Thread: DST and who is to blame for it

Originally Posted by DZEC

... Kind of like the jet lag you experience when flying east.

Just don't fly to THE East. You might catch something Ajax won't scrub off.

I live on the western edge of the mountain time zone. When I was an astronomer I disliked waiting till 11pm for darkness in the summertime, but I did appreciate the extra light on a 4-5 hour run after work. I always treat DST as a mixed blessing. Hasn't much effect in the wintertime, seems to be dark when I go to work and when I come home.

Personally, I like the extra light in the evenings in the warmer months, even though it takes a week or so to adjust to it.

I do, however, think we should get rid of the penny. (both topics have in the past been on my students' AP English Language exam essay prompts, along with eminent domain and other topics people debate but never seem to solve).

Originally Posted by ScoutHikerDad

Personally, I like the extra light in the evenings in the warmer months, even though it takes a week or so to adjust to it.

I do, however, think we should get rid of the penny. (both topics have in the past been on my students' AP English Language exam essay prompts, along with eminent domain and other topics people debate but never seem to solve).

No pennies being minted up here for a while now and as they come in they are being taken out of circulation. When paying cash they round up or down to the nearest nickel/5 cents. Paying by credit card then it is the exact amount.

Bob

Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

Just don't fly to THE East. You might catch something Ajax won't scrub off.

You won't have to fly anywhere, it is coming to where you live soon now.

Bob

We don't understand the fuss about DST, never had problems adjusting. We have had it here for yonks. I like the extra hour in the evening during summer time.

Here's an idea. I too have heard the argument about kids waiting for the bus in the dark, yada, yada, yada. Why don't they split the diff, set it at 30 minutes in between and leave it that way?

Originally Posted by Kees

We don't understand the fuss about DST, never had problems adjusting. We have had it here for yonks. I like the extra hour in the evening during summer time.

To me DST is a pain cuz I interact with eastern countries quite a bit, those that don't have DST like China, India etc Even worse is when you are in such a country working back office for a country that does have DST (e.g my colleague who is in India, working backoffice support for Australia). Then there's the thing where different countries do DST at different times of the year.

Well now, if the object of the exercise is to avoid waiting for the school bus
in the dark, and still have the "extra" daylight in the summer, then we
should set the clocks back an hour in the fall, and then in the
summer set the clocks ahead TWO hours.

Genius, no? Damn the confusion! Fool speed ahead!

This is interesting about the kids waiting for the school bus. There seem to be a lot of ways people rationalize DST. I grew up in Saskatchewan (at the time the economy was primarily farming, and we didn't have DST), but I've lived on the west coast of Canada, in Europe and more recently in Quebec, and in each place people had different ideas of what DST was for. In Ontario and Quebec, the reason I hear the most is that it gives the farmers an extra hour of sunlight, which is BS, and doesn't even make sense. Yet people swear it's true. The actual history is all about saving energy (and therefore saving money), which has been proven to be negligible - and when taking the sleep-related accidents into consideration (not to mention the thousands of hours it takes to change all the clocks in all the countries who use DST), there is really no reason to continue with DST except that people are used to it and think there are more important things to think about (which may be true). Some articles talk about the benefits of having an extra hour of sunlight after the 9-5 workday, but even the 9-5 workday is slowly becoming obsolete, because our modern technological world and our global economy. I'm certain nobody cared about kids waiting for buses in the light or dark when they pushed this through the government - I'm not sure how many kids were even bussed to school in 1916, anyways.

As for PaulFLUS' idea to split the difference and leave it there, that would effectively eliminate DST, which I'm completely in favour of.