Apr 03
Energy savings my ass.
But other than forcing millions of drowsy American workers and school children into the dark, wintry weather three weeks early, the move appears to have had little impact on power usage.
“We haven’t seen any measurable impact,” said Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co., one of the nation’s largest power companies, echoing comments from several large utilities.
If DST doesn’t change energy usage when it’s implemented a month early, it also has no effect when it’s implemented at its usual arbitrary date. It’s time for DST to go away permanently.
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April 3rd, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Hell no! I LIKE it.
In fact, why not just leave it 365 days a year?
–chuck
April 4th, 2007 at 7:30 am
Because leaving DST in effect all year would defeat the purpose of logical, orderly time zones, as I pointed out in my first DST article.
April 4th, 2007 at 9:22 am
Shut up. If they change the rules, all my computers will crash again.
I don’t want to change the clocks. I just want the time to always be set up so that it not friggen dark when I leave work at 5. (On those rare days that I do leave at 5)
April 4th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
But it’s all arbitrary to begin with, so why not set it so that the sun is up later in the day across all zones? I don’t personally care if the time changes or not, I just don’t want sunsets at 5 PM, ever.
April 4th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
It’s not all arbitrary to begin with. The Earth’s 24 time zones correspond to the 24 hours it takes the planet to rotate, and noon in each zone corresponds with the sun’s highest point in the sky. The only arbitrary thing is the choice of the prime meridian. Otherwise, the time zone system is directly related to the physical relationship between the sun and the earth.
April 5th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
There you go thinking all logical and stuff again. And while it is a good point, I’d still rather have the sun set later in my day, then when it’s supposed to. It makes me happy, and it really is all about me, after all.
April 8th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Given that we no longer actually measure time with the position of the sun, why not shift it an hour?
April 9th, 2007 at 9:47 am
We do measure time with the position of the sun - that’s the definition of what a time zone is. The sun passes over 15 degrees of the Earth every hour (360 degrees / 24 hours = 15 degrees/hour), and that distance determines the width of a time zone. The time when the sun is at the highest point (centered) in that time zone is defined as noon.
There is a concrete relationship between the physical reality of the Earth’s rotation and the position of the sun relative to the surface of the Earth. Arbitrarily moving the clock forward or back an hour defeats the purpose of recognizing that physical relationship (time zones), and we might as well go back to a time when every locality arbitrarily set the time for itself.
April 9th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Ok, so why not move the centered point of the day to 1300? Isn’t it all for the convenience of the human race? People don’t want it to be dark at 1700, so let’s change the standard so it’s not dark at 1700.
I suppose we could alternatively change the standard work day to 0800-1600 instead of 0900-1700, but somehow I doubt any of us work those standard hours anyway.
April 9th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Yes, we could redefine “noon” to be 1 PM as long as it is redefined in all time zones, providing a consistent, predictable way to tell time in any given zone.
April 10th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Aaron, you are falling into the classical, logical trap of getting wrapped around the measure, rather than the reason for measure.
Additionally you will NEVER have a logical, consistent measure of time across the entire globe. For one, the landmasses, population centers, and political boundaries do not fall into convenient distribution. You have very uneven distribution of all the above which will always lead to local variations for perfectly reasonable and locally relevant situations.
But, you seem to value the measure over the reasons to measure, and would impose a logical, though bizarrely unreasonable hard and fast mathematical measure, that assumes the world is a smooth, featureless, sphere overlaid with a symmetrical grid. The grid is a concept to measure reality… but it is NOT reality.
–chuck
April 10th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
I have done nothing but talk about the reason for time zones. The reason for time zones is to predictably measure time in a given part of the world. Consistent quantification is the definition of measurement.
Any logical scheme for time would have to include allowances for geopolitical realities, as the current time zone setup does. But, if you declare your city to be in the US Eastern time zone, then your time should always be GMT -5, and not GMT -5 between some arbitrary dates, and GMT -4 between other arbitrary dates.
April 11th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
But I LIKE arbitrary dates! They add a layer of entertainment to our lives.
–chuck