From "Clock runs out on efforts to make daylight saving time permanent" (WaPo).
Great! I wish there'd be more of this admitting that they just don't know what to do.
There... are regional differences in who would most benefit from permanent daylight saving time. Lawmakers in Southern states such as Florida argue it would maximize sunshine for their residents during the winter months — but some people who live in the northern United States or on the western edge of time zones, such as Indianapolis, would not see the sunrise on some winter days until after 9 a.m.
Yeah, I've already seen little kids waiting for the school bus in darkness, and it's a month and a half before the solstice (the darkest day). So that would be 3 months of kids going to school during the nighttime.
But Marco Rubio, of Florida, says: "This isn’t a partisan or regional issue, it is a commonsense issue." He's a co-author of the inanely named Sunshine Protection Act. No, Florida man, you are not offering sunshine... or "commonsense."
I'm blaming Rubio for invoking common sense when he's lacking it, but the spelling "commonsense" is the responsibility of The Washington Post. It strikes me as wrong and I'm not used to seeing it that way, but I'm thinking about "commonplace" and "commonwealth" — how did those words congeal? By common use, I presume. But you can't jump to close up the spaces between words. I just wrote "common use," and it would be plainly wrong to attempt "commonuse."
As you might imagine (if you read me very much), I went poking around in the OED, looking at words that begin with "common" and checking out the long entry on "common sense." I won't belabor that. I'll just cherry-pick one thing, a quote from the 1974 novel by Alison Lurie, "The War Between the Tates" (about a married academic couple):
"He believed their courses to be composed of equal parts of common sense and nonsense—that is, of the already obvious and the probably false."
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115 comments:
Republicans in DC have a lot of "Common Sense" ideas.
It is one of the thing they go to when they want to avoid doing what their voters want them to do.
Rubio is one of the worst. A complete globalist tool.
I don’t really care (and doubt it matters) which time they pick, but I really wish they’d pick one. Shifting an hour wasn’t a big deal when I was young, when I woke by alarm clock and could easily sleep in a bit. But when I became a parent, it took us months to shift the child, and when we did it, we only had a couple months before we’d have to do it again. It made our lives harder.
Now that I’m older and haven’t woken by alarm clock in years because I naturally wake early, my body never really shifts. I just spend 6 months of the year waking up stupidly early. I’m not looking forward to facing that again starting tomorrow.
It's a fact rarely realized that Massachusetts gets more sun in the summer than Florida--and less sun in the winter. That's because the further from the equator you go, the greater the extremes, all the way to the north pole, where there is 6 months of sun half the year and 6 months of no sun the other half.
The result is that there simply isn't much sun in the north in the winter. By changing the clocks, you can move it between morning and evening, but one or the other will be depressingly dark.
This week has been the worst week to get kids to school. Fall back should have happened two weeks ago, at least. My kid went to catch the bus in the dark at 7:45! I think congress should go back to pre GWB calendar. It might eliminate some of the anger.
But I will riot if we went on permanent DST.
I say that they should vote to require 12 hours of sunlight every day and everywhere. End seasons. End latitude. Because of disadvantage, because of injustice, because of inequity, because of the disparate impacts of greater or lesser sunlight. We all deserve good growing seasons to feed children and the poor. Only the Nazis and Ultra-MAGA Republicans oppose sunlight equity.
Seasons are not fair. Spheres are unfair. The sun is unfair.
Great! I wish there'd be more of this admitting that they just don't know what to do.
In this case the issue is not all that complicated so unfortunately it is one more sign they are morons...
I prefer that Daylight Savings Time be made year-round.
I would prefer Standard Time.
Kids should not be at the bus stop in pitch black.
Missoula's on the western edge too so yeah no why not year round Standard? Never thought I'd say that but I grew up in LA where the difference wasn't so stark.
At least there will be a little more morning daylight for my walk tomorrow but that will soon vanish.
Though I do have a preference- preferring that they leave it on Standard Time for good- I'd be fine if they'd just pick one and stick with it. I do remember going to school in the dark as a kid. Granted, those were different times, but we survived it. Yes, it's hard enough to get a kid up in the morning without it being pitch black outside, but kids are tough. Even in the cold, snowy, dark, bitter wind in the face northern climates, they can survive. (heh)
My greatest concern is my dog. As an older dog, and much like older humans, she now goes to bed earlier and wakes up earlier. These days it's around 6:15. Tomorrow morning it'll suddenly be 5:15 she'll be rousing us to get up. And it'll take weeks to get her retrained to standard time. If this keeps up I'll be functioning on Althouse Time. Not sure I can do that.
So, yeah, just pick one and stay with it.
@Birches,
They pushed it to the weekend after Halloween, to keep kids from getting run over in the dark trick-or-treating.
But I'm with you on the rioting if they go permanent DST.
It was a bad idea 80 years ago, and it's worse now that only 2% of America works on a farm.
Congress should scrap it forever.
"Now that I’m older and haven’t woken by alarm clock in years because I naturally wake early, my body never really shifts. I just spend 6 months of the year waking up stupidly early."
The *clock* doesn't make it "early." It doesn't matter where the clock is set unless you're keeping appointments. You wake up naturally because of the sunlight, so there's nothing to shift. Who cares what the clock is saying while you are asleep? I get up based on the sunrise, which means I might need to make an effort to get up in time in June and July, because it's not dark until after 9, but there's so much darkness in the winter that it's easy to get enough sleep during the dark hours. What's stupid is to think of certain times in the after-midnight hours as "stupidly early." How early are you getting up? When I wake up in the darkness, I look at my phone to check the time and just hope it's after 4. Once the clocks change, I'll hope it's after 3. What difference does it make? Set your body to the sun... it's already set. Don't change it. Just use your clock to keep your appointments. Are people complaining that they have to go to work *later*? Think of the children waiting for the school bus.
I know you talked about the difficulty of shifting your kids, and I assume you mean it was a problem in the spring when the hour is "lost," so you're rousing them early and they didn't get enough sleep. I would recommend putting them to bed earlier, incrementally, in the weeks leading up to the shift back to DST. Don't suddenly deprive them of an hour of sleep.
Overall, the shift is helpful to kids, because they should not be walking to school or waiting for the school bus in complete darkness.
I suggest legislation that prevents the time from changing. Going into effect by a randomized selection of a date. Then its done. I dont care where it lands. Just that we stop. I'm from the rural contingent. We just dont care. We've had electricity for a while now, and all the tractors have lights, Plus(climate control, 12 position seats, satellite radio, and 4g internet to power our precision farming and IPad pro)
In Madison, if DST continued through the winter, there would be many days when children would be walking to school *an hour* before sunrise. Do you want children walking to school or to the bus stop, at a time when people are driving to work, when it is as dark as the middle of the night? That's crazy!
Althouse, you crack me up.
If this was a newspaper, Althouse would be all...
"I think we should run a story on Daylight Savings Time. That's fun!"
I'm still contemplating yesterday's Umlaut exclusive. "I think we should get to the bottom of this Umlaut mystery. Our readers need to know!"
But of course Althouse is retired and doing this for fun! So strange how that makes her work way more interesting than what the professional journalists think are worthy of our attention.
(If Althouse made us subscribe to this blog -- and I feel like some of us would subscribe, naming no names -- she would be up to her ass with complaints from other subscribers who wandered in here by mistake. "What's up with this Umlaut shit? I am paying you for top-of-the-line thinking about the events of the day, and this Umlaut story is just a waste of time and resources and I want my $1.99 back right now, thank you very much").
"Do you want children walking to school or to the bus stop, at a time when people are driving to work, when it is as dark as the middle of the night?"
It's also the coldest time of the year and often there is snow and ice. The potential for accidents is unreasonable, and it's also just sad and scary for kids (and their parents).
If you must have ONE time, it should be standard time. Keeping DST all year is terrible mistake, but some people would need to try it to learn how bad it is. We already DID that in the 70s.
Speakin' a commonuse, where's muh Tik Toks? Ain't had none in quite a spell.
Why not have time zones go north-south as well as east-west?
It'd be a matrix.
Boston might have the same time a Lubbock.
"By changing the clocks, you can move it between morning and evening, but one or the other will be depressingly dark."
If it were only about people feeling depressed about darkness, it wouldn't matter, but it's about children and safety. The time for kids to be outside moving around needs to be the scarce light hours. It's too bad that you won't like seeing that it's already dark when you're getting out of work. What's important is that there's still light when the kids are coming home from school. The light beyond that is properly redistributed to morning hours, when they are going to school.
What time would the sun the sun set in winter though, if not for the time change? I seem to remember as a kid in NJ that it was sometimes dusk when we walked home (although that might have just been on Wednesdays when we walked from school to the church for CCD class and then walked home.)
"This week has been the worst week to get kids to school. Fall back should have happened two weeks ago, at least. My kid went to catch the bus in the dark at 7:45! I think congress should go back to pre GWB calendar."
Right!
"it took us months to shift the child, "
Hard to believe.
Here in northeast Kansas I'm at the latitude southern Spain [+39]. Over the decades I've live most of the time north of +44, including quite a few years at +54 and +61.
It's amusing to hear locals here in Kansas complain about how late it's dark in the morning and how early in the evening. Northerners just deal with it b/c there are other priorities like avoiding frostbite, keeping your car's block-heater plugged in, and preventing your eyelids ffrom freezing shut.
First poem I memorized (from A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson)
In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?
My (admittedly minority) view is to keep Daylight and Standard time - but switch to Standard earlier in the Fall and switch back to Daylight later in the Spring. I will say that far too many people think Daylight time increases the amount of daylight - when of course it only moves it around.
I'm disappointed in progressives that they haven't yet come up with a way to blame this issue on capitalism, or white males, or otherwise call it a crisis that justifies redistributing wealth and micromanaging your life.
They could fix that bill and garner enough votes if it included a sunset clause.
I'm for Standard Time all year long. I'm a natural morning person, and staying up late in the summer to observe the stars will be easier with Standard Time than with Daylight Saving Time.
The West Coast states have passed legislation for year-long DST, but Congress needs to act to make that go into effect. If the passed year-long Standard Time, that could go into effect this spring, when the clocks are due to move forward as that's already in the law.
it's about children and safety. The time for kids to be outside moving around needs to be the scarce light hours.
yeah, see, that's why I come here
inspiration and stuff that never occurred to me
You wake up naturally because of the sunlight, so there's nothing to shift. Who cares what the clock is saying while you are asleep? I get up based on the sunrise
You wake up naturally because of sunlight. How about people who sleep in rooms with blackout curtains because a neighbor's or the city's lights disrupt their sleep otherwise? Or neighbor has a motion-sensitive floodlight that can go on and off throughout the night as animals pass through his yard. In a previous house, we lived on a corner, where the headlights of passing cars would almost strobe through our bedroom.
Or how about those who do shift work or have commutes that require them to be on the road by 6, like my neighbor?
I wake up at 6:30, dark or light, like clockwork, because my dog does, and we slip out so my husband can sleep longer.
You appear to have a good bit of passion for this subject. But your experience isn't universally applicable. Even retired people can live in circumstances that don't allow them to "wake up naturally because of sunlight."
"Roger Sweeny said...
It's a fact rarely realized that Massachusetts gets more sun in the summer than Florida--and less sun in the winter. That's because the further from the equator you go, the greater the extremes, all the way to the north pole, where there is 6 months of sun half the year and 6 months of no sun the other half.
The result is that there simply isn't much sun in the north in the winter. By changing the clocks, you can move it between morning and evening, but one or the other will be depressingly dark."
Daylight savings ends in the Fall. The purpose of it is to coordinate the utilization of extra daylight in the summer. We go back to standard time in the winter, when there is equal amounts of daylight on either side of Noon.
Why not keep the clocks the same and shift the school hours to a later opening?
"Do it for the children!"
Which in this case makes sense. I'm all for making it permanent. I used to one of those people who could wake up at a predetermined time without an alarm clock. Now I wake up to pee at 3:30 every night give or take ten minutes. As adults it shouldn't matter. Most of us don't have careers that depend on us working in daylight.
I'm sure Althouses' neighborhood is loaded with small humans in giant backpacks wandering the sidewalks in the morning and evening hours.
In my neighborhood, I live about a mile from our high school, both the boys and girls track teams run their miles through the neighborhood they don't always obey the lines on the pavement or the rules of the road. Having to navigate around them in the dark would not be a good thing.
Astronomers for Standard Time!
Are there many places where kids still walk to school? Honest question, not snark. The suburbs, having been designed for cars, have eliminated that in so many places because major thoroughfares would have to be crossed so walking to school is often prohibited.
Maybe the older cities still have enough neighborhoods that are walkable but here in the South all of the development took place during the era of the automobile. What most people do when it’s dark in the mornings is wait at the bus stop with kids.
Is there perhaps a more reasonable level of government at which to regulate how and when kids get to and from school? Is it possible that the best answer for children in Miami is different from the best answer for children in Milkwaukee?
Is there perhaps a more straightforward method of regulating school bus timing than requiring everyone in the state or country to change their clocks and pretend that it's a different time than it is?
The main issue in Arizona (which maintains constant time) is to figure out if the Midwest is one or two hours ahead.
Is there any reason to change time these days?
The WaPo is correct. Common sense is the noun, but commonsense is the adjective.
The WaPo is correct. Common sense is the noun, but commonsense is the adjective.
If you stop changing the time, it removes the possibility of a stopped clock being right one or three times a day.
The desire for permanent DST wanes, the farther west you live in your time zone.
"I will say that far too many people think Daylight time increases the amount of daylight...."
I would like to question whether anyone actually thinks that. The idea is often stated as a joke (as you can see in this thread).
But Rubio's bill has a name that seems to encourage people to believe that stupid joke.
@ CStanley - Loved the Robert Louis Stevenson poem. Few people realize how far north London is, 51.5 degrees compared to 40.7 degrees for New York and 42.4 degrees for Boston. So their seasonal swing is even greater and it is not hyperbole that kids had to "get up at night" in winter and "go to bed by day" in summer. This all being before we started clock moving in World War I.
I would like to question whether anyone actually thinks that. The idea is often stated as a joke (as you can see in this thread).
It would be nice to think that people have more sense than this, but this kind of thinking leads to all kinds of ideas that laws can somehow change natural reality to make things work the way we wish they would or to make things more “fair”. I’m reminded in particular of abortion “rights”, as though the ability to kill one’s unborn child with immunity somehow makes things more equitable between men and women.
Overall, the shift is helpful to kids, because they should not be walking to school or waiting for the school bus in complete darkness.
Stop changing the clocks and change the school hours. I know. Then parents could not be there to take their kids to school, walk them to school, wait at the bus because they would have had to leave for work. So, change work hours, too. Maybe we can take 3 months off in the winter and go to school in the summer! There really is not much you can do to mitigate the effect of northern winter hours.
But if the safety of the kids is paramount, then we either:
1. Take 3 months off in the winter
2. set the start of school to be 30 min after dawn based on Jan 1 sunrise
3. Adjust school hours later from mid Oct to Mid Feb to accommodate sunrise.
Oh, and pick a time and stick with it as far as the clock goes.
The purpose of DST is to coordinate our ability to exploit longer days in the summer. A note: We are shifting back to standard time in the fall, this makes Noon the center of the day and gives equal amounts of daylight in the morning and evening.
The desire for permanent DST wanes, the farther west you live in your time zone.
"I prefer that Daylight Savings Time be made year-round."
Of course you do. Says the man who lives on the Eastern edge of his time zone.
Simple Solution (from the gilbar dept of simple solutions)..
JUST USE GMT, it's 14:45 RIGHT NOW; make of that what you will.
(i like to get up around 11 or 12GMT, and i hit the hay around 02:00)
people think Daylight time increases the amount of daylight...."
I would like to question whether anyone actually thinks that.
my friend Ben, would Every year around this time start Bitching and Moaning; about how much he HATED daylight savings time, because it made it get dark so early.
YES; Ben Not Only thought it was the clocks that made the sun set.. He thought that daylight savings time was during the winter.. and,
YES; Ben smoked MASSIVE amounts of pot.. and,
YES; Ben voted democrat, EVERY election
"Lawmakers in Southern states such as Florida argue it would maximize sunshine for their residents during the winter months"
Turns out, their residents will get the same amount of sunshine whatever their damn clocks are set to.
When Atlanta goes to EDT in March, our solar noon occurs at 1:45 PM. If, as some foolish GA legislators wish, we go to EDT year-round, we'll have a lovely stretch of sunrises at 8:43 AM in late Dec / early Jan. So yeah, I'm against it.
When we tried DST in December back in the 1970s, there were massive traffic jams in Boston where I then lived because so many parents decided to drive their kids to school every day. The roads around the schools were overwhelmed.
So, I agree with our hostess on this one. There will be unexpected, unwanted consequences for any change we make.
That must be why everyone in Arizona has at least one gun. No daylight savings time.
This bill dies if Congress doesn't pass it in this session, right? I'm really hoping it dies.
Actually governing is not a Dem/ Progressive ability. ALL they know how to do is blow social Justice smoke while they literally steal trillions of dollars before it’s too late. The Orange Man Cometh. The hour adjustment twice a year is insignificant.
After living in AK, this whole conversation about when the sun rises sounds like latitude privilege to me.
Silver lining for the fired Twitter censors, the time change won't matter this year.
Darles Chickens said...
"Why not keep the clocks the same and shift the school hours to a later opening?"
Thank you.
We evolved for tens of thousands of years with no clocks and nothing but roosters (at some point) and the rising and setting sun to set our sleep cycles.
Seems to have worked out.
Don't fuck with Mother Nature...
@Aesop
Thanks for the info, though the jokes on lawmakers. The kids in my neighborhood refused to go out until dusk. We didn't get our first trick or treater until a quarter to 7.
A lot of kids out West still walk to school, especially elementary schools. Busses are not common at all where I grew up even today.
My younger kids are driven to school because we attend a charter, but even driving is an inconvenience when it is dark. Drivers don't behave the same way in morning darkness as they do in at night. Yesterday, multiple cars honked at the car in front who refused to turn left though there were multiple instances of space from incoming traffic. So instead 5 or 6 cars turned left on the yellow and red light. It happens frequently in the morning. I've never seen it happen at night.
Just pick a time, and stick with it. Changing time twice per year is an unnecessary process that adds complexity. Once that's done, everyone can fix their own problems.
If children can't stand around in the dark, school districts can change their schedule. When I was teaching, we had seven different bell schedules. The standard, then one for state testing week, one for days with an assembly, and so on. Have a Winter schedule where everything shifts an hour later or have shorter periods and a shorter school day.
"After living in AK, this whole conversation about when the sun rises sounds like latitude privilege to me."
Kate's comment is arguably the thread winner.
As I never tire of pointing out (much to my wife's chagrin), Daylight Savings Time is Standard Time. DST runs for almost two-thirds of year! That's the standard, isn't it?
As I never tire of pointing out (much to my wife's chagrin), Daylight Savings Time is Standard Time. DST runs for almost two-thirds of year! That's the standard, isn't it?
As I never tire of pointing out (much to my wife's chagrin), Daylight Savings Time is Standard Time. DST runs for almost two-thirds of year! That's the standard, isn't it?
As I never tire of pointing out (much to my wife's chagrin), Daylight Savings Time is Standard Time. DST runs for almost two-thirds of year! That's the standard, isn't it?
Once again, the news from Washington DC steals a plot line from Veep.
I for one am looking forward to seeing a Veep reboot with a properly diverse cast.
Getting that bill through the Senate was the high point of Ed Markey's legislative career, his legacy. Don't fail him now, House of Representatives.
You can't just change school hours, because they have to mesh with parents schedules.
I want to fall back and stay back. Keep that extra hour forever!
No one listens.
I don't think that the later sunset (EDT) should be year-round. But I would appreciate them delaying perpetual midnight (EST) a couple of weeks until late November, and then ending it two weeks earlier in late February. Four months of darkness is too long.
the spelling "commonsense" is the responsibility of The Washington Post. It strikes me as wrong
They should have used an umlaut.
“ Overall, the shift is helpful to kids, because they should not be walking to school or waiting for the school bus in complete darkness.”
As Einstein would say, everything is relative.
Easier on society to just shift the school day. If the kids are waiting for the bus in the dark when school opens at 7, then start school at 8. For most schools, they need to start HS later anyway - teenagers, esp later teens, tend to go to bed later, and naturally stay in bed later anyway. It’s not really healthy for them to be starting their school day at 7 am (worse for those of us who had to get there earlier, for pre-school day activities, like Marching Band at some schools). The trick is to run schools optimally for the students - and not for the teachers. They are the ones demanding that schools start so early. It’s better for them, but not the students. And as for high schoolers - the teachers are adults, who aren’t going through puberty, and thus don’t need their sleep. The students are. We, of course, shouldn’t be surprised though - the teachers were the ones disastrously driving shutting down in-school schooling for much of the last two years, as political payoffs by Dem politicians. And maintaining the approximately 180 day school year, when many of our our global competitors have gone to 240 or so school days a year.
other subscribers who wandered in here by mistake
Dude that makes no sense. A subscriber would not be here by mistake.
This wouldn't be a problem if everyone would just identify the Earth as flat.
But here's a proposal, instead of changing the clocks, why don't schools and businesses change their operating hours? Or go extreme and everyone shift back to the time prior to the Long Island Railroad time tyranny to operate on Local Apparent Time with noon (LAN) occurring when the sun is at the zenith over the location? Sundials would then return to accuracy. I mean, you have to know LAN to get your latitude in celestial nav. Does noon in NYC really need to occur at the same time as noon in Atlanta? We have streaming instead of broadcasting now so everyone can tailor their own time.
I watch the farming channel, Laura Farms, they just finished harvest where they were up early, but couldn't start harvesting till mid morning then the moisture on the soybeans had dried to an appropriate level and then ran deep into the night till the moisture again went up. So there goes the "farmer argument". Which is a myth, DST came about when factories used natural light.
But if there is to be permanent fix, it should be on standard time with put the zone noon on the central zone meridian with the boundaries only a half an hour plus or minus. And it is based on the time the solar zenith to move 15 degrees of longitude. Whereas with DST, the LAN of the westernmost longitude boundary would occur 1.5 hours after the zone noon and the LAN of the easternmost would occur 0.5 hours after the zone noon.
I propose that in April and September/October we have Golf League Time (GLT), in which the clock is moved ahead 2 hours from DST, so that we can duck out of work at 4:00 and get 9 holes in. The rest of the year is good the way it is, because it's too cold in the winter and there's plenty of daylight in the summer.
"After living in AK, this whole conversation about when the sun rises sounds like latitude privilege to me."
I agree. I worked the Gulf of Alaska/Aleutians June to about mid November, and have made shore landings in high sun at 3 am as well as seen sunrise at 11am when we just ran out the chain for a couple days work and didn't want the hassle of doing payroll with such a short time change. It was weird getting of the 8-12 watch with it feeling more like the 4-6.
In contrast when I lived in Honolulu, the sun shone into my east facing condo the same time all eye due to it rising behind the foothills behind the university in summer but out past Diamondhead in winter
“The main issue in Arizona (which maintains constant time) is to figure out if the Midwest is one or two hours ahead.”
That just shows your Midwest connections. For me, the question is whether AZ is aligned with MT and CO in the Mountain time zone, or N ID, WA, and NV in the Pacific time zone, at any given time. We have two houses, one in MDT (MT), the other in MST (AZ), and mostly fly in and out of Spokane (which requires driving through N ID) in PDT. Some of our doctors are there too, in PDT, along with my oral surgeon and dentist. We also spent some of July, most of August and September, and the first half of October this year stuck in Las Vegas, for back surgery on my partner. We missed some plane flights this year because we were late to the GEG airport, as well as having to reschedule a dentist appointment.
I use my various IOS devices to try to keep this straight. I run four clocks on them, showing Phoenix (MST), Montana (MDT), Spokane/Las Vegas (PDT), and current time. And when I am entering appointments and the like into the calendar, I make sure to specify time zone, along with the time (IOSVdefaults to where you are). And still, I screwed it up.
We should be like the Chinese. No clock changes and the entire country is on one time zone. It is 6am in the east AND 6am in the west. If they used time zones, they would have 5 of them, so sunrise in Shanghai is 5 hours earlier than Kashi who would be seeing the sun about the time people in Shanghai are having lunch.
Nobody talks about the poor farmers in the field anymore, the real reason for daylight savings time.
I'm with the pick one crowd. I'd prefer standard time, but don't care too much. We adjust.
For those worried about kids going to school in the dark, very bright flashlights are small and cheap and long-lasting, and easier to see in the dark than many kids dressed in dark or muted colors are in the light.
Please, no more Forward-strokes. Keep Spring for babies, human, animal, and vegetable.
Permanent DST.
Winter darkness at 4 pm sucks. Summer daylight until 10 pm is great.
The desire for permanent DST wanes, the farther west you live in your time zone.
Maybe for some. Not me. And I'm an hour from the Pacific Ocean.
Of course you do. Says the man who lives on the Eastern edge of his time zone.
That's the point. People who live in the eastern part of the time zone tend to like DST, because without it, in the summer it starts to get light at 4am and dark at 7pm. But in the western end of the zone, it stays dark till 8am by late October, and would be worse in December and January.
I kind of like the idea of shifting school and work schedules rather than the clock.
these congressional morons can't address crime, illegal immigration, out-of-control spending, inflation, soaring gas prices, Biden's Gestapo abuses, or Federal judges abusing their authority.
BUT.. they can address the massive DST crisis that is rocking the nation. Here's a clue. Just stop fucking with things. We've had DST forever. Leave well enough alone.
I'm looking foreward to "Falling back" since I get up early. getting to my office in the darkness is a bummer.
"If, as some foolish GA legislators wish, we go to EDT year-round, we'll have a lovely stretch of sunrises at 8:43 AM in late Dec / early Jan."
I'm in Idaho. Sunrise is at 8:30 AM now, and it's only the first week of November. With all-year DST, sunrise would be nearly 9:30 in late Dec/early Jan.
Time zones should consider North-South instead of just East-West.
Everything above 38 degrees in the lower 48 needs to fall back.
There is no need for Miami and New York to be on the same time or LA and Seattle.
“Say, excuse me.” I turned again to the sack across from me. “Could you tell me the time?”
“The time?” His stubble split in a grin. “Golly, fella, we don’t have such a thing as the time. You from outa state, ain’t that so?”
I admitted it and he thrust hands in his pockets and laughed as though they were tickling him in there. “Time, eh? Time? They got the time so fouled up that I guess there doesn’t nobody really know it. You take me,” he offered, leaning the whole prize toward me. “Now you take me. I’m a millworker an’ I work switch shifts, sometimes weekends off, sometimes a day here, a night someplace else, so you’d think that’d be enough of a mess, wouldn’t you? But then they got this time thing and I sometimes work one day standard, the next day daylight. Sometimes even come to work on daylight and go home on standard.
Oh boy, time? I tell you, you name it. We got fast time, slow time, daylight time, night time, Pacific time, good time, bad time . . . Yeah, if we Oregonians was hawking time we’d be able to offer some variety! Awfullest mix-up they ever had.”
He laughed and shook his head, looking as though he could not have enjoyed the confusion more. The trouble started, he explained, when the Portland district was legislated daylight time, and the rest of the state standard. “All them dang farmers got together is why daylight got beat for the rest of the state. Danged if I see why a cow can’t learn to get up at a different time just as easy as a man, do you?” During the ride I managed to find out that the chambers of commerce of other large cities—Salem, Eugene—had decided to follow Portland’s lead because it was better for their business, but the danged mud-balls in the country would have no part of such high-handed dealing with their polled wishes and they continued to do business on standard. So some towns didn’t officially change to daylight but adopted what they called fast time, to be used only during the week. Other towns used daylight only during store hours. “Anyway, what it comes down to is nobody in the whole danged all-fired state knowin’ what time it is. Don’t that take all?” I joined him in his laughter, then settled back to my window, pleased that the whole danged all-fired state was as ignorant of the time of day as I was; like brother Hank signing his name in capitals, it fit.
From Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
Nelson Algren had a similar screed in one of his books but I don't remember which.
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
In Puerto Rico we are on Atlantic standard time all year. Same as eastern daylight half the year, an hour off the rest.
There has been talk of changing to Eastern and EDT for years and I would be fine with that.
Or stay on Ast and add daylight savings.
Changeling back and forth relative to the upper 50 is a royal pain.
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
We also have "Caribbean time" down here.
It's anything from 30 minutes to a couple hours after clock time.
Show up at 2 for a 2 o'clock appt and find that they weren't expecting you to be early.
Wikipedia: "The Uniform Time Act of 1966 formalized the United States' period of daylight saving time observation as lasting six months (it was previously declared locally); this period was extended to seven months in 1986, and then to eight months in 2005."
I grew up in southern California with six months of DST, and think that's plenty. Seven months meant too many dark mornings, and eight way too many. Year-round Standard Time would mean very light early on summer mornings.
Also, DST hasn't saved energy despite its intentions. The more months of it we make for ourselves, the higher energy cost.
Even with a flashlight, it's hard to see dog poops on a dark morning.
Forget about the mid-term elections. There are already 90 posts today about daylight savings time.
I guess we have our priorities straight.
Rabel said...
Darles Chickens said...
"Why not keep the clocks the same and shift the school hours to a later opening?"
Thank you.
I say - thank U!
Some body should mention the fishermen that like getting up early to fish before work.
What about them I remember Paul asking when we were arguing about time on the bus home from Jr. High in 67. I cant remember what side the fishermen were on but they seemed concerned.
My comment on this derives from Mark Twain. "The sunsets are beautiful. The sunrises are reported to be also. I do not know."
Stupidest issue in the whole wide world. Let's change the clocks, because it's way too hard for local places like schools and businesses to change their hours.
It would be even better (stupider) to change them half an hour, four times a year. Or every week.
Yeah, if we Oregonians was hawking time...
Sounds like Portland. We used to stay in Portland on the way to Ashland. No more. Too many homeless vagrants and antifa goons.
Twice a year jet-lag exercise, to no good purpose. One planet, one clock setting. All clocks on UTC and set your business hours however you want.
I don't want to be the squealer on the Althouse blog, but there's a garner on the thread. I think it's intentional!
Is intentional smart-ass "garner" worse than trying-to-impress-people "garner"?
I don't actually understand why "garner" sounds more impressive to the ear.
You've only added one syllable! It's a two-syllable fucking word! I'm sorry but that is not impressive at all. If you can't do five or six syllables, don't open your fucking mouth, okay?
I use two syllable words all the time, and I got a dirty mouth.
I think possibly I was slightly impressed by garners before I discovered this blog. In the South we don't say that shit. Unless we're trying for an A, maybe.
In life are you a spring forward person?
Or a fall back?
I think I'm a fall-backer who would really like to be a spring-forwarder except I'm too damn lazy.
If it's Mrs. Robinson, I'm spring-forward. And if it's Barbra Streisand, I'm fall-back.
(There's at least one scene in The Graduate where Benjamin is all springing forward. In fact there's a whole montage of springing forward. If that movie was a clock he probably jumped three time zones).
For the record, I don’t get up based on sunlight. I’m up in darkness most of the year. I often have hours before it’s to go out for the sunrise. But my timing is adjusted to the sun.
Some up thread had the right idea, cut back on DST. Instead of "springing forward" in early march, do it in april. And fall back in early October.
When it first started, DST was only done in the summer months. It made sense. Why have have sunrise at 430 AM, when everyone's asleep? Take that hour and move it to the end of the day. But DST makes no sense from March 5 to November 5. Thats too long.
I vaguely remember as a kid in the 70s standing in the dark and waiting for the school bus. I couldn't bike to school because it was dark. I hated it. wasn't that related to the energy crisis or something? Anyway, I'm glad they changed it.
And its just silly to change the school day to keep DST - instead of Kids being in school from 8-230 you're going to push it back in the winter to 9-330? crazy. You'll have the parents going off to work before their kids leave the house.
BTW, I like the idea of getting up at first light and do it whenever I can. Its feels natural.
Whenever I had a chance, I've chosen a bedroom with an eastern view, so the sunlight comes in at daybreak.
Is the DST debate, really the disguised war between morning people and evening people?
What's emanating from your penumbra said...
I'm disappointed in progressives that they haven't yet come up with a way to blame this issue on capitalism, or white males, or otherwise call it a crisis that justifies redistributing wealth and micromanaging your life.
It's a well-known fact in certain circles that the whole DST industrial complex was created by the ice people - white male colonizers from the cold dark north - to steal the bright, warm sunlight from peoples of color at the warmer latitudes. Sunlight Reparations are coming...
JK Brown said...
This wouldn't be a problem if everyone would just identify the Earth as flat.
Well, it *IS* flat - as a look at any map of the Earth would clearly show. The problem is that it's wrapped around this really big misshapen sphere.
Permanent DST is simply shifting existing time zones one notch east (subtracting 1 hour from the offset to GMT). It does nothing to change the relative amount of daylight in any location, and only marginally impacts the timing of that daylight since we're fairly rapidly back to dark mornings/evenings in the Northern Hemisphere after the switches regardless. Really not surprised to note our resident reality-denying socialist is in favor of it. Most of us probably wouldn't see it but I have not doubt that within a couple of decades there would be another hue and cry to institute DST in the summer all over again. It's a useless fixation of some people that just won't die.
My preference would be scrap it totally but my main beef is with another of W's idiotic innovations that changed the timing of the switch in the US to be one week early and one week later than when everybody else in the civilized world makes their switch. If going to permanent DST is what it takes to be rid of that mistake then I'll live with it.
Step 1: Make Standard Time permanent. Step 2: Open businesses, schools, and whatever an hour earlier. It impacts kids' performance in school? OK, figure out when schools should open and do that. Let it be different in different parts of the year if need be. ("Following spring break, classes will recommence one hour earlier...") How many businesses will really care whether the adults start at 9 vs 8? This will clearly affect blue collar jobs much more than white collar. White collar jobs are already like "our core hours when everyone must be working are 10 to 3".
Step 1: Make Standard Time permanent. Step 2: Open businesses, schools, and whatever an hour earlier. It impacts kids' performance in school? OK, figure out when schools should open and do that. Let it be different in different parts of the year if need be. ("Following spring break, classes will recommence one hour earlier...") How many businesses will really care whether the adults start at 9 vs 8? This will clearly affect blue collar jobs much more than white collar. White collar jobs are already like "our core hours when everyone must be working are 10 to 3".
Let each state decide. As it should be. We are a Republic.
Once the US devolves to colored people's time none of this will matter.
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