"I hate letting go of daylight saving time … because, as a general rule, I cannot stand Morning People," @RadioFreeTom writes.
"I do not like to cede even one minute to those chipper and virtuous larks." https://t.co/z9yPIsMrkY
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) November 4, 2023
Tom Nichols, at the Atlantic, wants to “Overthrow the Tyranny of Morning People”:
I’m a night person, and I say: The rest of the world needs to sleep later…
This is the time of year when opponents of changing the clocks go on about why it’s unhealthy to fall out of sync with the sun, about why a practice first instituted more than a century ago is outdated, about how much human productivity is lost while we all run around changing the hands and digits on timepieces. Those are all great arguments, and I agree with them, but that’s not really why I hate letting go of daylight saving time.
I hate it because, as a general rule, I cannot stand Morning People. I do not like to cede even one minute to those chipper and virtuous larks, the co-workers who send you emails marked “5:01 a.m.” and who schedule “breakfast meetings” at dawn so we can all do some work before we get on with … doing more work. They are my natural enemy, and I refuse to entertain their caterwauling about waking up in the dark…
… Americans still venerate the idea that mornings are super productive, and every year, we’re all forced to give back an hour of sunlight in the afternoon so that our overmotivated friends and colleagues don’t have to endure their first latte in the predawn gloom. Instead, the rest of us have to feel the darkness enveloping us in the late afternoon, when we’re trying to get stuff done at work while the morning people nod off behind their desks.
Yes, I know: Kids will have to get up in the dark for school. Here’s one answer: Instead of setting the clocks back, maybe we should stop sending kids to school so ridiculously early, especially teenagers, who have a harder time learning in the early morning. Doctors and educators have been suggesting this for years, but we don’t listen, because we remain convinced that industrious people get up early in the morning and lazy people sleep in…
So, enough. Leave the clocks alone; better yet, comrades, let us smash the oppressive culture of our lark overlords and reclaim the day.
Or let’s at least just get the time-changers and the early risers to stop bugging us in the morning.
Change your clocks accordingly. pic.twitter.com/EyY0eelh3A
— KAMALA NATION (@KamalaNation) November 5, 2023
#DaylightSavingsTime @GOP @HouseGOP style. pic.twitter.com/3jxFkJy1Vd
— Bros4America (@Bros4America) November 5, 2023
raven
I’ve got nothing to say but it’s ok. . .
Yarrow
I dunno. Some people are morning people. Some people are night people. Some people aren’t either. Changing the clock isn’t about “morning people” anymore than changing it in spring is about “night people.”
That Tom Nichols essay just seems like a bunch of whining. If you don’t like losing morning light, move south. Hell, move to the equator. It’s not some “tyranny of morning people”; it’s because you live in a place where you get a lot of light one time of year and not much the other. He has the ability to change what he doesn’t like but instead he whines.
RevRick
Like dogs and cats my stomach said it was lunchtime at 11 am.
WaterGirl
@RevRick: Always take the word of your stomach over whatever BS the clock is telling you!
Ken
@WaterGirl: That’s why I’m twenty pounds overweight.
brendancalling
I have read articles that we would like standard time 365 days a year even worse than DLST, but I am too lazy to figure out if that’s true or not.
Like Tom, I’m a night person. Mornings are overrated—on weekends, mine typically go on til the early afternoon. A perfect morning, IMO, involves waking up around 10, making some coffee in the French press, then bring the press upstairs so my lady and I can spend some time together in bed. Then maybe a bong load, and some food.
Tom is also right about school schedules. It makes no sense.
FYI, I read Arlo and Janis DAILY, and yesterday Arlo (who very much IS a morning person) let Janis sleep in while he watched the sunrise. I’m with Janis—pull up the covers.
Also, too, A&J is a wonderful strip. I like everything about it. Much better than Mary Worth and Gil Thorp. Although GT has a lot going on these days—teenage pregnancy, abortion, gay and trans students, Gil’s wife leaving him for another woman… it’s pretty crazy in the funny pages!
Kent
I commute by bike (well, e-bike) about 13 miles each way diagonally across Vancouver WA. I hate daylight savings by mid-fall because my 7 am commute from mid-October onwards is in complete darkness. Last week I was riding to work in complete darkness and seeing tons of school kids out on the streets, waiting for the buses or walking to school. It’s not safe with so many distracted drivers zooming around in big SUVs and the poor bike/pedestrian infrastructure we have in much of the country. Plus the circadian rhythms of kids gets messed up when we start their day in darkness.
This week we are finally back to more normal morning daylight and my commute is once again in daylight.
This far north it doesn’t really matter to me what time we are on during the summer months because there is lots of daylight to go around. But when daylight gets scarce in the winter months I appreciate being on standard time so that mornings aren’t so pitch dark.
So my vote is no change or if we are going to change, then stay on standard time year-round.
Alison Rose
I prefer it being light later, but TBH I don’t give a shit which we stick with, I just want to stop changing the clocks. It’s not too bad to fall back, but going forward an hour fucks me up so badly for like two days. It’s stupid and pointless.
Sister Golden Bear
It’s hyperbolic, but as a night person, I agree that the world is structured around morning people, and night people are expected to conform themselves to it. Just as introverts are expected to adapt themselves to a world geared towards extroverts.
Yes there are morning people, and there are night people — but the flexibility usually goes one way.
Then again, working in the tech world I get to deal both morning people in time zones three hours ahead of me, and then late-night meetings with offshore teams (on the same day). I’ve had to let East Coast co-workers know that while they can schedule meetings at 7:30 am Eastern, that I won’t be attending them. Like, WTF people?!
jlowe
Tom Nichols exudes strong “you kids get off my lawn” vibes, based on reading other things he’s written. Also, Never-Trumpers aren’t our friends: we should use them but never trust them. Finally, he listens to crappy bands.
Scout211
California passed a law for later starting times for high school and junior high. After numerous research studies showed the devastating impact of early classes on teens’ health, California’s district middle schools now start no earlier than 8 am; and high schools will start no later than 8:30 am. The fears were that it would be a disaster. It went fine.
Gvg
I think the time change works ok. Not perfect, but pretty well. I am tired of the arguments about it. Everyone trying to insist on their way. I happen to think kids not going to school in the dark is important because it was scary when I was a kid. And changing school start times wouldn’t really change school bus times because most parents work and young kids go to some morning drop off early because parents have to go to school. People used to whine about schools weren’t supposed to be daycare, but effectively in our society they are, so own it and adjust.
I feel groggy for a week or so when we spring forward, and hungry early for fall back. So what? I get more daylight use when not in work, this way. I can adjust, and complaining about trivia is not me.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
There’s always plenty of reasons to dislike Tom Nichols, that piece was another one.
Said as someone who gets up 5 days a week at 3:30am to run 6.5 miles.
I hate the time shift either way but much prefer standard time to daylight “savings”.
teezyskeezy
@Yarrow:
Evergreen.
Kent
No, he’s not right. Sure we can start schools later in the day. But because so many people depend on schools as their daycare while at work that means millions of people would have to start work later if they are dropping their kids off at school at 9:30 am instead of 8:30 am. Or they would be leaving their little kids at home unattended for an hour or two each morning and expecting them to lock up and get on the school bus on their own. Which might be OK for HS kids but not kindergarten or 1st graders. There are very good reasons why we align the school days and working days.
So to do as Tom suggests we would end up shifting the entire work day for hundreds of millions of people to accommodate sending kids to school later. Which would be hugely disruptive. Either for family schedules or work schedules.
Or we can just adjust the clocks like we do now which is about 100,000-times easier and simpler.
Personally I don’t understand all the angst about changing clocks twice a year. Of all the petty annoyances in life, that doesn’t even crack the top 10,000.
satby
I prefer daylight savings time myself. And changing clocks isn’t a big deal to me, digital makes it easier than on analog clocks, but whatever. It’s like the weather, people will complain about it no matter what.
JaySinWA
Not a morning person but let’s just go to year round standard time.
Washington State passed permanent daylight savings time in 2019 and it can’t go into effect until the US government changes its laws. We could have abolished daylight savings without federal intervention. The dysfunctional US congress won’t act on this. WA acting alone might be awkward for cross state schedules, but CA, OR and WA (or CA) alone would have a huge impact. I’d be fine with west coast standard time.
The whole time change thing is insane, the rationale is no longer factual if it ever was.
We should leave the clocks alone and adjust our schedules
ETA It’s not just a hassle, it’s a health issue.
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/7-things-to-know-about-daylight-saving-time#:~:text=Making%20the%20shift%20can%20increase,a%20professor%20in%20Mental%20Health.
Old School
I don’t recall to credit, but I recall someone saying the only way to get everyone on board with changing the clocks is to have “spring forward” on a Friday at 4:00 p.m. and “fall back” on a Monday at 8:00 a.m.
piratedan
old conservabros gotta bitch about something…
clock settings, expensive viagra, wimmenfolk having bodily autonomy, kids and “their” rock and roll music… it’s always sumthin’.
Yarrow
@Kent: Tom Nichols isn’t even working a regular job anymore. What does he care about the time changing? And according to his Twitter timeline sometimes he even gets up early – apparently by choice – to be on Morning Joe. He doesn’t have to do that but he does. Whiner.
H.E.Wolf
https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-permanent-daylight-saving-time-in-the-70s-people-hated-it/
I suspect that permanent Standard Time would be equally unwelcome, given the realities of 21st-century life.
On the bright side, twice a year we can all kvetch about what we dislike in the current system. It’s a form of community-building!
Yarrow
As I said above, move south. You get more light. The equator is a great place to live.
Scott P.
I’m a night person to, but here’s the thing — it’s dark at night. As a night person, I want it to be dark!
sab
@Kent: Yes. I was relieved to see the elementary school kids waiting for the bus in early morning light instead of total dark like last week.
bbleh
As a morning person, I don’t care very much about the night people, as long as they keep the nighttime noise to the nightlife districts. I get stuff done, they show up when they show up, I leave when I leave while they’re still buzzing away industriously — it’s all good. I don’t know of many morning people who feel differently. (And btw is it lonely when you go to work in First-World Europe at 8am …) About the only time I’ll snarl at ’em is when they wake me up at midnight.
Redshift
@JaySinWA:
Arizona acts alone. Indiana (if I recall correctly) used to have it in part of the state but not all of it. It can be done.
TheOtherHank
I’d prefer permanent DST. I already get up the dark, but like having as much light as possible at the end of the day. That said, my kids are grown so little kids going to school in the dark no longer effects me personally.
I just looked it up and during the Nixon administration there was year-round DST in 1973. I was a little kid then, but spent the entire year attending Taipei American School in Taiwan, so it didn’t impact me.
ETA: H. E. Wolf beat me to the permanent DST.
Redshift
I just think it’s ludicrous that we change the clocks twice a year so we can pretend we’re continuing to work on the same schedule.
dmsilev
I’m one of those “morning people” and sure, I may send you an email at 5:45 AM, but I don’t actually expect you to read and respond to it for the next several hours. Unless of course you’re six or seven time zones east of me (one of my informal titles at work is speaker-to-Europeans…). By the same token, don’t send me an email at 10 PM and expect an immediate response.
Somehow, the world continues to spin on its axis (though, not as stably as some might like; look up the concept of “leap second” if you don’t believe me).
Eyeroller
As a former physicist who worked in relativity I’ll just note that the Einstein quote about time being “an illusion” is a misquote and/or misunderstanding. It was something he wrote to the family of a colleague who had just died (Einstein himself followed not long afterward). In relativity time is very real and there are some significant differences between time and “spacelike” dimensions (of which there may be more than three but that’s irrelevant here).
Redshift
@bbleh:
The fact that you can reasonably make that argument illustrates how our culture is wired for morning people. I’d be laughed at if I made the same request of morning people. There’s no question that at times deemed reasonable for morning people, they can make any noise they want anywhere — construction, lawn mowing, whatever. It doesn’t matter if night people are still asleep.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@dmsilev:
The problem with time and time zones
Alas, even “just use UTC” is not a perfect answer.
Chris T.
I don’t really get the “oh no it’s dark in the morning” people because when we switch to Standard Time instead of DST, yeah, OK, it’s light at 8 AM, but now it’s dark for the evening commute with the sun going down at 4:30 PM. You can’t win this game, as it’s only light for about 8 hours (near Dec 22 anyway).
Admittedly I’m pretty far north, almost in Canada…
Alison Rose
BTW if our resident bookbinder Yakbreath is around, WIRED happened to post a fascinating video today with a woman who is a rare and antique book restorer. Watching her work and how she does it was really cool. This feels like the career I was meant to have and I hope another version of me in the multiverse got there.
Maxim
I’m with Tom — tongue firmly in cheek. (And some people’s snark meters seem to be broken.)
Making kids start school early is bad for them, especially teenagers. School and work hours are already misaligned, since kids generally get done by 2:30 or 3 and parents generally work until 5 or later. We’d adapt to a different morning schedule, just like we’ve found workarounds for the afternoons.
Making people spring forward is also bad for them. As Jay notes, there are very real public health problems with the switch to DST in the spring.
That same article that Jay posted also notes that having more evening daylight could adversely impact sleep, since it delays our melatonin production. (But what do people in northern climes do in the summer? Just not sleep?) So maybe permanent standard time would be better than permanent DST.
Either way, though, we need to quit the damned switching. It does more harm than good.
Hmph.
bbleh
@Redshift: actually I’d have no trouble snarling at a neighbor running a lawnmower (or one of those fkin leaf-blowers) at 8 in the morning if I were still asleep, or even if I weren’t. It’s not about “wired”; it’s about simple politeness.
Construction, yeah, that’s a problem, but that’s the nature of the business, cuz they’re so dependent on the weather. If you’re sleeping near a construction site, get earplugs or something. Like I did, when I lived above a club. Assumed risk and all that.
(And as to “wired,” have you ever been in an urban apartment building — at least one that isn’t effectively a retirement home — in the evening? No wiring there that I’ve noticed, nor should there be.)
JaySinWA
@Redshift: Yes we could go it alone, we tried with permanent DST, but if we are in sync with CA we would have a powerful force for scheduling stuff around “our” time and not be seen as an outlier.
BenInNM
Here’s my thought – if we were on standard time all year it wouldn’t be crazy dark in the winter and if we also had a standard work day of 8 to 4 then in the summer we’d be able to enjoy a lot of light and in the winter there would still be some glow in the evening (except for Portland where I grew up and will never return) and we could all be happy!
cain
@Kent:
It’s not just changing the clocks. That one hour makes a difference in my sleep schedule – it takes me weeks or even months to adapt. The cats are confused and wondering where the fuck is the food as their body clocks don’t change. Kids are also kind of messed up on when they have to go to bed because their body clock has to adjust.
So I think there is more to it than that. My 2 dollars. (hey, it’s expensive now :-)
JaySinWA
@bbleh:
I have had construction next door on both sides of my house in the last three years. I’ve lived here for a lot longer than that. The only risk I assumed was not having control over neighbors construction projects. In revenge I had a new roof put on, but that was only for two days plus a couple of delivery days. Of course I bore the brunt of the early starts.
Omnes Omnibus
I am going to go full contrarian here. I am fine with the current system. I have a week or so of adjustment and that’s it.
TheOtherHank
I think the original justification for DST was to give farmers more light during the day so they had an easier time getting the harvest in. Which, as someone who worked on a farm during high school summers, is stupid. If the crops need to be harvested you’re out in the field doing it. It doesn’t matter what time it is. Light is light. And in this modern era, tractors/combines/etc have headlights, so if you’re in a crunch you keep going after it gets dark or before it gets light.
cain
@JaySinWA: I thought we were all waiting on my state, OR to change state law. I think it was on a ballot but didn’t pass(?) I can’t remember.
Math Guy
I’m a night person. I married a morning person. We made it work – I’m now simulating being a morning person. This is why I still hold on to the belief that Peace is possible.
Denali5
@Alison Rose:
Thanks for the video. What patience she has!
cain
@bbleh: I can do both late night or early morning. I prefer nights but I lately I’ve been going to bed at 9pm to get up at 6am. Usually I go to bed at midnight and still get up at 6am – although 7am is just fine.
If I have to go to work I usually end up there at 9:00-9:30am. If I work from home.. I start at 7:30am. I end up working more doing remote work.
I knew this guy who used to get up at incrementally one hour later every day till he would go to work at 2am and come back at 10am and so on.
Mr. Bemused Senior
I was once a night person, now and then getting system time on computers on third shift. Then we had kids. Nowadays I’m just always tired due to [Obama’s joke] being ready for the 3:00 A. M. call because I’m in the bathroom anyway.
Scout211
@Kent: At least in California, it’s only the high school starting time that has been changed to 8:30 or later. They didn’t change the elementary school start time and the junior high start time is 8:00 or later.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I have no problem with a late sunrise and late sunset, bring on DST! I’m a night person too and would rather have more light after work than before or while at work.
JaySinWA
@cain: It looks like Oregon went full DST about the same time as WA, and we are in the same boat, waiting for Federal permission.
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/11/03/fall-back-an-hour-sunday-morning-oregon-daylight-savings/#:~:text=Oregon%20lawmakers%20voted%20four%20years,and%20the%20air%20grows%20chillier.&text=But%20at%202%20a.m.%20on,will%20dutifully%20do%20just%20that.
cain
@Maxim: I love Tom just because he’s snarky. He’s a bit older than me – but I find him funny even if he is a conservative. But he’s a classic conservative and not some crazy GOP nutter. Meaning, you can actually argue with him about policy. I did get to argue with him at one time since he didn’t shut me down I must have won. :D
Gvg
We have had the no time change before. People wanted it but when they got it, it was hated so much it got repealed fast. I expect that to happen again.
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: So am I. Not as fine with what happened with the Brewers today.
cain
@JaySinWA: oh – thanks for checking. That’s great – I think then the entire west coast is all ready to move forward. We are just waiting for the Biden administration to pay attention to us.
cain
@Gvg: I hear that Oregon wants to repeal the whole ‘pump your own gas’. lol. I must admit it has not changed my life – someone is still pumping my gas. Oh baby.
Scout211
@JaySinWA: California (and several other states) have already passed permanent DST. Congress has to act to pass a law allowing the change to DST permanently.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I’ll be waking up in the dark and driving home in the dark for the next 2 months. Fucking Bollocks.
Omnes Omnibus
@japa21: You made me go look. Holy shit!
JaySinWA
@Scout211: The problem is getting congress to act. I think it would be easier for states to go to standard time than to get congress to move on this.
ETA OTOH that’s a large block of states that would flip if Congress got its act together. States rights FTW//
BC in Illinois
It seems that no one has ever proposed the most obvious, most natural, least disruptive solution:
Change 10 minutes each month. Six months in one direction, six months the other way.
Easy peasy. Just follow the sun.
Old School
@japa21: Well, at least the Brewers aren’t spending $8 million on a manager.
Not that they’ll spend that money on players either….
JaySinWA
Thousands of software maintainers and clock manufacturers are having deep thoughts right now.//
Sundials are back in vogue.
satby
@Yarrow: Not for those if us who do poorly in heat and humidity.
Redshift
@Gvg:
Its popularity dropped, that’s true (as the WaPo article recounts.) But it seems like a big factor was traffic incidents involving school children being attributed to it, which wasn’t actually true, statistically – there were more such incidents in the morning and fewer in the evening, but not more overall.
We have plenty of policies that have survived having their popularity drop below 50%, so there’s no guarantee people would turn against the change enough for it to be changed back.
Redshift
@TheOtherHank:
That’s a myth, apparently, for exactly the reasons you note (though it’s the one I learned growing up.) The latest explanation I heard was that it was for energy savings during WWI, though I’m not confident that’s true either.
Which makes me wonder, do other countries have myths about the purpose of “summer time”?
lowtechcyclist
I’ve always been a morning person (from Shrek Jr., the musical)
glc
“The death of public health”
Redshift
@bbleh:
8am isn’t the night person equivalent of midnight for a morning person. Try 9 or 10, and see if anyone pays any attention. I’m not unsympathetic to either group, but I feel there’s a difference between trying to get people to stop doing something that’s widely considered obnoxious and trying to get them to stop doing something that’s considered normal.
I’m lucky to be a heavy sleeper, so I don’t personally suffer too much from these effects, but my wife is both a night person and a light sleeper, so it can be a big problem.
lowtechcyclist
@Scout211:
So California wants to be on Mountain Standard Time? Sounds fine to me. Just redraw the time zone lines to put it in the Mountain zone.
Yarrow
@satby: Not all the places through which the equator runs are hot and humid.
lowtechcyclist
@cain:
That’s simple – just move the Pacific time zone entirely into the Pacific ocean, so that the West Coast states are on Mountain time. Mountain Standard Time = Pacific Daylight Time.
gene108
I think we should set our clocks back one hour every month, so we get one 49 hour weekend a month.
No losing an hour by springing forward.
Just get an extra hour each month.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@JaySinWA:
Good! I’m down in Brookings and am down with that. 👍
Kent
They already passed self serve gas this year.
the self serve ban had become completely untenable in small towns and rural communities where there simply wasn’t anyone available to pump gas at all hours of the day or night.
lowtechcyclist
@Sister Golden Bear:
Seriously, the world is structured around night people. Practically everybody stays up until 9pm, but who gets up at 3am? Almost nobody. You’re more likely to stay up until 3am than get up at 3am. Parties frequently don’t start any earlier than 7 or 8 pm, and go past midnight. There isn’t even any morning equivalent to that..
In terms of most people being awake, 7am is probably the morning equivalent of 9pm. So morning people get five hours, and evening people get nine. That’s fine, just don’t tell me that the world is structured around morning people.
So yeah, we’d like a few months each year when there’s as much daylight before noon as after it; the rest of the year, you’re welcome to have a couple more daylight hours after noon than we have before noon, because for several months, there’s enough to share.
terben
Am I the only person who had to look up ‘Me, either’? I see that the response to a negative statement can be ‘Me, neither’, and the response to a positive one can be ‘Me, either’. The latter is something I would never say. I would say ‘Me, too’.
JaneE
I still prefer standard time. I do not like to get up in the dark, and in the summer broad daylight is waking me up in what should still be the night. I no longer have to do all my recreation after working hours. And I do like to guestimate the time by shadow length. On standard time I am pretty accurate.
I expect I would get used to year round DST eventually. I do have fewer clocks to change than even 10 years ago, but it is still a pain, more so because I am shrinking and my hands don’t work well at all anymore. And there are always one or two I forget until the Monday after – this year it was the furnace and pellet thermostats.
It will take a week or two to adjust, easier for me in the fall than the spring.
lowtechcyclist
@Scout211:
I’m all for this, but what did they do about practices for team sports? I’ve always assumed making time for football practices and the like was the reason why high schools started their days so early. (Not that I care whether high schools have sports teams, but obviously a lot of other people do.)
lowtechcyclist
@Gvg:
This. It’s really helpful for a lot of people to have daylight at 7am, so having standard time in the winter months is a good thing. But on the flip side, even a morning person like me can see that that hour of daylight in the summer that would be pretty much wasted if it were between 4am and 5am on standard time gives people a lot more enjoyment if it’s between 8pm and 9pm in the evening. It’s worth changing the clocks twice a year to get the daylight where it has the most benefit.
If anything, I’d tweak it a bit. Especially this: when we ‘fall back,’ put that extra hour on a Sunday night, so we can sleep an extra hour before work on Monday. And similarly, ‘spring forward’ on Friday night to have the whole weekend to adjust to the time change before going back to work on Monday. Why not?
prostratedragon
@JaneE: But consider: on Standard tme those 5am sunrises become 4am sunrises. Long summer days mess up my internal clock rather badly.
Uncle Cosmo
@Yarrow: No, just nearly all of them.
wjca
Because of course the Republican-led House will instantly jump to pass the necessary legislation the moment that Biden asks them to. Riiiiiight….
Scout211
Oopsie! Correction!
and high schools will start no
laterearlier than 8:30 am.Matt McIrvin
I’m inherently, constitutionally a night owl, but having a little kid forced me to be more of a morning person and I never entirely recovered as she grew up (now she can sleep in, but I can’t). And I’m forced to get up early now by her school schedule and my work schedule, because I’m collaborating with people in a distant time zone who have to be night owls just to talk to me.
At some point, I’ll have the freedom to sleep in late again, but by that time my aging body is probably going to betray me again, have me waking up before dawn and conking out at 8:30 PM regardless.
Nelle
@Maxim: When we lived with 24 hour sunlight (sun came up in May, first dipped below the horizon briefly at the end of July), the “days” sort of extended. Maybe it was my husband’s work (bush pilot, based on an island off the north coast of Alaska), but we often ended the day around 1 or 2 in the morning, eating our supper at 2 or 3. (That was significant, because having a beer or wine with the meal signalled that the pilots weren’t going to fly any more that “day” ). People just rambled around at all hours. I was never up there in winter as I was teaching in Seattle during the academic year. I had eight summers up in the Arctic.
Matt McIrvin
@Redshift: in the US, it apparently was first enacted as a World War I-era energy-conserving measure.
These days, it doesn’t really work at all as a means of conserving energy since we spend much more on things other than artificial lighting. In particular, in the summer, air conditioning is a huge load and that’s worse during sunlight hours. And light bulbs are far more efficient than they used to be, too.
geg6
@satby:
Seriously. I’ll deal with this stupid ass time change if my only option is to move south. No fucking thanks. And the heat and humidity is only the half of it.
sab
@TheOtherHank: My grandfather was a dairy farmer, not a crop far,er. He hated daylight savings time. Cows don’t have clocks. They have udders.
wjca
But, contrary to popular belief, cows do not have to be milked at 12 hour intervals. Twice a day, yes. But not every 12 hours.
The whole time I was growing up, Mom milked the cow at 8 AM, i.e. after we left for school, and at 5 PM, i.e. before dinner. Cow never had a problem with it.
Jackie
@Kent: What’s your PM traveling home like with Standard Time?
You’re bound to get darkness one way or the other, unless you’re working less than an eight hr day.
Tehanu
Too true. I’m still trying to adjust to my new boss’s insistence that I choose either 8am to 5pm or 9am to 6pm as my working hours — after 23 years of top productivity with a 10am-7pm schedule. At least he doesn’t call meetings at 7:30 am like some of them.
Jackie
@gene108:
But… you gain that hour back every Nov when you try sleeping in that extra hour 😉🥱
moonbat
I prefer falling back to springing forward. I want that hour of sleep back!
And if you don’t like the seasons of the northern hemisphere, do as a commenter above suggested and move to the equator or find yourself another planet.
I’m half convinced that these back and forth attempts to regulate daylight and sleep cycles is making everyone psychotic. And bitching about winter days being shorter is #1 on my First World Problems Top 10 list. And while I’m at it, Get Off My Lawn!
Matt McIrvin
@Gvg:
It’s been shown that the time change kills people, through an increased rate of car accidents and heart attacks around that time–particularly the one in the spring, which is the rough one.
I’d like to get rid of it. But the big problem is whether to settle on year-round DST or year-round Standard Time, and it’s really a question of which kind of pain in the winter you think is less bad: dark mornings or dark afternoons. I’ve decided they’re both rough and I don’t care enough to pick a camp. Just settle on something.
Ryan
Maybe he can team up with George Will. Yell at some passing jeans-shaped clouds.