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Ontario to Match U.S. DST Change
Devastator writes "CBC is reporting that Ontario will be the first Canadian province to change daylight savings rules to reflect the changes happening in the U.S in 2007. Attorney General Michael Bryant says 'the province's economy was the deciding factor and that if Ontario isn't on the same time as the United States, it will be hurt financially.'"
Last time I checked, both Canada and the US did trade with countries other than each other. Some of these are in other time zones. Hell, there's a 3h discepancy between here (BC) and Ontario, and I live in the same country.
I hope that a lot of people come out very vocally to demonstrate what a stupid idea this is, and how it's just a case of nose-to-ass following without justification.
I can't stand daylight savings time, it kills my day. If the sun is only up for a few hours it should be up later in the day, not like 7 in the morning till 5:30 or something... 8 to 6:30 would be much better. It pissed me off when they started it "so children could get on the bus in the morning in the daylight" and it continues to piss me off now that it is expanding...
That messes _this_ up:
:)
http://www.stemhaus.com/firefox/foxclocks/
But at least it gives me the opportunity for a shameless plug
Actually I'll add that as an Ontario resident, and a despiser of the current US regime, I think Ontario's move is entirely pragmatic: the US accounts for perhaps 80% of Canada's exports, and presumably a large portion of that comes overland from Ontario to the Eastern US. Having said that, I'll confess to the knee-jerk reaction that I don't want _my_ clocks set by a man who can't even set his own.
Andy
No daylight savings, no time zones, no AM/PM even! It's just GMT 24hour.
I've never understand the argument that a business loses money by being in a different mode of Daylight Saving Time. I grew up in Indiana and never understood why other states changed their times, but I figured maybe we were just backward or stupid (which the state is, but for wholly different reasons). When I moved out to California I learned just how stupid DST really is. It is a terrible idea. It's not just that I'm too lazy to change the 12 clocks in my house/car/office, but more that in the winter the sun goes down at like 5pm. I hate driving home in the dark and having the sun wake me up an hour earlier (all hail flex time). I've lived in both and can compare the two. The people I know who have moved from a DST state to Indiana say they like not having DST. Anyone who hasn't lived without DST can't argue with me. Indiana is changing this year to DST, and I can't wait to hear all the bitching that occurs.
My mom has an international shipping business in Indiana and works with all time zones and all permutations of with/without DST. It has never affected her work. How can being in a different time zone affect your business? You already have to work with other time zones, so why would this affect them?
IANAL, but I play one on
It's not Canada it's Ontario. Timezones are of provincial authority. So if any province wants to switch timezone or DST, Canada can't say anything against it. Quebec already announced it would switch so either it is first to or Slashdot is slow to report the news :)
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
The entire practice of Daylight Savings time is inane and utterly ridiculous.
The primary reason for changing it yet again is to reduce overall fuel consumption. So, instead of mandating higher fuel economy (the average being lower than it was two decades ago) we choose to change time.
Just stop and think about that for a moment. The insanity of it threatens to collapse in on itself and tear a hole in the universe.
George H.W. Bush once said in response to calls for conservation that "The American way of life is not negotiable." We want what we want, when we want it, without having to deal with the realities and consequences of acquiring it. It's too inconvenient to consider that we might be taking the wrong road. We Americans get viciously defensive when anyone questions our habits and have to largely be forced into making any changes that will benefit us in the long-term. What pleases us this instant is usually the only concern we have.
We assume that any problems can be glossed over and this stands as a prime example of glossing over a major one at our own peril. When gas prices rise, legions demand that the president "Do something about it". Just wave the magic wand, make the problem go away, let us go back to living the way we want to, even if it isn't sustainable, simply because we desire it. There is nothing wrong with desiring something, but having unrealistic expectations for receiving it is pure greed. I could stand up and demand that the local bank hand over a large sum of cash just because, but my desire alone does not validate my demand. We act as if we deserve low gas prices simply because we want them to be low and cannot reconcile the demand/price relationship whatsoever.
If you choose to drive a vehicle that gets 12mpg, you really have no leg to stand on when you bitch about rising gas prices. You are part of the problem. You cannot, and should not be protected from the widespread impact of your choice. You are not a child. Grow up.
When you buy into sprawl by moving into the latest subdivision on the edge of the city to escape the last subdivision you lived in on the old edge of the city, you do not generate much sympathy when you complain about your traffic woes, lack of greenspace or rising taxes. You are making the decision to encourage the kind of development which is unsustainable and lowers your quality of life. (Note: I know in some areas, there is little choice about the kind of neighborhood you live in - sprawl is the only option, but many, many people continue to move further and further out to the same kind of development they already live in expecting the process not to repeat and that they will somehow escape the sprawl, and become indignant when they have to deal with the consequences I mentioned above. This example referred to the active supporters of the lifestyle and not the helpless participants who have no other choice.)
I may want to eat ice cream all day, but if I choose to do that (which I do not) I cannot demand to be thin. Most people would laugh at me if I did. Yet, when we are greedy and selfish in other ways, we act as if some Constitutional amendment has been violated if we actually have to face up to the effects our actions produce.
Time to take out the pacifier and deal with matters properly.
Please.
When you can drive across the border, and time loads to arrive at particular locations at particular times, then time matters. The less weirdness, the better.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Going to UTC won't change a thing.
I would go to work from 0900 to 1700, the guy in Germany from 1000 to 1800, the American from 0200 to 1000 or whatever. You haven't gotten rid of timezones at all, you've simply hidden them away in a more confusing system.
As it is now, at least I know when I go to the States, that I'll be able to go shopping at 1500 hours, because that's the way it is in my country too and human life tends to follow similar patterns. In your system, if I try buying something at 1500 hours, I'll get a strange look from people and they'll say 'you're not from around here, are you?' So you've made it worse for me - not only am I jetlagged, I also have no ideas at what time I'm supposed to do what things - I'll simply be the laughing stock of the hotel employess when I demand my breakfast at 0800 hours.
If I want to call someone in Calfiornia now, I'll have to check timezones to make sure I won't wake him up in the middle of the night. If I want to call someone in your system, I have to check at what time people go to bed and when they wake up over there to make sure of the same thing. So - it really is the same difference.
Man, if I had a nickle for every time I've heard that.
-
Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
Thank you for posting the facts. I'm sick of repeating this stuff to ignorants all over the net. Daylight savings time is a pain in the butt, but it exists for a reason, and for once that reason doesn't descend from some ruler's unchecked vanity. No matter what the bureaucrats tell you, we're still animals and thus we exist according to the rules of nature. The fact that we have these ugly buildings and cube-farm hate factories is just fluff. Sunlight is a ridiculously important energy source which is why most of us live by day and sleep at night. Adapting our synthetic time system to nature's clock is only logical.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Of course, the easy, cheap answer is to just encourage people to work different hours, with things like tax credits, etc. Save a lot of money, save a lot of fuel, everybody wins. Changing your clock is just silly.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Last time I checked, both Canada and the US did trade with countries other than each other. Some of these are in other time zones.
80% of Canada's exports go to the US; 25% of the US' exports go to Canada. Each country is the others' largest trading partner. 40% of Canada's population is in Ontario. The next largest province is Quebec, which is also in the Eastern timezone. The largest city is Toronto (in Ontario), the next largest is Montreal (in Quebec). Toronto and Montreal are two of Canada's busiest airports (Vancouver is in the top three as well I believe).
Anyway you cut it Canada and the US are interconnected economically. Anything that messes up the interaction can have serious repercussions.
While you're at it, have it last year-round. Not like it hasn't been done before:
/ daylight050728.html?print
The last time the United States and Canada observed different winter time systems was during the 1974-75 oil crisis. The U.S. did not turn its clocks back at all that fall in an attempt to conserve energy.
From http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/07/28
Better to have to change once and get it over with than replay the same drama every decade when someone wants to avoid problems like having hundreds of thousands of people driving huge vans and SUVs to work with no passengers. By the way, why is gas so much more expensive in other countries when we seem to waste it? From time to time I hear about equivalent prices of over $10/gallon.
--
"Extra Anus Kills Four-Legged Chick" -- Headline
It has nothing to do with being an "old skool fanboy". I like interfaces that I can learn to the extent that I could "use them in my sleep". Specifically, I dislike interfaces like this that confound motor learning, because they basically force me to re-learn how to use the interface every time something changes.
I really hope you're kidding with that statement. That or that you're not scientifically trained at all. It's kind of trite, but in this case it's really true: correlation does not mean causation. Don't you think there might be some more important differences to explain the difference in crime (think population density).
Steve
Because almost _everything_ as we know it would have to change.
For example, how do you tell your employees to be at work at 8:00 UTC if some of them are in New York and others are in California?
Here's how: Have some of them come to work at 8:00 UTC, and others at 11:00 UTC? That is called having Time Zones.
Time Zones exist because of geography and physics. The Sun and Moon will be a specific places in certain geographic regions at certain, erhm, times. Benjamin Franklin was the one that proposed "Daylight Savings Time" as we now know it - in order to save Paris "Millions of Dollars"(century adjusted) in Candlewax use.
Candles were used for lighting homes at night back then.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
I don't buy it.
In Florida, at least, 1 more hour of sunlight = 1 less hour of lights and 1 more hour of A/C running on "high" instead of "med/low" (depending on time of year).
Its stupidity, no matter what kind of inane justification they try to put to it.
And anyway, ten thousand?! Ten measly fscking thousand? Take a look at this, even Canada uses 1.7 MILLION barrels a day. For some reason the US isn't on there, but I bet it uses significantly more. 10,000 a day is chickenfeed. Is that worth the hassle and lost productivity in the economy that DST causes?
== Jez ==
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