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I am in COMPLETE agreement here!!!

Truth

Those who have children in school would vehemently disagree! Remember how dark it was in the northern latitudes of the Continental US before the switch back to Standard Time? Are you advocating that schools change their hours to start and finish the school day an hour later? What would this do to day-care and job requirements? There's a better solution.

I prefer the abolition of DST altogether. Stop the nonsense that disrupts our circadian rhythms twice a year in favor of a stable year-round 24 hour day. Those whose days are determined by daylight don't care about the official clock anyway.

Since as you say, it's up to the schools and businesses to set their schedules to suit their needs, would it not make perhaps more sense to just stay with normal "standard" time all year around, the way everyone had done since the clock was invented?

The west coast is in the grip of this mania. Our legislature passed a bill decreeing permanent daylight savings time, even - but it won't be observed, because that has to be ratified by an act of US congress.

But if we resolved instead not to go back to daylight savings time, that would be our prerogative without requiring federal consent. And aside from the simple satisfaction of seeing the sun directly overhead at 12:00 noon, it reportedly would be better for health. The effect of daylight on circadian rhythms is more about getting started in the morning, which is intuitively fairly obvious - most of us think nothing of extending our lighted daily cycle far past sunset. I expect that when people have lived through the winter with that hour offset, they will start to realize that it doesn't give them summer in the winter, it just makes the morning ridiculously late.

So we will have used this gimmick to fool ourselves into a schedule change that we could have made at any time, by simply changing banking hours etc. - and it will only make us depressed.

All the way back to when I was a band director in NY, and during DST, I would drive to school in the morning, in the dark and see my students standing at various bus stops in the dark along the way. Some roads where I taught were not well lit and I thought that it was very dangerous for these kids to be standing out there. Luckily for my own kids, the bus stopped right in front of our house, so it really wasn’t an issue with us. Here in the north Austin area, we live across the street from an elementary school. During DST, on many mornings I'm either leaving to go to the gym or leaving to go teach lessons at around 7 am. It’s dark at that hour and kids are walking to school. Not safe. I see Joe’s point too. I would advocate for getting rid of DST, but if that’s not possible, keep the clock on DST all year. Changing the clocks twice a year with the impact it could have on our bodies and minds isn’t worth it.

bloke wrote:re: Arizona/Florida/Louisiana/etc.

Farther south, the winter days are longer.
For a NATIONAL don't-change-the-d@mn-time, though, it would help out yankees for the "Daylight" time to be THE time...
...Again: Those individual businesses/institutions that disliked it, could change THEIR hours (without effecting others' hours) to suit themselves.

What he said.
Too dark to work on deer stands after 5 pm or so right now - and I really enjoy mowing lawn at 10:30 pm mid-June (no neighbors, I'm the only house at the end of a 2 mile gravel township road. What we have most of is peace and quiet.).

Tim "Yankee Voice from MN" , weighing in.

How did it happen, that our schedules are all an hour too late, so that we have to change the clocks and live in "fake time" to make it work out?

Traditionally, it has however been based on the sun, which defines a "day" that we have no influence over. Thus AM and PM - ante and post meridiem - refer to the middle of a day that existed before there were clocks or hours.

But later decisions to set hours of business at 9 AM to 5 PM were certainly human constructs. In Scandinavian countries, it apparently leans more to 8-4, like they somehow managed to "save" daylight time without playing games with the clock. Of course they're often depressed, as one would expect with such a daily regimen, but they do what they want.

Not that I disagree with your conclusion, Tofu, but school activities around here for grade and middle-school students don't extend into the evening. Our local Community Concert Band rehearses at a middle school. I arrive at 6 pm in order to help set up the room, and there are NEVER any students around. Occasionally there may be a few cars in the parking lot when educators are meeting. When the parent-teacher conferences are held, we rehearse elsewhere because parent-accompanied students flood into even our rehearsal room to meet with their teachers.

I live a few blocks from an elementary school, and since I've retired I've learned the hard way to avoid driving anywhere near it before school starts and as it is ending. Why? Because the streets are jammed with the cars of parents who are dropping off or picking up their children. In this day and age I understand why they feel compelled to do so, but this behavior for the most part vitiates any argument about daylight and elementary schools in addition to creating a nightmare for the children's crossing guards.

It’s dangerous for the kiddies to stand outside in the dark.

Instead of starting school later in the day, let’s force everyone to set their clocks forward/back!!

This problem and others can eventually be solved by Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Every place in the world will have the same time at the same moment. Local schedules can be adjusted as needed; they will be determined by local conditions and not the clock.

Many systems already operate this way. Satellite communication, multi-time zone military operations and airline navigators all rely on coordinated time.

There are plenty of advantages for ordinary people also. No need to ever cross a time zone on the other side of a river, or to reset your watch after a long flight. Never reset all your clocks for idiotic daylight savings time.

Hup

It would be a nice compromise to "split the difference" and make the half-hour between the two the hour, but that would take the unlikely agreement of the entire planet, I suppose.

Along the same lines, why do we transpose for different instruments?
Why aren’t the all written for in sounding pitch with the same clef!?
(Hey- at least the transposition doesn’t change twice between the movements of a symphony! )

SWE wrote:It has actually been piloted in the U.S., and people didn't like it.

What I'm seeing is 1) 3 winters during WW II, and 2) 1974 trying to save energy during the oil embargo. I was a little surprised I didn't remember that, but then Congress apparently amended it in October to go back to standard time, so while the "trial ended in 1975", it amounted to only about three months of extra DST January - March. I guess after you've done it for a few months, you start to realize, the days are too short no matter how you cut it.

Haven't thought about it much, other than ............. pick one and stick with it!! I hate switchin' time. Unless of course, it's in the meter signature!!!!

Late sleeper, are you?

The Powers That Be have done such a good job of telling me how much sunlight I prefer after I wake up, I’m exited for them to tell me what is best for my health and to control the climate!!

bloke wrote:"Having it be pitch dark before my workday is done"

If you'd muster up the nerve to talk to your boss about it, maybe you could work something out, like you could start the day one hour early and enjoy the benefits without the approval of the state legislature.

Not that it would necessarily make any difference what the state legislature says. My state signed it into law back in the spring, but we still changed the clocks. Need federal approval if you want anything but standard time during the winter (but you can stay on standard time year around, that's up to the states.)