Posted on 11/01/2013 3:31:05 PM PDT by Sergio
Daylight saving time ends Nov. 3, setting off an annual ritual where Americans (who dont live in Arizona or Hawaii) and residents of 78 other countries including Canada (but not Saskatchewan), most of Europe, Australia and New Zealand turn their clocks back one hour. Its a controversial practice that became popular in the 1970s with the intent of conserving energy. The fall time change feels particularly hard because we lose another hour of evening daylight, just as the days grow shorter. It also creates confusion because countries that observe daylight saving change their clocks on different days.
It would seem to be more efficient to do away with the practice altogether. The actual energy savings are minimal, if they exist at all. Frequent and uncoordinated time changes cause confusion, undermining economic efficiency. Theres evidence that regularly changing sleep cycles, associated with daylight saving, lowers productivity and increases heart attacks. Being out of sync with European time changes was projected to cost the airline industry $147 million a year in travel disruptions. But I propose we not only end Daylight Saving, but also take it one step further.
More at the source...
If anybody here had to make a living in an outdoor industry such as ranching, farming, construction, or oil and gas, the main reason for DST was to keep everybody on a the same working schedule with respect to daylight. That way if you needed a part or funds or seed while you were working, you could conduct your commerce at the same hour of need, instead of waiting for the banker to come in or go home while a little bit of daylight remained to get the actual work done in the field.
Stick your metric week where the sun doesn’t shine!!
I would leave it on DST year round.
Well if you include Nova Scotia ....
Beside the point. All this extra daylight saving time is adding to globul warming what with the sun being out an extra hour plus all the BBQ’s that the extra daylight allows.
From National Geographic.com
Ben Franklinof “early to bed and early to rise” fameas apparently the first person to suggest the concept of daylight savings, according to computer scientist David Prerau, author of the book Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time.
While serving as U.S. ambassador to France in Paris, Franklin wrote of being awakened at 6 a.m. and realizing, to his surprise, that the sun would rise far earlier than he usually did. Imagine the resources that might be saved if he and others rose before noon and burned less midnight oil, Franklin, tongue half in cheek, wrote to a newspaper.
“Franklin seriously realized it would be beneficial to make better use of daylight but he didn’t really know how to implement it,” Prerau said.
It wasn’t until World War I that daylight savings were realized on a grand scale. Germany was the first state to adopt the time changes, to reduce artificial lighting and thereby save coal for the war effort. Friends and foes soon followed suit.
In the U.S. a federal law standardized the yearly start and end of daylight saving time in 1918for the states that chose to observe it.
During World War II the U.S. made daylight saving time mandatory for the whole country, as a way to save wartime resources. Between February 9, 1942, and September 30, 1945, the government took it a step further. During this period daylight saving time was observed year-round, essentially making it the new standard time, if only for a few years.
There is a reason why there are fewer hours of daylight in the winter. It’s because Republicans don’t want children to be able to play outdoors after they come home from school.
I recently traveled in Arizona, the Big Rez of the Navajo a,nd Utah. I never knew for sure what time it was.
No thanks. I’m on the very edge of Eastern and like 10pm sunsets in the summer.
And that, dear City Cousin,
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I don’t exactly run around with ‘step in dungarees and have a stalk of straw in my lips’, but I am far from a Country Cousin.
Since we are ‘picking gnits’ here, sunrise sunset has only a slight bearing on the situation...are they not ‘programmed’ about every 12 hours or so?
Which is what I was implying to (not my original joke) that it doesn’t matter what the hands on the clock say, when the milk is ready, it is ready...
I know I am being ‘picky’ but the reason I brought up sunrise/sunset is that at in say Alaska and at the Poles there may be almost no sunlight.
Now, I realize that cows and chickens in that clime are about as rare as palm trees etc....
Like ‘they’ told us about Adak AK- there is a bathing beauty behind every tree. Trouble is there are no trees.
This DST/animal reaction ‘COULD’ be likened to Clark Kent waking up in modern times and having got the ‘secret signal’, was frustrated when all he saw were kiosks, not booths.... <: <: <:
The only thing I don’t like about DLS time is that we have to go back to standard time in the winter. I hate having the day turn dark at 5PM(and earlier the further north you go). I propose(and it was tried once, but a bunch of cry babies whined until we changed back)is going to Daylight savings time all year, to he** with standard time. When I was working(retired now) I used to commute 50 miles one way, in the winter I went to work in the dark, spent most of the day indoors, and then drove home in the dark. Keep DLS time 12 months per year and I would be happy.
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