Why DST?

The advantage of DST is available to everyone. Instead of having 2 separate pieces of free time (one in the morning and one in the afternoon) a person can now enjoy a longer period of daylight time to do something else constructive. The choice of what to do is at the discretion of that person.

It can however not be applied everywhere. A country like South Africa spans from over 15degrees east to just above 30 degrees east. But is not really big enough for 2 time zones. Some parts actually enjoy DST.

The time zone is based on the 30 degrees east. and it is impractical to introduce DST.

If we were civilized, DST would mean that we just work an hour LESS in winter (more dark hours to sleep when we tend to be sleepier anyway) and start work an hour earlier in summer.

YES YES YES!

At last a really good idea...hmmm, or maybe 2 hours less?

You stand, I'll vote!

How is it that with all of our time-saving technology we (Americans, anyway) are working, on average, 22% longer hours and taking two weeks fewer vacations just since 1979? ...Particularly since 1979 was well behind 1912 in terms of leisure time, time spent with family, rates of wealth increase, etc...?

The answer, sadly, is that our government now consumes over half the GNP, and has printed so much fiat money that a dollar is now worth only 4 cents by adjusted, 1912 valuation.

What we need in order to work fewer hours ourselves is to put our politicians out of business!

It's a government ploy to stop people playing golf after work in Autumn and Spring....Bast**ds.

It really annoys me....I'd rather we all had more flexibility of working hours.

Datlight saving...what do they do with it? Keep it in a jar for later?

The value is relative, Good for the early bird but bad for the early worm.

Wen did it start WW1 or WW2?

I will be floored by DST, the adjusting button on my watch broke.

My previous watch stopped but I think it is better than the current one. At least it is 100% on time twice a day.

DST actually stands for Dam Stupid Timekeeping.

What's daylight ?

I regurgitated some trivia on this elsewhere on CR4 (no , I haven't a clue ). In short it was a Brit idea. The Germans implemented it first for their war effort (WW1) and the Brits started soon after. OK , I couldn't resist.

Here is DST for Americans. Forget Ben Franklin , it's down to William Willett.

The Entity making money from this idea is the Neurotics Industry - has anyone ever bothered to consider the increased levels of neurosis engendered in those people who have their biological clocks forcefully shifted back and forth two times a year.

Governments, usually Conservative Governments, encourage the use of this neurosis developing mechanism, as part of their philosophy to have a divided, and so more easily controlled population.

The level of violent crime, domestic abuse, traffic accidents can no doubt be shown, to correlate with the introduction of "Daylight Saving Time".

There is also an astounding increase in the level of Stupidity associated with the introduction of DST - consider this - Australia can have at the one time FIVE different time zones in SIX States, FOUR of those States being on the East Coast and theoretically ALL on the same GMT meridian.

Depending upon which border you travel north or south, you can jump either half an hour or or one hour and not move one degree east or west. So much for the "Clever Country" catchcry.

What an oxymoron!

The suggestion that there be more flexibility in working hours, is sensible. People who like to get up early can go to work early and come home early, and so have extended daylight time in the evenings - those who like late starts can have their extended daylight time in the mornings.

Everybody is happy, no added stress levels due to distortions to body clock cycles.

One final thought - China extends across probably three "time zones" yet has uniform time across the country and all works well. The people are happy, no need to consider whether you are 2 or 3 hours ahead or behind someone you want to telephone in your own country - one clock for all seasons - no wonder Chinese civilisation has lasted over 5000 years.

As one postee asks, "do they put it in a bottle?"

Bravo. You're right.

After all, nobody cares about your clock; it's your behavior that's important. And at every clock change cycle the USA loses billions of dollars and countless hours in mixups.

Non-adjusted UTC time (international coordinated universal time) is already used for science, the internet, international business and travel. Why not use it for contractual and business purposes too?

It's easy enough to use work rules and laws of incorporation to establish winter/summer hours as both reasonable and desired.

By the way, Willett didn't invent DST. Franklin is more accurate

...But Benjamin Franklin was joking when he "proposed" DST ...along with policemen guarding candle shops and firing wake-up cannons in the streets.

Read, "An Economical Project" for yourself sometime. It's hilarious.

But as for our clocks? …It's time to be serious.

By the way, Willett didn't invent DST. Franklin is more accurate

I cite Wiki , what have you got ? Perhaps because America is commonly held to have been 'discovered' you need to make up for lost time . Perhaps the ancestors of Polynesian Chickens have moved from Chili to the North of America and caused confusion to other species. Perhaps Indiana Pi causes you difficulty with any matters circular.

You know how Wikipedia works, right?...

Now, look at the dates and read the facts again. Willett was a hundred years too late to first suggest we change clocks to save daylight, as Franklin clearly, though in jest, did. Read what I already cited. Look at the date. And the signature.

Try not to think so much about Polynesian chickens.

Quote fro Wiki :

Franklin did not propose shifting clocks; like ancient Rome, 18th-century Europe did not keep accurate schedules. However, this soon changed as rail and communication networks came to require a standardization of time unknown in Franklin's day.^[14]

William Willett invented DST and advocated it tirelessly.

In 1905, the English builder and outdoorsman William Willett invented DST during a pre-breakfast horseback ride where he was dismayed by how many Londoners slept through the best part of a summer day.^[15]

Unquote from Wiki

So what is your point ? If you read your own reference , you will see that Franklins muse was "in Jest".

What do you do for an encore ? ' The USA cracked Enigma ' ?

I hope this doesn't come as a dangerous shock; but Wikipedia is not the infallible authority you seem to believe it is.

You've made some ad-hominem attacks on me, and you're in good company there. If you look me up in Wikipedia, you'll see a history of lots of changes, quibbling, along with a lot of stuff that just isn't true.

I happen to know something about myself, and I must tell you that what's in Wiki just ain't so.

But OK. I admire your tireless lobbying for a man long dead. That's great. I'll try to bring Willett into conversation and give him his due.

But this posting was originally about the merits of DST itself, and you must admit that it's all just a game.

We could change the hours we do things without changing our clocks. Why don't we just do this and change our clocks only when they're wrong?

This is about concrete behavior, not abstract time.

You've made some ad-hominem attacks on me

Hold on a few seconds here. I made a tongue in cheek remark about Franklin , and gave a reference to Willett. Your 'btw' included in your post #7 referred back(handedly) to this and refuted my assertion.

If you want to argue a non-issue , any personal 'attack' seems to be on your part ;

I hope this doesn't come as a dangerous shock; but Wikipedia is not the infallible authority you seem to believe it is.

Speaking in a patronizing manner , and presuming to know my thoughts on source material , is not exactly going to make for reasoned discussion. If you know of any infallible general (ie all topics) reference work then please let me know. If I could be bothered , there are many other sources of reference that uphold the majority opinion of Willett being the 'inventor' of Daylight Saving.

Devoting 2 paragraphs to your citation in Wiki is an unnecessary way of illustrating it's inaccuracy (which I am well aware of). I have not the slightest interest in your life or utterances outside of CR4. If you think that I am engaged in 'tireless lobbying' for Willett , then I can only state that you are wrong. What you do with any information I give is entirely your own concern.

Providing a link to Willett is entirely valid to the question of 'why do we have DST ?'.

It is certainly not my intent to engage in any personality differences on CR4 , and I'm sorry if that's the way you perceive it. Having made reference to the origin and implementation of DST , there is nothing further I have to add to this thread so you may continue unhindered. Just one last thought - I don't recall if you are in on the 'Pi' thread , but I have made reference to 'Indiana Pi'. That is because the thread seems to be mostly jocular and it has some relevance . Had I notice your location I would probably have done so regardless (as it has no personal bearing upon you).

Respectfully ,

Kris.

Just read the Franklin thing. He actually advocated taxing window shades and shooting cannons in the street to wake up the lazy Frenchmen who played chess 'till midnight and slept until noon (as Franklin did himself).

While Franklin was too smart to actually advocate fooling ourselves about the actual hour, he did recommend that we wake up and go to bed according to the day's length in order to save energy.

So if we define DST as the self-deception of changing clocks, and not the more practical (though amusing) proposal to change behavior in order to save time, then I'm more than happy to credit Willett than to in any way besmirch an American Hero like Franklin by saying he's the one that did this silly thing to us.

As for all the angst-laden jousting between us; I apologize if I misinterpreted your tone.

Electronic communication may be convenient and fast, but it tends to be too easy to be hasty and rude. You have a lot of time before a letter goes out, but it's so easy to hit "send" without deliberation.

I should probably apply for a government grant to study this.

... If you get that grant we'd best share it !

Well, if I can't be civil on web-posts, you can't expect me to share grant money.

Sorry. That's just the way incivility works.

You're not getting the grant , because I 'bid' higher for it !

That's the way Politics works.

You got that right.

Oh, and another thing...

I just looked up my entry in Wiki, and found that a lot of the history (along with a lot of other stuff) had been deleted!

Wikipedia is a very good place to get ideas for places to look for information. But PLEASE don't trust what you read there as truth!

Bring back Sunday blue law, too, wouldn't be a bad idea. Just thinking about pointless work and money destroys the spirit.

This site looks good for all sorts of related stuff.

Being a fisherman, I like DST, in fact, I would actually vote for double DST (as in the UK in WW II) if it were possible!

Long evenings with lots of light, fantastic!!

The more northerly (or should I say polar) you are the more dramatic the effect.

In Canada, and I assume the norther USA, since the USA dictates to us when DST begins and ends, there is a noticeable draw on hydro when people get up in the dark and party into the small hours of the night. So when the long summer hours come, by shifting the behaviour of the multitudes to the daylight hours, we minimize consumption of electric lighting in the homes. (Behavoiur modification).

However, the only ones to really appear to benefit are the golfers. They get more hours of usable daylight to get a second round of golf in. So if you can legislate your play time......(By the way, DST began earlier this year by several weeks!)

Flex hours allows us to do the same thing anyways.

I heard a rumour once that it benefitted the farmers. They rise with the sun, so setting the clocks ahead allowed them to get up at a more civilized hour.

I dont believe that DST is used in countries that lie near the equator.

Correct, it would be pointless to have DST near to the equator, because the daylight/night times vary only slightly in length no matter what time of the year.

The effects (the ratio of the length of time that it remains day, or night)or changes increase in effect the farther away you live from the equator.....which is why in high summer, the north pole has continuous sunlight and in deepest winter continuous night!

Only where the change is considerable, is it worthwhile having DST!

The rumor about farmers is just a rumor. Farmers don't care about clocks except that they typically have other jobs to pay for their farming (teaching, truck driving, etc.) that require fixed schedules.

In Indiana we switched to DST solely to be "like everybody else." And this "like everybody else" thing is why we do so many stupid things through the millenia...

Is it true that in the USA, some states have DST and some don't? That those that do, some change on different dates?

That you haven't yet coordinated yourselves as a country?

I do realize that you have different time zones across the USA, but that should not play a role with regard to DST, or does it?

Can anyone throw light on this strange Un-United States of America problem with DST?

You're right. Until just this year, Indiana, Arizona and Hawaii didn't observe DST. After years of political wrangling and preposterous claims about how DST would make Indiana a SuperPowerNation, Indiana succumbed.

However, that's only a part of the problem, since in Indiana (and several other states), there are multiple time zones that don't necessarily correlate with geography.

For instance, Indiana lies entirely within the Central Time Zone, yet most in Indiana wanted to be like those suave, sophisticated and urbane New Yorkers, so most, but not all of Indiana is on EST.

Parts of southwest and northwest Indiana, are on Central time, not just because that's more reasonable, but, in the case of northwest Indiana, they like to think of themselves as Chicago.

I work from home for companies all over the world, so I have to work with Italy, Germany, Japan, as well as the USA. It's not so hard to figure out when to have meetings and such, since we just use uncoordinated UST/GMT, and don't even consider the +/- hours and DST. It's so much simpler.

Why can't we all do that and give up this sick clock fetish?

Well as far as a consistent system in all states, keep in mind there are many states in the US with populations and Land area larger than many European contries (california alone is 3/4 the size of France, half the population and has an economy that is nearly as productive in total , more productive per capita).

I know some people from Arizona, and they are pretty rigid about not observing DST there. They still don't observe it. They are next to a state they believe is way to socialistic, overpopulated, polluted, pompous and rich; and, therefore, want to be totally different. Californias observance of DST is one of the main reasons i hear people from Arizona not wanting to observe DST, just because they don't want to be like those Californians. There is no single federal jurisdiction on such things, since the US is actually a Republic of states, it differs from other more centralized countries. Wage systems aren't standardized from State to State also.

You make good points about the relativities between Europe and the USA. But, ironically, one area where the federal government actually has legal jurisdiction and refuses to take it is in setting standards and measures, including time.

Article I, section 8 of the US Constitution gives the US Congress the power to "fix the Standard of Weights and Measures."

Congress really should make the call, and I'd actually proposed they do just that when I ran for congress.

Sadly, nobody ever reads the constitution, and most of us believe what politicians (and their school systems) tell us about it...

I fully agree that everything they do in indiana is a simplistic attempt to copy the rest of the US.

I think the word "simplistic" is slightly incorrect.

Most of us have fallen for the notion of "democratic values." What some call Majority Rule, and what Ben Franklin called "two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch..." most of us have come to regard as a religion.

While Hoosiers may be particularly faithful to this religion (we never vote for anybody who "can't get enough votes to win"), we are not alone in being herd animals.

As you say , some words are over-rated .

Let's poll 100 assorted farm animals on 3 candidates ;

Larry : 30 votes

Minty : 30 vote

Wolfy : 40 votes.

Well , our Chief Chef was democratically elected by a majority. Even if 'loosing' voters get to re-cast their vote , Larry and Minty fans might just swap over. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

It wouldn't be so bad if we were hiring burger chefs; but the guys we're hiring have missiles, and we don't even interview them or look over their resumes before we vote.

And democracy, in this country at least, has often involved a rope, a tree, five white guys and one black guy.

We play it like a game, but the stakes are very high.

All very true. Our PM was never elected . No crisis , just a political favour.

What a vision to give the rest of the world about America. Very racist. I could say that democracy, in this country at least, has often involved a wallet, a baseball bat, five black guys and one white guy. Lynching, as you so describe, went out early 20th century. No body I know would stand for that. Democracy is what it is. We have a choice to vote or not. Other countries don't get this option.

Stating a historical fact isn't 'racist'.

It was the lynchings, part of your history, as was the massacre of some of the native population, that was racist.

You can't airbrush history to suit modern ideas.

This is not an anti-US post. Us Brits have done our share in the past.

You are missusing the term 'racist'

We do tend to airbrush history...almost as much as we do the present.

How can we think we're done with lynchings, or slavery in the USA?

Recent estimates put close to 150,000 slaves in the USA. Not "slaves" to taxation (serfs), but actual, chained-together-and-working-on-the-floor slaves.

Lynching as an organized phenomenon may be gone for now, but don't assume it's gone forever. Some people here in Indiana really hate DST, and I have no idea what they'll do about it.

I think your reply should have been aimed at #41 not me!

I'm trying not to attack anybody, as I'm a recovering flamer.

I'm just spouting off...

...as I'm a recovering flamer.

Having laughed myself silly at the phrase , I went googling it and laughed even more !. I have loads of empathy - people keep saying I'm 'pathetic' which is close enough for me.

I was replying to the lynching. Slavery is indeed a sad part of the US and abroad. But it is not condoned as it was early in our history. All I am trying to say is that lynching is a part of America's dirty past, hopefully forever. As for lynching, Indianans, and DST, thats another story.

As far as DST, I heard a rumor once that it actually started for the farmers. As their kids are in school during the daylight hours. As the days grew shorter the kids did not have enough time to work in the fields after school. By changing the times, the kids had more daylight to work in the fields. Just a rumor...

I wish we would learn lessons from history. But history shows no examples of that except for the work of our nation's founding fathers...and who remembers that?

Here it is July 4, and the Land of the Free has the world's highest percentage of citizens in prison, and more taxation, regulation and litigation than all the other nations on earth...combined.

Anyway, I live on a farm in a farming district within a farming county in a farming state; and I assure you that farmers do not care about DST any more than than they have to for the outside jobs that actually pay bills.

Nearly all small farmers have other jobs in trucking, teaching, engineering, whatever. If they could afford to do farming full time, they'd never look at their clocks unless they're going to a movie in the far-off city, since city-folk time is irrelevant to farming. You do what you need to do when you need to do it. Animals, weather and plants make you keep their schedules; and those schedules are a lot different than what Indiana's DST is all about.

And when it mattered most to have kids laboring on the farm, an hour one way or another didn't make any difference. When it was time to work, you'd work all day.

Who doesn't have a dirty past? I'm just trying to do my best to make our future a little less dirty.

I assure you that farmers do not care about DST any more than than they have to for the outside jobs that actually pay bills.

This is a good point. Daylight-saving is often attributed to the needs of farmers. Their lives revolve around the needs of crops and stock , and I've never known of either Corn or Cows paying much heed to what a clock says.

Apart from the losses due to human error ('oh , I forgot the clocks had changed' etc ) , which I think you mentioned earlier , there are other arguments for ditching DST. People keeping more in touch with the ebb and flow of seasons might go some way to restoring a better world - a lot of social issues may be related to the detached (from nature) way in which we try to live. A frenetic pace of life must be partly responsible for all the rage that exists in modern societies.

The best attitude to DST, or any other ST for that matter, was by Monsieur Robert who was a retired neighbour of mine in rural France. He had a watch that stayed on GMT+1 all year round. He just didn't care. Admittedly, he had retired and had no train to catch in the morning; you couldn't help but admire him standing up to authority whenver he could (his fat cat was named after the corrupt prime minister Juppé).

Now I'm back in the centre of London where no-one has the time, be it summer or winter.

Admittedly, he had retired and had no train to catch .

C'est manifique mais ce n'est pas le gare...

(old French joke...doesn't seem to be a smiley quivalent of the Gallic shug...piff paff pouff)

Like probably everybody in the USA, we have lots of timekeeping things around our house. But as we have two ovens (each with a prominent clock) in our kitchen, my wife (knowing my thoughts on DST) set one for DST, and one for correct time.

A tiny, futile defiance, certainly. But patriotic defiance nonetheless.

I admit that this DST is messed up.

How come when time moves forward, people forget to change and are always coming to work late?

But when time moves backward, I have never heard of someone coming in early?

For those of you elsewhere, the biggest catch of this DST in the stupidity of purchasing alcohol. When time changes(not sure which way this works), beer sales stop a 1:00 am. When it changes back, sales stop at 2:00? Now thats stupid. DST all they want, but leave last call alone!!!

Here in Montreal, last call is done at 3am (4am when the clock rolls back)!!

As the one who posted this question, I feeled obliged to fill in one of the blanks. I posed this question to the office staff of a US Senator. 3 mos. later I received a reply to which I could not respond. They failed to address any of my specifics and gave me a rambling line of political B... that was more about this 'wonderful' senator's 'accomplishments' than about my issue. However, their underlying train of thought on the matter had to do with saving energy by changing the clocks. They said it started in WWI and has been a wonderful thing every since. I, again tried to reply, asking for some specific examples of how it saved energy buy my email bounced back. I now wish I would have saved their response so I could have posted it here. I'm no engineer but I do like to know how and why things work, on occassion. One more point. They said Arizona and, I think, Alaska, ignore the concept. My hat's off to them.

Thank you for putting and end to all this irrelavent and immaterial drivel. Surely, that senator's office had the same thing in mind....

Does our biological function depend on gene,activities,kind of work/profession,physical effort,mental effort,kind of food,artificial light used,family members etc?.