Daylight saving is stupid

[Slick Rick]

I think daylight saving is stupid because it doesn't actually save us any useful time in the daylight. I would rather wake up in the dark and get more daylight in the afternoon when I'm wide awake and doing something. In the morning i don't really care if its light outside or not. Don't need daylight to have a cup of coffee do you?
Its 5:00pm now and its pitch black outside Cant play footie at the park, wash the car, mow the lawn etc... in the dark.
Anyway i think its a stupid idea and something should be changed.
What do you think?

 

[ExigeEvan]

There's still come light left out west

I like waking up to daylight, so I'm happy to sacrifice evening light.

 

[Danoff]

I don't think it's worth the hassle of changing the time of day to meet with daylight hours. However, you have to keep in mind that we're currently on standard time. During the summer, we're on daylight saving times - or as one of my proffs in college called it, "advanced time". Where we "advance" the clock one hour.

It's actually daylight saving time that you want year round. Standard time is what bothers you. But in general, I agree with you that it's a pointless exercise to mess with the clock. You'll be glad to know that they're changing the length of standard time now, so that it ends earlier in the year. That means that we'll be on "daylight saving" time longer. If they kept doing that, we could eventually phase out standard time entirely.

 

[Slick Rick]

I don't think it's worth the hassle of changing the time of day to meet with daylight hours. However, you have to keep in mind that we're currently on standard time. During the summer, we're on daylight saving times - or as one of my proffs in college called it, "advanced time". Where we "advance" the clock one hour.

It's actually daylight saving time that you want year round. Standard time is what bothers you. But in general, I agree with you that it's a pointless exercise to mess with the clock. You'll be glad to know that they're changing the length of standard time now, so that it ends earlier in the year. That means that we'll be on "daylight saving" time longer. If they kept doing that, we could eventually phase out standard time entirely.

Ahhh, thanks for that. Well maybe that's what they're planning, reducing it bit by bit so there's not a huge change all of a sudden...

 

[kikie]

It's stupid, nah!!

 

[Dave A]

It doesn't really bother me, it's supposed to benefit farmers and it's also spposed to save energy and worked quite well during WWI which is when it was first introduced in the UK, but whatever. That said in my last job it was depressing to wake up in the dark, travel to work in the dark, be in work when it's light and then for it be getting dark again as I'm leaving work. But even if we kept the extra hour of daylight in the evenings, it would have been dark within half an hour or so of me getting home so it wouldn't make much difference to someone in that situation.

 

[vladimir]

danoff is right, we need to get rid of standard time...wo came up with that anyway?

 

[Swift]

danoff is right, we need to get rid of standard time...wo came up with that anyway?

I believe it was Ben Franklin's idea for daylight savings time. To help farmers at the time.

 

[TB]

Apparently Mr. Franklin never had kids. As an adult you can easily compensate for the one extra or one less hour. Try getting a 2 year old to do that. So far he hasn't slept past 6am yet.

 

[UnoMOTO]

Having lived in Arizona once upon a time, We survived easily enough with out DST. It wouldn't be much of an adjustment for anyone to get use to.

 

[FoolKiller]

I grew up in a farming community and I can tell you that the farmers used to be helped by daylight savings time. When it was introduced it was a great help to farming. Why they didn't just permanently adjust teh clocks, I have no clue.

Anyway, nowadays farmers don't need extended sunlight hours. I've seen farmers out in the tobacco beds until midnight with the beds lit up like a football stadium.

That said, I still didn't vote it as stupid because it was purposeful, and I am sure there are still some poor farmers that can't afford a football stadium's worth of lights and they gain benefits. These are the guys that just barely scrape by without enough extra money to hire migrant workers. They have kids that learn the farm and are out there with them by age 8.

I personally don't get largely affected by daylight savings time and could care less one way or the other. The only trouble I have is that I have to go around and change all the clocks. That wasted about 10 minutes of my day.

 

[ExigeEvan]

Bah, I don't see how all of you can wake up while it's still dark outside.

 

[vladimir]

I believe it was Ben Franklin's idea for daylight savings time. To help farmers at the time.

i mean who is responsible for standard time, which apparently sucks.

 

[FoolKiller]

Bah, I don't see how all of you can wake up while it's still dark outside.

I get up at 5:00 AM, so it is dark no matter how you play with the clocks. (On the plus side I leave work at 3:30 PM)

I used to be the guy in college who used to say that if God wanted me to see the sunrise he would make it at noon. Now I complain because the sun rises and shines right in my eyes at work in the morning, after I've been there for over an hour.

 

[wfooshee]

i mean who is responsible for standard time, which apparently sucks.

The 1884 International Meridian Conference selected clock of the Royal Greenwich Observatory as the standard of measuring the hours of the day. The concept of time zones was still a ways off, and communities set their clocks by the sun's noon position, more or less. Probably on a given date.

Rail travel and instantaneous telegraph traffic brought out the problem of local time standards, as identifying a message time or scheduling a train proved incredibly difficult. In North America, the railroads simply decided on 5 time zones and enacted it. Local communities complied or didn't, as they saw the need. The standard time was enacted into law in 1918, when daylight savings time was introduced.

Standard time measures the day with noon the time of the sun's highest position. Daylight Savings was introduced to make the sun "later" against the clock for agricultural purposes, so farmers could coordinate their schedules with other business interests, and still have time to work the fields. In winter we revert to Standard time because the late light is no longer needed. Standard time also conforms to the world-wide adoption of Greenwich as the standard clock.

The width and occasional overlap of time zones introduces other issues. My home is only 20 miles or so west of the Eastern time zone, so I live very early in Central, meaning it gets light earlier and dark earlier for me than for my cousin in Texas, by almost a full hour.

The absolute worst part of changing the clock is that my animals don't understand. They come into my room expecting the day to start an hour earlier than they did last week, and they won't leave me alone!

When I was a junior in high school, we had to share our building with new school. All the enrollment had been set, everybody had been assigned this school or that, and the contractor fell behind. The building wasn't ready, but the administration was, and they couldn't put everything back the way it was in time, so we went to school from 6:30 AM to noon, and they went from 12:30PM to 6M in our classrooms. With no lunch needing to be served, our cafeteria became their offices. This was the year Nixon extended Daylight Savings into the winter for the energy crisis, so the sun came up sometime during 3rd period!

 

[vladimir]

so they set the time in such a way that the sun's highest position is reached at 12 o'clock? that is something only an arithmetician could have done...12 o'clock, thats when proper people get up on a weekend!

 

[Pupik]

It doesn't really matter to me; it's dark when I wake up for all work days regardless of the day of the year, and just becoming light as I punch the clock.

It might be nicer if we reversed the pattern of DST in Florida, as it's dark too darn early in the winter months, and it could stand to be a little cooler in the summer months. That might actually improve productivity, since it's hot and humid during the summertime.

And why not? The rest of the country thinks were backwards, anyhow.

 

[Taurine]

Why can't it be moved half an hour and be forgotten about?

 

[Duke]

Well, when I was a kid in the early '70s, I was in elementary school during the first major 'oil crisis'. One of the proposed mehods of saving energy was to stay on DST all year rather than reverting to standard time, which was supposed to reduce commecial electric loads for lighting.

However, it meant that all the school kids - particularly young elementary kids in suburban or rural districts - were going to the school bus stops and waiting by the roadside in pitch darkness every morning. Eventually it was decided to revert to Standard Time to reduce the safety hazard.

 

[a6m5]

We like to play basketball(outside) after work during the summer, so we have no beef with DST.

 

[kikie]

Some of us are complaining about the DST. But have you ever thought about the people whom live all the way up north. They have to live half a year in darkness. The sun won't even come up during winter.

 

[Mark T]

I actually like having the dark evenings especially around Christmas time. I wouldn't be too fussed about a change though.

 

[JosX]

Woops, I pressed it isn't useless by accident. Well i think it's totally pointless. Putting all the clocks back & forward is damn annoying & having to get used to waking up earlier & later is very weird & annoying (although feeling like your sleeping in when they go back is nice!) I hate it & always will.

 

[Deathclown66]

it shows just how easily the mind overpowers the body

 

[Cap'n Jack]

Our daylight savings is so that its lighter later in the day. I assumed it was the same everywhere. Well, I love it. Means school doesn't waste too much time and I get to spend the summer afternoons outside for longer.

 

[GT4_Rule]

Yes, it is stupid. No good done - we always have quite a few people missing from school because they forgot to reset/forward their clock.