NationStates Jolt Archive

That freak put us on Daylight Savings Time. What does DST save anyway? For 26 years I've been on the same time, now suddenly twice a year we have to screw with our clocks. It should be 9:30 right now, not 8:30, it doesn't feel right, it's too bright this early, and by the time I leave work it'll be dark.

It was dark yesterday at 1730! I mean DARK, not dusk, it was night time. Of all the stupidity, we've lived for decades without playing with our clocks, what the hell was wrong with that?

Daylight savings time, what an idiotic idea. Any other Hoosiers on here annoyed by Mitch? Also what's with the leasing a toll road to foreign companies? How the hell does that make sense? If a toll road is profitable then the state is awful stupid for doing it, if it's not profitable then the company is stupid for doing it.

That freak put us on Daylight Savings Time. What does DST save anyway? For 26 years I've been on the same time, now suddenly twice a year we have to screw with our clocks. It should be 9:30 right now, not 8:30, it doesn't feel right, it's too bright this early, and by the time I leave work it'll be dark.

It was dark yesterday at 1730! I mean DARK, not dusk, it was night time. Of all the stupidity, we've lived for decades without playing with our clocks, what the hell was wrong with that?

Daylight savings time, what an idiotic idea. Any other Hoosiers on here annoyed by Mitch? Also what's with the leasing a toll road to foreign companies? How the hell does that make sense? If a toll road is profitable then the state is awful stupid for doing it, if it's not profitable then the company is stupid for doing it.

Look at it as a way to remind yourself to change the batteries in your smoke detectors, or to do any other thing you do twice yearly (and yes, it is a plot by radical elements of the Combined Committee on Plots of the Left-Right Coalition to mess with your mind).

I don't have any smoke detectors. It's just a pointless change, what was wrong with our time before? It's not a substantial change, it was changed on the extraordinarily flawed premise that screwing with our clocks would improve our economy.

I don't have any smoke detectors.

Then think of this as a reminder to go get some and make sure the battery is working :)

It was originally put in place to make sure farmers had daylight to do their morning chores and whatnot. A bit moot in a primarily information- and services-based economy like we have in the US now.

It was originally put in place to make sure farmers had daylight to do their morning chores and whatnot. A bit moot in a primarily information- and services-based economy like we have in the US now.

It's also touted as an energy-saving scheme: by having more daylight the time most people are up and about, we reduce the amount of artificial light required, which reduces the demand for electricity, which reduces ... you get the idea. There's a decent article in Wiki, which I was too lazy to copy the link to. I wouldn't miss it if it were done away with, and like Cluich says, you should have smoke detectors, unless you live in a field, and just use the time change to change the batteries.

It was originally put in place to make sure farmers had daylight to do their morning chores and whatnot. A bit moot in a primarily information- and services-based economy like we have in the US now.

Fear the Wiki:

DST is not universally accepted and many localities do not observe it. Opponents claim that there is not enough benefit to justify the need to adjust clocks twice every year. The disruption in sleep patterns associated with setting clocks either forward or backward correlates with a small increase in the number of fatal auto accidents,[5] (cf. above estimate of net decrease in fatal auto accidents of 50) as well as lost productivity as sleep-disrupted workers adjust to the schedule change.[6] It is also noted that much effort is spent reminding everyone twice a year of the change, and thousands are inconvenienced by showing up at the wrong time when they forget.[citation needed] Since DST exchanges morning daylight for evening daylight, late sunrises occur when DST is in effect either too far before the vernal equinox or too far after the autumnal equinox and darkness in the morning can be undesirable for early risers like schoolchildren and workers who must awaken at 6:30 a.m. or earlier.

There is also a question whether the decrease in lighting costs justifies the increase in summertime air conditioning costs. Workers arriving home to an empty house during hotter hours will need to use more energy to cool their house.[citation needed]

It is also speculated that one of the benefits—more afternoon sun—would also actually increase energy consumption as people get into their cars to enjoy more time for shopping and the like.[citation needed]

DST's twice-annual shifts in recorded time cause legal and business-operational complications, as shown in the following examples. During a North American time change, a fall night during which clocks are reset from 2 a.m. DST to 1 a.m. Standard Time, times between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. will occur twice, causing confusion in transport schedules, payment systems, etc.[citation needed] DST's annual autumn shift in recorded time—which causes an hour of the same numerical name to be recorded twice—also means that people born during one of those two hours have no way to know which of standard time or DST was used to record the time of their birth, unless someone such as a parent makes a note of it; birth certificates rarely keep track of this. A British politician, Lord Balfour, noted the legal complications in British law: "Supposing some unfortunate Lady was confined with twins and the first child was born 10 minutes before 3 o'clock British Summer Time. ... the time of birth of the two children would be reversed. ... Such an alteration might conceivably affect the property and titles in that House."[7]

Daylight saving time also causes much confusion with international business, people who commute across time zones, and computer networks that span multiple time zones. One particular problem for scheduling systems is that it makes the length of a day variable. Each year there is one 23 hour day and one 25 hour day, causing display and time tracking problems, especially when coordinating events between time zones.

Some studies do show that changing the clock increases the traffic accident rate.[8] Following the spring shift to DST, when one hour of sleep is lost, there is a measurable increase in the number of traffic accidents that result in fatalities.

People who work nights often have an extra hassle logging how many hours they worked, since it will be either one hour more or one hour less than the simple difference in start/stop times.

DST is particularly unpopular among people working in agriculture[9] because they must rise with the sun regardless of what the clock says, and thus the people are placed out of synchronization with the rest of the community, including school times, broadcast schedules, and the like.

Other critics suggest that DST is, at its heart, government paternalism and that people rise in the morning as a matter of choice because many people enjoy night-time hours and their jobs do not require them to make the most of daylight. Different people start their day at different times (office workers start their day later than factory workers, who start their day later than farm workers), regardless of daylight saving time.

Fear the Wiki:

You should have quoted more than just the "criticism" part of the article. Besides, changing the clocks twice a year confuses the Islamofascists, who don't even have a decent calendar. :D

Oh, and by the way, dark at 17:30 is Standard Time, what we'd be on if we didn't have Daylight Savings, so ...