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Florida Lawmakers Approve Year-Round Daylight Saving Time (tampabay.com)
JustAnotherOldGuy writes: It seems like we're seeing a sudden outbreak of common sense from one of the most unlikely places. Florida might become the third state -- after Hawaii and Arizona -- to be done with the hassle of changing their clocks twice a year. Yesterday, the Senate overwhelmingly passed the Sunshine Protection Act in under one minute, with only two dissenters. The House had already passed it 103-11 last month. Now it has to be signed by Gov. Rick Scott. If Scott passes it, however, it still has to go through Congress before Florida has Daylight Savings Time all year long.
Don't they mean "Atlantic Standard Time" ?
- Chuq
PLEASE bring this to my State (and all States). I am so over changing time twice a year for absolutely no real reason my whole life. And picking to stay on Daylight Saving Time year-round ("permanent daylight saving time" is the best possible choice. I am very jealous. And yet, this could be the start of something great...
-Changing time-
Saves energy: FALSE
Helps farmers: FALSE
Gives extra sleep: FALSE
Reduces accidents: FALSE
Causes lots of lost productivity: TRUE
Causes a nightmare for people with sleep disorders: TRUE
Causes minor health problems even for normal people: TRUE
Generates a lot of hassle and confusion: TRUE
Hurts the economy: TRUE
Other than sunrise, sunset, and high noon, all of our measured time is "fake". Since the clocks don't care, might as well set them conveniently.
I agree - time of sunrise and sunset should be symmetrical around noon.
Why?
Sounds good on paper, but it sucks up north. Getting dark at 4:30 PM is just shit.
It remains a measure of the day's progress even if the sun reaches it's height at 1. Even with the current timezones, there are very few places where solar noon coincides with exactly 12:00:00 anyway.
Right, because bouncing the clocks around twice a year is not confusing at all.
Changing the clocks is confusing twice a year. Having different time than neighboring states is confusing for at least five months per year.
The less your opinion about Daylight Savings matters.
That's true, and also the closer you are to the "land of the midnight sun" the less you care about DST.
Furthermore, people on the eastern side of a time zone have a different feeling about DST than those on the western side, because on the western side the sun rises and sets an hour later than for those on the eastern side so they have a built-in DST advantage, or punishment, depending on how long before sunrise you have to get up to get the kids to school.
We just need to change the axial tilt of the earth. Why has this simple solution not been adopted already?
Why is Snark Required?
Get up and go to work earlier so you can leave sooner
Oh look, a person of privilege. Guess what, the vast majority of people's lives don't work like that.
No.
In the modern Western world, we work on a 9-5 schedule (or thereabouts). DST was invented to shift more daylight hours in the summer to the afternoon and evening, so that people could enjoy this daylight after work. Otherwise, a lot of the daylight hours would be very early in the morning, when most people are asleep or getting ready for/going to work.
So going to DST year-round actually makes sense, because it permanently shifts daylight into the afternoon, i.e. into after-work hours. I don't care how far that puts nominal noon away from real/solar noon, because time-keeping is anyway just a convention made up to make people's lives easier. So we can bend this convention a bit to suit our present purposes. Moving to DST permanently is easier than getting everyone to switch to working 7-3 or whatever.
...then the other half of the state is pissed that it's still dark in the morning
Said nobody, ever. Seriously, have you ever heard that complaint?
Just another day in Paradise