for longer nights. One can move to Ecuador if you want the same sunrise and sunset.
I love DAYLIGHT SAVINGS.
BUT thanks for the historical perspective.
On any given day where you live, the day and night will have precisely the same duration from year to year, no matter what time of day is associated with any given part of it. (With very slight differences based on inclination precession, but that's a very slow process.) Wherever you are, on the Nth day of the year, there will be X hours and minutes of daylight, and Y hours and minutes of darkness, and that will not change based on whether someone declares sunrise to occur at 0500, 0600, or 0200.
Mek - exactly! Why do people not understand this?
Sure. You are correct but I don't want darkness at 730 pm in June. It's just window dressing but even little League games can be played later while the sun is still up.
And? People have fixed assignments. Your argument is not useful.
yes, the issue is having to work or go to school or whatever at particular times. I can "get up earlier" but that doesn't give my more time after work, unless I can also go to work/school earlier.
It is GOING TO GET DARKER IN THE WINTER ANYWAY...YOU HAVE LESS HOURS OF DAYLIGHT.
YOU WILL STILL BE DARK ONLY IT WILL BE AN HOUR EARLIER...SO GET UP EARLIER.
yeah, the problem is latitude! lol
Agree-this is the hill I will die on.
The winter isn’t less dark because clocks are changed! There is the same amount of light and darkness.
Ii would keep DST all year. I like long evenings. If I was rich I would move to Sweden in the summer and South America in the winter.
delighted to now be able to blame this mess on a guy who loved bugs.
What I find remarkable is the desire of so many to change things so that it suits them. They don’t care how difficult they make it for others, as long as they’re happy. It’s intensely selfish.
Agree. And 9/10 of them don’t have children. I was talking to a woman in the library this week and she said: how nice that you had an extra hour of fall break! I must have looked at her funny because she said: of course, you have an hour less in the spring. So I said: yeah they should just leave it on standard time now. Oh she said, but I love the long summer evenings! At which point, despite my true preference for standard time, I said: well I don’t care as long as they just pick one and leave it. Then she said: well I like change! Except that she doesn’t. She prefers to stay in her little cage and continue running on her little hamster wheel as if she is a natural born creature. At this point I was feeling a little sorry for her so I just meekly agreed when she said: it’s so nice we are all so different! This conversation ending platitude sounds nice, but when it comes down to it, someone else is determining how I live my life despite me wishing to live differently. And flaunting democracy while they are at it I might add. So who decides?? These are the same people who were perfectly fine scanning their little QR code to get into a restaurant and wondering why I was so bent out of shape about it. After all I could just go get injected and all my problems would be solved? It’s my choice, right? Either get with the program or don’t, but you are not allowed to point out the absurdity. 😑
gosh. the funny thing is that "the change" she likes is just a made up fantasy change. It's not like the SUN is any different. She could change her own schedule and go outside earlier in the summer if she wanted. She could make up a bunch of fantasy changes if she wanted to. I guess what she really likes is the government pushing her around, lol.
exactly. there is no real conversation with people like this woman.
Changing the time arbitrarily twice a year doesn't "suit" animals, infants, small children, people with dementia and other thinking problems, etc. The sudden change wreaks havoc for any institution (schools, hospitals, etc.) or households with such people in it; households with pets, farms, zoos, kennels, etc. We are not talking about a small percentage of the population.
Ill spend the next month thinking, "it used to be 10 pm, but now it's 9....")
My solution is to never let myself think that. I force myself to think, "It is 9 now," of course that does remind me of "We have always been at war with Eurasia," or something like that.
that's the story of life on earth.
True. One runs into it everywhere.
human nature is immutable.
First we had to endure Rachel Carson then Paul Ehrlich and NOW THIS?!? Entomology must be stopped!
I would guess that the overwhelming majority of the world agrees with you, as it has for decades. So, how to we stop this PPintheA?
Damn right it does nothing for farmers... right now I have to put my chickens out before dawn before I leave for work, a very dangerous situation for them. I can't wait for next weekend to fix this.
The reason I see pushed here a lot is that 'golf courses can stay open later'. Sorry to be a Scrooge, but golf, bah humbug. Who plays golf in winter at the 48th? I can't imagine the sun setting at 5:30 PM instead of 4:30 PM is going to generate any more income for local golf courses.
I wish it would be standard time all year, but it looks like our legislators are bone stupid...but we knew that, right?