[ale] Stupid people and DST

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

I for one completely understand the rationale and purpose of DST and why
we shift around, and honestly I agree with it.

No, it does not "make the day longer".  That's nonsense.

What it DOES do (as I am sure you all know, but I'm going to nerd-splain
it anyways) is shift *when* during the counted day the daylight comes.

Just some background -- I grew up in Ohio and then moved to Boston for
school and lived there 20 years before moving down to Atlanta.  Ohio and
Boston are 600 miles apart but are both in US/ET.  During the winter,
sunset in Boston can be 4pm and it is DARK by 5.  Granted, this just means
Boston should be in the Atlantic timezone, but let's ignore that for now.

It was mentioned earlier in this thread "why not change the length of an
hour to match the amount of daylight?"   How Talmudic!   Indeed, that's
what they used to do.  There were 6 hours from sunrise to solar noon, and
another 6 hours from noon to sunset.   Of course, that makes it extremely
hard to build a watch to keep track of time.

But that concept is exactly why DST exists, to make the "hours of
daylight" more useful to humans who don't center the day around noon.  I
mean, who here lives their lives such that the middle of their waking day
is 12 noon?  That would mean you're awake from 5am to 7pm.  Sure, there
may be SOME people who live that way, but I think with the "9-5 job" it's
more likely that people are living 7am to 9pm (or 7-10, or even 7-11).  So
what does that mean?  It means the middle of waking hours is more like 2pm
or 3pm, rather than 12.

Okay, so center daylight at 2, right?   That works great when we have 14,
16 hours of daylight.  However, that doesn't work well further north in
the winter, when daylight is only 8 hours long.  That would give you
daylight from 10am to 6pm.  In those cases, you want to shift the daylight
to "more useful" times.

The same argument works if you start from winter times and then go into
summer.

The alternative, which I would support, is to shift around the timezone
lines to make it more "longitudinally" specific and not based on "who's my
neighbor" or even state lines.  This would imply more than 4 time zones in
the lower-48.

-derek

On Tue, March 15, 2022 4:17 pm, Raj Wurttemberg via Ale wrote:
> Whoo! Hooo!    Just passed TODAY (3/15/2022)!
> U.S. Senate approves bill to make daylight saving time permanent
> https://www.cnet.com/culture/senate-unanimously-passes-bill-to-make-daylight-saving-time-permanent/
>
> /Raj
>
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2022 at 3:17 PM DJPfulio--- via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>
>> On 3/15/22 14:47, Don Lachlan via Ale wrote:
>> > If someone wants more daylight, then they should get up earlier (or
>> move
>> > toward the equator).
>>
>> Or shift to higher latitudes during local summer every 6 months.
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-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant