It's Daylight Savings Time in the US
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@Dashrender said:
What do you mean they mean nothing? I don't work in any of the fields you just mentioned, but when the time changes here in Nebraska, everyone I know goes to work either one hour later or earlier depending on which direction the swing goes.
Only because companies strangely keep their working hours the same as local time. Why would they do that when the clocks just changed? Makes no sense. Why wouldn't they keep each day to 24 hours, much more logical and natural. That the "time" changes is just a weird numerical thing. As someone with Aspy's, this is one of those wholly illogical things where I can tell that large groups of people doing something without any reason other than "lots of other people do it" but none of them have a reason.
I've literally never been told any reason why any organization shifts its "noon" away from true noon based on DST. If the gov't wants the clocks to read an hour different, who cares? What if AM and PM were switched, would people sleep in daylight? Actually, AM and PM were switched twenty years ago, no one even noticed.
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Television was the big one. When I was a kid, you came home from school, you watched Grange Hill, you had your tea, you did your homework, you watched Starskey & Hutch, you went to bed. Everything was scheduled around TV. If school started an hour later it would have thrown my whole world into chaos.
But with Netflix, and more flexible work hours for adults, time becomes less important. I reckon the next big thing that needs tackling is flexible school hours, but I'm not sure if that will ever be considered (it should be).
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@scottalanmiller said:
Only because companies strangely keep their working hours the same as local time. Why would they do that when the clocks just changed? Makes no sense. Why wouldn't they keep each day to 24 hours, much more logical and natural. That the "time" changes is just a weird numerical thing. As someone with Aspy's, this is one of those wholly illogical things where I can tell that large groups of people doing something without any reason other than "lots of other people do it" but none of them have a reason.
Why are you changing the number on the clock at all if not to have people shift when they are doing whatever it is they are doing? Originally, as I understand it, DST was done to save electricity etc by having more daylight available to people. So 70-80 years ago I can Maybe understand that, but today, it really doesn't save much if anything.
But I do agree with you that DST is definitely something we should do away with.Now as to the UK gov't wanting to match central Europe you have to ask yourself why they want this. I'm guessing because it would allow their workers to be online and active at the same time as those people in central Europe. Meaning that if the UK did change to UTC+1 or UTC+2, they would also be shifting their working schedules to match, otherwise why bother making the time change at all if they are going to continue to go to work at what would 6 AM and leaving at 3 PM central Europe time when in central Europe people go to work at 8 AM and leaving at 5 PM?
I've literally never been told any reason why any organization shifts its "noon" away from true noon based on DST. If the gov't wants the clocks to read an hour different, who cares? What if AM and PM were switched, would people sleep in daylight? Actually, AM and PM were switched twenty years ago, no one even noticed.
Are you talking about which 12 belongs to which? That's not really switching AM and PM.
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I was thinking about school as well, not about a flexible schedule, but going to school year round with 3 week breaks between quarters.
I know how much of a hassle child care is already for parents during the summer months, so I'm not sure how to handle the four breaks of three weeks.... Most people don't have 12 weeks of yearly vacation to stay home with their kids.It would be great to see, in the US at least, the states agree to not all take the same time off also. i.e. Nebraska could start their year on the first Monday of the year after Jan 1, Iowa start a week or two later, etc.
Of course this destroys cheap summertime employment so I have no idea how that would effect our ecomony.
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@Dashrender said:
Now as to the UK gov't wanting to match central Europe you have to ask yourself why they want this. I'm guessing because it would allow their workers to be online and active at the same time as those people in central Europe.
I don't think so. I think it's mainly that we should all get up a bit earlier, and hence go to bed a bit earlier, so that we make the best use of available daylight. By maximising daylight we use less electricity. At the moment, we sleep when it's light and are awake when it's dark.
Of course, we don't have to change the time zone to go to bed earlier. I've recently changed my work hours so I now start an hour earlier at 7.30, so I'm already making better use of daylight, as sunrise is currently 6.30am and sunset 6pm. There's nothing to stop other people doing this - it's just our stupid fixed ways and inflexible employers.
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@Dashrender said:
Of course this destroys cheap summertime employment so I have no idea how that would effect our ecomony.
But it increases cheap, year round employment. So it might help a lot. Cheap summer employment is pretty worthless, overall. Very few businesses can leverage it.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Of course this destroys cheap summertime employment so I have no idea how that would effect our ecomony.
But it increases cheap, year round employment. So it might help a lot. Cheap summer employment is pretty worthless, overall. Very few businesses can leverage it.
Few businesses can leverage it? Lawn care businesses, amusement parks, mall stores, etc.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@Dashrender said:
Now as to the UK gov't wanting to match central Europe you have to ask yourself why they want this. I'm guessing because it would allow their workers to be online and active at the same time as those people in central Europe.
I don't think so. I think it's mainly that we should all get up a bit earlier, and hence go to bed a bit earlier, so that we make the best use of available daylight. By maximizing daylight we use less electricity. At the moment, we sleep when it's light and are awake when it's dark.
Of course, we don't have to change the time zone to go to bed earlier. I've recently changed my work hours so I now start an hour earlier at 7.30, so I'm already making better use of daylight, as sunrise is currently 6.30am and sunset 6pm. There's nothing to stop other people doing this - it's just our stupid fixed ways and inflexible employers.
I don't know about Europe, but in the winter we get around 9 hours of sunlight. The sun rises around 8 AM and sets around 5 PM. I work M-Th 7 AM - 5 PM. In the winter I don't see daylight unless I go outside to eat lunch. I suppose if I leave at 5, I get the great luck of driving home in the western sunset blinding my drive home.
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@Dashrender said:
Few businesses can leverage it? Lawn care businesses, amusement parks, mall stores, etc.
Most malls, parks, lawn care, etc. don't operate only during the summer, so extra help only during the non-school window helps very little. A little, but nothing compared to more flexible year round help.
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@Dashrender said:
I don't know about Europe, but in the winter we get around 9 hours of sunlight. The sun rises around 8 AM and sets around 5 PM. I work M-Th 7 AM - 5 PM. In the winter I don't see daylight unless I go outside to eat lunch. I suppose if I leave at 5, I get the great luck of driving home in the western sunset blinding my drive home.
Europe gets far less. FAR less. Just going from NY (a bit north of you) to Ireland is a staggering difference in the sunlight.
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Well it depends how far north you are There's a big difference between southern Spain and northern Scotland. I believe here in England we're roughly in line with Canada.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Well it depends how far north you are There's a big difference between southern Spain and northern Scotland. I believe here in England we're roughly in line with Canada.
Rather north in Canada. Madrid is in line with Washington, DC.
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To give it some perspective, Montreal is the northernmost major city on the east coast of either the US or Canada. It is north of Toronto and Halifax. It is really far north. Five hours north of New York.
Montreal is right in line with..... Milan, Italy and the French Riviera!! Places like Switzerland and Austria lie completely north of the populated portions of the North America Eastern Seaboard. Places like England, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, etc. are so far north that it's actually confusing for Americans to picture people living so far north.
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And while the Pacific Coast is shifted much farther north than the Atlantic Coast is, even Vancouver, the farthest northern major city on the continent, is only in line with Paris, which is about the middle of Europe.
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@dashrender is in Nebraska which is identical in latitude to Pennsylvania. He lives right in line with Barcelona.
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And just out of interest, here in Houston we line up with Cairo and the southern border of Morocco.
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Yeah, I'm really not looking forward to global warming screwing up the Gulf Stream. <shivers>
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Yeah, Europe risks a rather chilling future.
