Posted on 11/01/2014 11:14:07 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Back in 1784, hanging out in Paris and heady with Enlightenment, Benjamin Franklin had an idea. Struck by the fact that Parisians were sleeping during sunlight hours and then staying up late at night by candlelight, he calculated the number of candles that were being wasted -- and came up with a very impressive number, 64 million pounds worth of them. Franklin therefore jokingly proposed a massive schedule change, noting that a fortune could be saved through "the economy of using sunshine instead of candles," and even suggested at one point that perhaps cannons be fired at sunrise to get everybody out of bed.
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The paper, published in 2011 in The Review of Economics and Statistics by Matthew Kotchen of Yale and Laura Grant of the University of California-Santa Barbara, took advantage of what the researchers dubbed a "natural experiment" with the effect of daylight saving time in the state of Indiana --
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So what caused daylight saving to apparently backfire (rather than backlight)? "In the spring, you are basically making people wake up in the early morning, the coldest time of day, when they might turn up their heat," explains Yale's Kotchen. "And in the summer, if you take an hour of sunlight and you move it from the morning and put it in the evening, people are more likely to be running their air conditioner harder in the evening." That's because heat from the sun builds up over the course of the day, making that particular hour of sunlight hotter than it would have been if it occurred in the morning rather than the evening. So the "Benjamin Franklin effect" -- people using less artificial lighting -- turns out to be overwhelmed by heating and cooling choices.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I say that if we can’t agree on either standard or daylight, the next time we need to adjust our clocks...
Let’s move them thirty minutes (half-way) and then leave them alone!!
Everybody wins.
I'm happy we're getting our hour back tonight. Why do we ever have to give it up? It's totally stupid and accomplishes nothing!
This.
Really! Though its changes the subject, can you tell me how religious they are and how the common people see their gov. and Putin, and the US and its Pres.? What are the youth looking for?
What is transportation, housing and food like?
Spasiba
I believe that Arizona kept daylight savings time until someone in the 1960s said, “this is goofy”.
Bingo!
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BEEN THERE, done that, no T Shirt to show for it though.
IN USN Communications, when one steps into the Radio Shack you go into a world of GMT or Z (ZULU) time. You may be living and observing whatever time zone you may be in BUT all work is in Zulu time.
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OOPS... I really meant to say fall.
Lets see now it goes
FALL FORWARD, SPRING BACK doesn't it?
Turning are clocks back make plenty of since. Now if we question turning them ahead last spring they might have a point.
“Funny you should mention it.”
Nah, I’ve been there. Like you, I didn’t need much sleep growing up and spent much of my time reading or working on some project. DST didn’t bother me much back then, the biggest reason I hated DST back then was that I would lose an hour to read in the morning or evening.
Unlike you, as I aged, however, I came to need sleep more and more and generally at the same times or I really just don’t function well. I still get bouts of insomnia from time to time, but my body and mind end up paying for it during the day.
Maybe you’re actually a cat?
LOL
The questions you ask could take hours to answer, but I’ll try to make it short...
I live in the south of Russia, and area that has been growing rapidly over the past 10-15 years. Because of the growth, we haven’t really experienced any economic slowdown since 2008. With the sanctions due to Ukraine, there has been some inflation, and less variety of products on the supermarket shelves. Other than that, life seems to go on.
I prefer to stay apolitical here. I watch the news, follow events, but don’t get involved. In short, I behave the way I would hope non-citizens behave in the US.
As far as religion, they are building more churches around the city. They are attended on Sundays, with a much bigger attendance on special religious holidays. I would say that the average person is slightly more religious than the average person in the US. There are missionaries here in town. They are watched by the government, but no overt harassment.
The common people are really not that much different than the common people in the US. Most people just want to get on with their lives and take care of their families, etc. But, like in the US you have a mixture of people who have different outlooks and goals in life. But the “average” person here is not unlike the average person in the US.
The young people here are like the young people in the US. They want to enjoy life and have a good time. Most want to visit the US or Western Europe. Very few people have any animosity towards the west. It had been just a few holdovers from the Soviet Union days. However, the activities in Ukraine has helped stir up some nationalism, although most people are not opposed to the US...just Obama.
Transportation is a hassle because so many people have cars here. They prefer the SUVs. My city wasn’t designed for so much traffic, so there are lots of traffic jams. They do have lots of public transportation, but if you can afford a car, you go by car.
To me the food is rather bland. My preference is Georgian. A bit spicier! A majority of people live in apartment buildings here. They are building like Cary’s now. Expectations are the city will double in population in 10 years. People would prefer to live in houses, but it is very difficult to build one. There are very few housing developments life in the US. Mostly people but a plot of land and do it themselves. The process could take 4-7 years.
In some work environments, using GMT is simply the logical thing to do. For society as a whole, I think there would be a whole lot of people who just couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt to it.
Thanks for the revealing report! At least you are not seen as a CIA spy! But N. Korea would be different.
They ditched the national 55 mph BS.
I think there would be a whole lot of people who just couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt to it.
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Think the US ‘conversion’ to Metrics.....
Which I will admit I am just as glad we didn’t change BUT would have survived had we did.
THE ONLY ‘good thing’ that came out of that
I, like Ronald Reagan, have attained a certain age and in his great wisdom he claimed...That is not so old, it is only 24 Celcius.
Chickens use clocks?
How would the rooster know what time to get up and crow ?
They crow whenever they want.
That’s what males do. :p
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