Daylight Savings Time

[Dhalin]

This is one of those things that I can't help but to rant about twice each year, because no matter how many times we do this stupid/useless archaic practice, I still do not see what good it does.

What it DOES do:

1). Make everyone disoriented for several weeks.
2). Cause us to have to change our clocks.
3). Make us lose an hour of sleep every Spring.
4). Cause people to be late for work if they forgot.
5). Cause confusion on the internet when people interact with each other when the subject of Time comes up, as not everyone observes this practice.

Can anyone point out a single, GOOD thing that DST gives us?

It has been 10+ years now that I've been on the internet and I've yet to hear anyone say anything of why we actually *need* DST.

I think we should just get rid of it, and keep our clocks at the same time, all year round, for the entire world. It would get rid of all of the confusion, headaches, and annoyance of having to adjust our clocks twice a year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it gives us an extra daylight hour in the evening.... but it subtracts a daylight hour in the morning. The purpose of that, is.....?

Yeah, I thought so. There is no purpose to that.

Some people say it "Saves Energy".

Just how does that save energy? Make you turn on the lights less during the evening? Well, that's nice and all... but too bad you have to leave the lights on longer in the morning. Heck, I've even heard of studies that say DST does the _opposite_!

It is an old, out-dated practice that just needs to die, plain and simple.

[Akrion]

Daylight Savings Time was meant to reduce candle usage pre-electricity, and only meant for that. It is completely and utterly useless in modern times and has no business still being around. I completely agree with the fact that DST should be rid of, it's absolutely pointless.

On a slightly unrelated note, but still something I feel falls into the "useless practice" idea: I think that schools should teach metric first instead of imperial just because of how stupidly difficult mathematically the imperial system makes things on us.

1 meter is 100 centimeters, 1 kilometer is 1000 meters, etc. Isn't it great when measurements work on multiples of 10? You know.. Like how our numbering system is base 10? Lets look at Imperial: 1000 thou is 1 inch, 1 foot is 12 inches, 1 yard is 3 feet, 1 furlong is 220 yards, 1 mile is 8 furlongs, 1 league is 3 miles. <- This caused me endless amounts of grief in school. Stupid system is stupid.

[neva]

*points and laughs at all you people serving DLS time since in Arizona we don't, because we are cool even with are 100 degree dry heat in the summer.*

[Dhalin]

1 meter is 100 centimeters, 1 kilometer is 1000 meters, etc. Isn't it great when measurements work on multiples of 10? You know.. Like how our numbering system is base 10? Lets look at Imperial: 1000 thou is 1 inch, 1 foot is 12 inches, 1 yard is 3 feet, 1 furlong is 220 yards, 1 mile is 8 furlongs, 1 league is 3 miles. <- This caused me endless amounts of grief in school. Stupid system is stupid.

The problem is, is that most people who *cling* to this, are just as stupid as the system. Like my parents.

I tell this to mom and dad and they go

"I don't want to have to remember to go pick up a "2.78 liter jug of milk!"

And I tell them "No, no, NO. If we got rid of the stupid imperial system, you'd go to the store and buy a _3_ liter jug of milk. Stop trying to convert between the two systems; forget the old one exists."

But they refuse to listen. They think that the imperial system is somehow better. One coworker of mine is the same, too. He just won't get that x10 is better than 2 of this, 6 of that, 8 of that, 3 of that over there and having to try and remember all of that crap instead of merely moving a decimal point.

[Charys Stormchild]

I hate having to change my clocks twice a year, but some people over here want us to change to such a degree that the home of GMT would never use GMT!! Personally I like the dark evenings, but then I've never really been a daytime person, lol.

As for Imperial v metric, I'm Imperial all the way, it's what I was taught in school. For those of us of a certain age metric is totally alien. I watch stuff on tv and they talk about metres and kilometres and I have no idea of how far it is. It's not refusing to change because of being stupid, it's what we've grown up with.

[Dragonboy]

1 meter is 100 centimeters, 1 kilometer is 1000 meters, etc. Isn't it great when measurements work on multiples of 10? You know.. Like how our numbering system is base 10? Lets look at Imperial: 1000 thou is 1 inch, 1 foot is 12 inches, 1 yard is 3 feet, 1 furlong is 220 yards, 1 mile is 8 furlongs, 1 league is 3 miles. <- This caused me endless amounts of grief in school. Stupid system is stupid.

Daylight savings are annoying and useless, btw it is not only possible to get to work to late, but also in winter to get an hour early. This happened to me last year.

As for the Metric vs Imperial system... I am happy that I never had to learn anything else then Metric. The Imperial system is utterly old fashioned from a time that people actually used their feet to measure stuff and should be officially and legally removed from this world. Even then you shall always have people that keep it alive, but after 1 or 2 generations the average population will be used to Metric.

[Frith-Rae]

BUT YOU NEED IT TO SAVE DAYLIGHT!! SAVE THE DAYLIGHT!!

XD

When someone in my raid last night sent out the reminder "for those that participate in DST" I asked that if I choose not to participate would the rest of the world forgive me for being an hour early and/or late (in sixmonths).

We all laughed and they said they'd forgive me if I choose not to participate.

Somehow I doubt everyone else would.

Personally I don't see what the big deal is -

It takes me a single day to get use to the extra hour either way. Pepole are disoriented for weeks? Seriously? WTH do these pepole do when they get on a plane?

You don't actually lose an hour of sleep - that's just your perception with faulty math. When you move the clock forward or back - your wakeup time is also moved forward or back. So while you feel you're goign to bed at 10 instead of 9, you're also waking up at 7 instead of 6. Just beucase your alarm doesn't have to change doesnt mean you lost an hour of sleep. The whole shift moves - not just the one hour.

Yea its old, its outdated, and we don't *need* it anymore - but there are many much bigger systems in our society I could say the same about that I'm more concerned with. *cough*Electoral College *cough*

But its your rant of course - feel free to rant - but still I say SAVE THE DAYLIGHT!

[Dragonboy]

The problem that I hear about it is that children often have dificulties adjusting and with them the parents.

If a child normally sleeps till 07:00 it will still sleep the same amount of time regardless of the clock, be it 06:00 or 08:00.

[Gengel]

* wipes her bleary eyes *

Forget the children adjusting. My cats now wake me up at 4:30am to eat.

* smiles *

~< Gengel >~

[Dhalin]

Well, they tell you to change the clocks at 2AM.

If you normally go to bed at 11PM and get up at 8AM, you'd do everything as you normally do until 11PM, and then change your clock to 12AM, and then go to bed... having to get up at 8AM.

Before: 11PM-8AM: 9 hours
After: 12AM-8AM: 8 hours

So you *are* losing an hour of sleep. The trick, is to go to bed an hour early, but then that cuts off an hour of your Saturday Evening life.

Now, granted, few people actually work Sunday Morning, but I happen to be one of those people who do.

[jerk-o]

Bars are supposed to close at two, but two o'clock technically never came last night, it jumped straight to three, so legally were bars obligated to close last night?

[Dragonboy]

Now, granted, few people actually work Sunday Morning, but I happen to be one of those people who do.

Many years ago at my previous employer during the weekends we had 12 hour shifts, 08:00 to 20:00 and vica versa. Many times I had the bad luck of having to work during those nights so that I suddenly had to work 13 hours instead of 12, however I also had te luck of actually only having to work 11 hours.

[Veruliyam]

Or move to Arizona!

[neva]

Or move to Arizona!

*gives a high five to Verul*

[Romirez]

Daylight Savings Time was meant to reduce candle usage pre-electricity, and only meant for that. It is completely and utterly useless in modern times and has no business still being around. I completely agree with the fact that DST should be rid of, it's absolutely pointless.

On a slightly unrelated note, but still something I feel falls into the "useless practice" idea: I think that schools should teach metric first instead of imperial just because of how stupidly difficult mathematically the imperial system makes things on us.

1 meter is 100 centimeters, 1 kilometer is 1000 meters, etc. Isn't it great when measurements work on multiples of 10? You know.. Like how our numbering system is base 10? Lets look at Imperial: 1000 thou is 1 inch, 1 foot is 12 inches, 1 yard is 3 feet, 1 furlong is 220 yards, 1 mile is 8 furlongs, 1 league is 3 miles. <- This caused me endless amounts of grief in school. Stupid system is stupid.

they really tried to get the US to the metric system. they failed. the Army uses the metric system though (except for Centigrade, we still use farenheight).

our country is special. <.<

and besides, it's like tryiing to have a gas engine run on diesel. the immediate transision kills the engine (or in this case, confuses the **** out of everyone). i have NEVER used Kilometers personally, so i have no clue without miles. (doesn't really matter anyway, because we Ohioans measure distance in time anyway. )

our country is too deeply ingrained with the imperial system, it aint gonna go away.

[Valornyx]

our country is too deeply ingrained with the imperial system, it aint gonna go away.

Every country was - until 40 years ago - the difference was that most of the world made the change (painful as it was to the people who had grown up with the old system) .. the US (and I think England,too) did not despite the fact it makes a thousand times more sense .. prolly because it was proposed by the French - heh.

The difference is that although it was tough to transition - we did it before writing every single computer program in [archaic stupid measurement system] .. I suspect the US is stuck with it now - I note however that they did deem changing time to a sensible system was considered just impossible - lol.

[Dhalin]

I note however that they did deem changing time to a sensible system was considered just impossible - lol.

This is another mini-rant of mine...

Why do we still use 12-hour clocks?

Why!?

It makes no freaking sense. There are _twenty-four hours_ in one day.

Why not count them 1, 2, 3, ...... 12, 13, 14 .... 22, 23, 0, 1, 2?

Nooooooo, people are just so stuck on counting to 12, going back to 1 and counting to 12 again and adding that stupid AM/PM crap onto it.

It makes computers and calculators count time MUCH easier if we use a 24-hour clock; the computer doesn't need to make extra calculations to figure out how many more hours until the "halfway" mark, etc. If you have 8AM and want to add 6 hours, the computer has to do this:

12-8 = 4
6 - 4 = 2
0+2 = 2

Just to figure out that 8AM + 6 = 2PM.

Using the muchly superior 24hr clock, you can just do this:

8 + 6 = 14

And just leave it at that. Makes counting time in your head MUCH easier too. But nooo, people have to stick to the old (and stupid) way.

Now, as far as doing the whole seconds/minutes/hours thing instead of breaking it down into 10/100/1000? That makes more sense, but I doubt anyone is interested in doing that. *shrugs*

[AmonGwareth]

Multiples of 10 work just fine if you go downwards from 1 second (which IS a metric standardized unit of measurement) and are in fact widely used across the world.

But really, it breaks down as you go up. There aren't 100,000 seconds in a day. Nor are there 100 or 1000 days in a year. And even if you went with a lunar month you still wouldn't get a nice multiple. And you can't redefine the length of a day or year.

Plus, to make matters worse, the length of days, months (solar or lunar), and years varies quite a bit.

Finally, the system of naming in metric is pretty pathetic on the large-scale. decasecond? hectosecond? kilosecond? megasecond? gigasecond? No thanks.

For the record, computers don't count time in hours or minutes. They store time in seconds (the number of seconds from a particular date, which varies for Windows, *nix, and others).

[Dhalin]

Multiples of 10 work just fine if you go downwards from 1 second (which IS a metric standardized unit of measurement) and are in fact widely used across the world.

But really, it breaks down as you go up. There aren't 100,000 seconds in a day. Nor are there 100 or 1000 days in a year. And even if you went with a lunar month you still wouldn't get a nice multiple. And you can't redefine the length of a day or year.

Plus, to make matters worse, the length of days, months (solar or lunar), and years varies quite a bit.

Finally, the system of naming in metric is pretty pathetic on the large-scale. decasecond? hectosecond? kilosecond? megasecond? gigasecond? No thanks.

For the record, computers don't count time in hours or minutes. They store time in seconds (the number of seconds from a particular date, which varies for Windows, *nix, and others).

Hence why I said that re-defining what a "second" is, isn't really feasible.

But to be honest, if you wanted to do it, I'd base it around the Year.

Break the Year down into 10 months.

Break Each Month down into 10 "Days".
Break each "Day" down into 10 "Hours".
Break each "Hour" down into 10 "Minutes".
Break each "Minute" down into 10 "Seconds".

Now, current "Second" would NOT be the same time-period as the new "Second" would, but that's the whole point of an entirely new measurement system.

But yeah, it wouldn't really be feasible, as people have been counting time in one consistent way for, what, hundreds of years? It isn't going to change overnight.

It IS possible, just.... not feasible.

But at the very least, I wish we'd force an adoption of the 24-hour clock, and get rid of the archaic AM/PM system.