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Trump Endorses Permanent Daylight Savings Time (thehill.com)
President Trump on Monday threw his support behind efforts to keep the United States permanently on daylight saving time, which took effect Sunday morning. "Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!" Trump tweeted. The Hill reports: California and several other states are considering measures that would end the biannual clock changes between standard and daylight saving time. Three GOP lawmakers from Florida introduced legislation in Congress this month that would end the November clock change from daylight saving time back to standard time. The measures, introduced by Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott and Rep. Vern Buchanan, would keep the country in daylight saving time, the clock change made in early March that is observed by most states for eight months of the year. Rubio introduced a similar measure in 2018. That bill did not advance in the Senate.
I never really understood why we "fell back" to standard time during winter, the one time of the year where the extra hour of daylight in the evening was the most useful.
Daylight until 8:30 PM during Summer never seemed all that helpful, but daylight when you're trying to drive home from work around 5:30? Now THAT is useful!
Yeah, sure... It would be better yet if management left everyone leave at 4 PM during Winter to improve their commutes, but we all know that's not going to happen in most organizations.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day!
Why would farmers care what time the clock showed?
Look I get it - Winter is dark up north. And the sun comes up really early in the summer (I have daylight from 5ish AM to almost 10pm where I live). Fireworks don't start until 9:30.
But I too hate the 1 hour forward/back. It's miserable. Why not get the benefits of both and pick the middle.
Trump says many things that are not idiotic.
Citation needed.
I have listened to him speak, and read many of his tweets. This is sufficient for me to know without a shred of doubt, that he is a moron.
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
Not nearly as useful as having exposure to at least *some* sunlight in the morning before a person start's their work day. While it's true that many people begin their commute while it is still dark in the winter, a *vast* majority of them still get to experience at least some sunlight before heading indoors at the end of their commute. Exposure to even just 15 minutes of sunlight in the morning boosts seratonin levels, which in turn boosts melatonin production in the evening and is vital for having healthy and restful sleep... delaying exposure to sunlight until later in the day does not boost seratonin levels as high as it will in the morning and further delays melatonin production, leading to health problems related to the lack of restful sleep. You're talking about a "nice to have", but comparing it to something that we are biologically adapted to, which is to function primarily during the day.... well, as I've said before on this subject, evolution is not a democracy.
And while you wouldn't get the sudden chaos that changing the clocks twice per year brings, instead slowly ramping up and then slowly ramping down throughout the winter, but keeping the clocks pushed ahead through the winter months would be certainly disasterous for a period of about 3 to 4 weeks in the middle of winter for people who live north of about 45 degrees, which while not a majority of Americans, is still not a small a number.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If the government must screw around with the clocks twice a year, they should move them BACK in the spring and return them to standard in the fall.
I call it "Night Life Savings Time".
Hmmm... a real dilemma: No drive-in theaters vs. the sun streaming in at 3:30am in the summer.
I'll side with 99.9% of the population and ditch the drive-ins.
Liberals will now find reasons to hate on this, too. Basically Trump can control them through reverse psychology. Support Jews, and liberals become literally Hitler. Checkmate.
For those who advocate "permanent DST", let's apply a little terminology. "DST" is a term that applies to the practice of changing the clock to something other than your actual time zone. It's not an actual time zone like EST or PST. If DST is made permanent, you're not in "DST" anymore, because the term is then meaningless. Rather, you're in the next time zone to the east of you.
So let's call a spade a spade here. If your standard time zone is PST and you advocate "permanent DST", what you really want is to switch from Pacific Time to Mountain Time -- even though you live in San Francisco. If you live in Texas and like the idea of "permanent DST", what you really want is to switch from Central Time to Eastern Time -- even though you live in the middle of the damn country. And so on.
Now we can finally see that the idea of "permanent DST" is ridiculous, confusing, and short-sighted. To be clear, if the stupid practice of changing the clocks was never invented in the first place, we would have all gone about our lives happily ever after, and never gave a second thought to it. But because we spent a few decades clinging to this stupid practice, now we have a debate. I say get over it, accept the time zone you live in, and wake up an hour early if you truly want to. Nobody is preventing you from doing that.
You can't make a rope longer by cutting a foot off one end and attaching it to the other. "Permanent DST" is identical to getting up 1 hour earlier. Just leave how we indicate time alone so the sun is (roughly) at its greatest height on the ecliptic at noon in any given time zone instead of playing a stupid shell game that doesn't do anything but mess up astronomical time.
~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.