That’s not my experience. In fact, I once flew from NY to Texas, and was really thrown out of whack, because I didn’t think a one hour change would matter much, but it turned out to be more like a 2 hour change in when the sun rose, and it completely messed up my circadian clock.
But that’s completely irrelevant. The numbers we use to label times are completely arbitrary. We’ve agreed to a standard so we can all arrange to do stuff together. But we agreed on that standard back when travel was slow, and we didn’t have live, in-person meeting across the country. Now, that standard is a nuisance, and adds unnecessary cognitive load on people on a regular basis. Why not fix it?
I mean, there’s a lot to be said for “let’s not change anything, it’s confusing and my old electronics will be wrong”. But if we are going to make a big sweeping change, why not actually fix that while we have the chance?
I’m not arguing against UST. If it meant I didn’t have to change my clock twice a year then I would be 100% on board.
When someone had suggested (in the DST thread on AO a bunch of years ago) putting the whole country in two time zones (basically Eastern permanently switches to Central and Pacific permanently switched to Mountain) I thought you were opposed. I know I was in favor.
I personally agree with this sentiment…but there are a lot of people who are wedded to the idea that “working hours” must be 9-5, “school hours” must be approximately 8-3, etc. Those preconceptions go a long way towards why we can’t decide whether to go with year-round standard time or year-round DST if we were to drop the seasonal time change.
I think that’s dumb…but I’ve been WFH for 15 years or so, so I’m very used to adjusting my work hours as necessary (I’m partial to bifurcated work days – work mornings and nights, but have personal time in the afternoon/evening), and working for/with folks many degrees of longitude away.
That being said… I think there is something to be said for being able to say “if it’s between 9 and 4, that is a reasonable time to make a business call…and they are x hours ahead/behind us” as opposed to “8-3 are reasonable times if they are in New York, 9-4 if in Chicago, and 11-6 if in California”. I’m sure that we’d adapt, and it would definitely be easier to coordinate events…but there will be pros/cons to whatever decision is made.
For one of my hobbies, we get around this headache by being in the habit of giving two times for everything: UTC/GMT, and “local” for the dominant part of the audience. Communicating in UTC ensures that we are all starting at the same time; adding in the dominant local time is for convenience, and helps provide the context of “this is a daytime/evening/… event for the dominant audience”.
Yes, and it’s because this would force most people and corporations to confront and change those preconceptions that i think it would be worth it to do this to give up the handy (for me) seasonal adjustment to those preconceptions.
If we could all acknowledge that it’s arbitrary and move to locally convenient times (and maybe rethink the whole, “wake up teenagers before dawn to send them to school”, while we’re at it) then i think I would be less troubled by what clock time the sun rose.
I agree that it’s just bizarre that people care whether we are on “permanent daylight savings” or “permanent standard time” or even the immensely stupid “permanent double daylight savings”. But they do. And I’d like to kill all that.
Yeah, that’s the polar opposite, in terms of how people would behave. Instead of having “we all work 9-5” be obviously stupid, and most employers picking times that made sense for their location, it would just be hugely inconvenient for vast swaths of the country.
The military generally does this if they have operations that span multiple time zones. “Zulu” time generally means UTC/GMT no matter where you’re at. “Lima” time is essentially Local time if that has a material impact on timing.
Bump, just ‘cause.
I recall nothing being done about this six months ago, and here’s an update: same ol’ same ol’.
Fun DST-related thing: I changed the clock in my wife’s car. What you do is that you change the time choices (DST or not DST) to Not-DST, and it will subtract an hour on the clock. No, you don’t simply reset the hour, as on my car or the several clocks in our house. You physically change the option on the car to Not-DST.
True, it was going to get dark early eventually where you are.
Down here, sunset is now 4:54PM and will drop to 4:43PM for 12 days over late Nov/early December (while the sun will rise later).
And, a lot of it has to do with where you are in your time zone: Boise Idaho’s sunsets (note, Boise is only two degrees east of L.A.) minimum sunset time is 5:15PM! Because it’s in the westernmost part of MST. (Thanks, A321!)
To be more extreme, Louisville KY’s minimum sunset time is 5:22PM. Richmond, VA, just a bit south latitude-wise, has a minimum sunset of 4:51PM. Both are in the Eastern Time Zone.
So, the one-US-time-zone-for-all advocates should have middle America, say Kansas City, be the place with the circadian perfect sunrises and sunsets, today sunrise is 6:54AM, sunset is 5:09PM, while in NYC the sunrise would be at 5:34AM, sunset at 3:44PM, and in L.A., sunrise would be 8:19AM and sunset would be 6:53PM.
Of course, the NYC one-zoners would want THEIR time zone to be the one time Zone, and the L.A. one-zoners will want THEIR time zone to be the one zone. And that is why a) it won’t happen, and b) why we have time zones in the first place.
I know most coastal folks believe everything between the coasts is the same, but Boise is actually in the Mountain Time Zone. Turns out there are 2 time zones between Eastern and Pacific.
The outliers that are big enough that you’ve probably heard of them are Presque Isle, ME (earliest sunset 3:44 PM) and Marquette, MI (latest sunset 9:46 PM). Further extremes exist if you go to smaller cities.
But of course the issue is that they’re both in the wrong time zone. Presque Isle should be Atlantic and Marquette should be Central, but both are Eastern.
Don’t give a crap what time it is, I wake up the same time every day. Don’t know the last time I used an alarm unless I needed like a 5 AM flight.
Just happens that the time was the wrong time today. Intentionally stayed up a bit late the last 3 nights to try to autocorrect. woke up at 5:40 instead of 6:20.
Stupid, useless tradition. I’m sure it causes pains for various professions.
That is probably the most reasonable solution - but I’d prefer standard time with everyone just accepting that “business hours” should start and end an hour earlier than we are used to.
Enjoy thinking about how cool it would be to move to the west coast and keep my job in the eastern time zone so that my work day would be over by 2pm. But waking up at 5-6am for a meeting would not be as much fun.
One nice thing about living on the west coast is sports and other live events. You can watch Monday Night Football or the Academy Awards show until it’s over and still function at work the next day. 2000 notwithstanding, you usually know who won the Presidential election before you go to bed. Kids can watch the Super Bowl in its entirety.
In particular I don’t know why the Super Bowl is on so freaking late. Even in Hawaii it doesn’t start until 1:30 PM. They should move up the start time by two hours IMO.
