I'm surprised by the general enthusiasm here. This is awful for teens! They're biologically programmed to go to sleep later and wake up earlier.
On DST an "8am" school start is actually a 7am school start.
If you want to institute this plan, convince society that starting and ending everything one hour earlier is a good idea. For good reason, people will tell you to f--- off.
Suck it Ben Franklin! The idea that we would mess with one of our universal standards, the measure of time, for the sake of convenience was always a stupid idea. Change the hours of doing business, not the standard of time.
it’s like making the length of a meter shorter early in the season to scale the distance to match fitness level so that everyone runs the same time throughout the year. it just creates confusion.
Never EVER fvcking mess with your universal standards!
Now we need to all switch to Greenwich Mean Time so everyone is on the same clock, then world peace will reign forever.
Not only would Greenwich Mean Time be wonderful, I am a full supporter of a 13 month calendar. 28 days a month, every 1st being a Sunday or Monday. End up with 2 outlier days that could be true celebration type days for the entire planet. It would take about 5 years for us all to think it was a normal way of life.
I don't think DST should be observed at all. Just keep everything standard. Light in the morning is good for people.
In the DC area, the sun rises at 5:45 DST am at the summer solstice.
That would be 4:45 am if you stayed with standard time. So, daylight in the morning is no issue in the summer no matter what. The switch is good.
On the flip side, sunrise is 7:25 am during the winter solstice. The switch back is good. This law has sun rise at 8:25 am.
Standard time is set to allow people to start their time during daylight at any time of the year. DST is simply people getting earlier as the sun comes up earlier.
No legislation can change the fact that the sun is out for less than 10 hours in the winter.
Shouldn't the time be based on setting noon when the sun hits apex during the day?
The sun doesn't hit an apex. It just stays where it is. We move around it.
Everyone knows this, Sunshine. If you put a stick in the ground on a sunny day and follow the shadow for a few days you'll notice when high noon occurs. And if people want to permanently change the time it should be based on high noon at the equator.
Daylight time is dumb. The sun should be at zenith around noon.
If the people really wanted to shift work/school to start an hour earlier, they could just do that on their own. Want to work 8 to 4 instead of 9 to 5? Looks like most people didn't, or they would have. But they do want to trick themselves into it?
I think it all depends upon where you live if you prefer DST or Standard Time. For me, living in the PNW staying on DST, which we are on right now, is far better. You have afternoon sun longer. It will be light at 5:15pm in December instead of dark at 4:15pm. Yes, it will be dark in the morning but I'll be going to work in the dark whether I'm on either time.
We should scrap it all and go on (CUT) Coordinated Universal Time. The whole planet is on the same time.
5 am might be the morning where you live, it might be the late afternoon somewhere else, but we're all on the same time.
Zulu Time.
That is used in aviation, sea travel and by the most militaries. The same time exists around the world. No DST. Time is determined at the Prime Meridian (0-degrees), which runs through Greenwich, England. If is is 5 am in Greenwich it is 5 am around the world.
China has a Zulu Time style single time zone that spans 5 adjacent time zones, and determined at Beijing. People do can live with a single time. A meeting time between two distant places requires no time conversion.
That's not quite true. We've moved on from the days of using the earth and the sun as a giant sun-dial to tell time, as there was too much variation in the wobble. UTC is based on frequency of the Cesium atom, and not (directly) on the Greenwich Meridian. Since these are different, UTC implements leap seconds to keep this difference within 1 second.
I grew up in a county that was right on the edge of a timezone, and we didn't change our clocks, while our neighbors did. It was confusing at first, as a kid, because all the times of my favorite cartoons shifted by 1 hour, but kids can quickly adapt.
If we were going to eliminate something, it seems awkward to keep the "Daylight Saving" time, rather than the original standard.
I work in the satellite industry which, like aviation, sea, and the military, uses UTC when unambiguous time matters. It would take some world-wide adaptation, but everyone adopting UTC would eliminate some problems (while maybe creating others).
When I first moved to Europe, each country decided for themselves when to observe Daylight Saving Time. Sometimes made for very confusing travel planning by train.
My favorite "consequence" of people changing their conventions is confusing the cows -- why not buy them watches?