Slashdot Mirror
California Voters Embrace Year-Round Daylight-Saving Time (sfchronicle.com)
Californians warmed to the idea of year-round daylight-saving time, approving an initiative that would urge state lawmakers to junk the annual springing forward and falling back. From a report: With 43 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, Proposition 7 was leading 61 percent to 39 percent. It's a long way from here to year-round daylight-saving time. First, the Legislature would have to approve it by a two-thirds vote. Then Congress would have to allow California to deviate from standard time when most of the rest of the nation shifts to it.
Let's get real, it's highly probable that both Oregon and Washington State will follow suit. Just easier.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
What they are saying is instead of going with the natural time (noon is midday, and midnight is... well, midnight), they want to keep the shifted time where we get up an hour earlier, so that we have more daylight later in the day after work.
It's interesting because two issues are being convoluted. One is having to change times twice a year, and the other is it getting dark earlier than people want. The former is a pain in the butt and disruptive, the latter is natural.
The "right" way to do it is do away with time changes and DST, and simply move schedules an hour earlier. School starts an hour earlier, work starts an hour earlier, etc. But apparently this is psychologically too difficult to embrace so instead we'll just pretend 8 PM is 9 PM, and call "6 AM" "7 AM", so we don't think we are waking up earlier and going to be earlier.
Better known as 318230.
It means that local "noon" will be roughly equivalent to one hour before the sun reaches maximum elevation around that longitude.
The basic idea is that people are firmly entrenched in the idea of what happens at what particular number is indicated on a clock, moreso than simply adapting to whatever actual time happens to be advantageous.
i.e. getting to work at "9AM" is an immutable, unchangeable state of the universe, while the actual position of the sun in the sky relative to your location on earth at 9AM is something that has to be legislated.
In the old days, people in high latitudes just had "summer hours" and "winter hours" where they'd open/close stores and show up to work based on whatever was advantageous for that time of year, and weren't wedded to the idea of having an unchangeable schedule on the clock. Businesses and families made or did not make changes as independent units, and the decisions were based on the nature of the activity.
Now the clock is somehow more important than actual, physical reality.
DST is just tricking people into changing their schedules while they somehow think their schedule has stayed the same because they do things at the same indicated time their clock has always told them to.
i.e. humans are incredibly stupid creatures sometimes.
The "right" way to do it is do away with time changes and DST, and simply move schedules an hour earlier. School starts an hour earlier, work starts an hour earlier, etc. But apparently this is psychologically too difficult to embrace
It's more about coordination than psychology. Maybe software developers are used to flexible hours but retail, healthcare, transportation and a lot of other sectors are tied to the clock. What happens if the school changes but work doesn't? What about contracts that specify working hours? Are stores willing to switch if customers split between early and late? What about rules for overtime pay that kick in at night? There's a million little things that make it easier for a majority to change the time zone rather than change everything else and then those who don't like it can try scheduling things an hour later if they can.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I like to have dinner around 6:30 PM. I could wait until each member of my family happened to be hungry and then feed them individually, but I don't. Because we all know dinner is coming at 6:30, everyone times their earlier meals they're ready to eat at 6:30. This is not natural behavior, but neither is it somehow underhanded. It's simply a logistical convenience made possible by the invention of the clock.
That's pretty much how all non-agrarian work is coordinated: we agree on when we'll show up for work and when we get home.
The purpose of daylight savings was to give people working industrial jobs more daylight leisure time in the summer. Remember, when it was first adopted electric lighting wasn't something those people would have. They could have got the same effect by telling everyone in your society to adjust their schedule twice a year, but the government doesn't regulate the start and end time of work shifts. It *does* regulate the time standard, making that the simplest mechanism for accomplishing this.
Daylight savings never made sense in near-tropical or near-arctic regions. Nor is the case for shifting back and forth between standard and daylight savings compelling in a world of ubiquitous electric lighting. You can either stick with standard time, and lose summer daylight leisure time, or stick with savings time year round, getting ready for work in the winter with the aid of light bulbs.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Nobody's suggesting getting rid of the clock.
But even as it stands, some businesses are open from 6-2, some are 7-4, others from 8-5, some are 8-4, and some are 10-6 [...]. It seems that we get along just fine with these already-wide variations in operating hours, where the first-shift factory worker's day is half-gone before the shop that is open from 10-6 even opens the doors. This is normal and it works as well as it needs to. Further discussion of this aspect is a really stupid thing to be doing.
Plenty of us are fed up with the twice-yearly tomfoolery of changing the clocks, though.
Solar noon happens at the same time every single day of the year for a given meridian.
If we stop doing DST, then the days just get shorter as winter approaches: The sun comes up a bit later, and goes down a bit earlier. The opposite happens after winter is over and the days get longer. No big deal.
If you need daylight to perform your job, you're already adjusting your schedule based on the sun.
The rest of your questions can be answered with "Figure it out once, and then write it down. And then change it later if it seems like a good idea." Just like every fucking thing else in business.
Kid-proof tablet..