[ale] Stupid people and DST

Wed Mar 16 11:58:27 EDT 2022

When DST was conceived the planet was basically agrarian. People mostly got up and went down with the sun. 
I'd almost put money on the 8-5, 9-5 workday as starting in daylight to avoid traveling too work in the dark as a means to curtail absenteeism. After work, the only thing that really matters to society, you're on your own.

For me, I still do the sun up, sun down thing not by choice (sort of). At the first hint of the sky brightening these animals I feed, let's call them cats, begin to dance first on my bed in anticipation of food and then become progressively more insistent as they dance on me to eventually sit on my chest and lick and nibble my nose to remind me of their sorry state in life - starving and un-loved.

This same scene occurs at sundown as the sky slightly darkens and the fur covered eating disorders begin their nightly performance in anticipation of the satisfying splat of bowl filler we call 'canned brown dead thing' . Once the gorging has subsided, they lapse comatose to save energy for the next feeding frenzy at dawn.

Yes, stormy weather and eclipses are confusing and would be fattening if the furry bottomless pits ran things.

So no matter DST, EST or any arbitrary placement of numbers, my day start is only numbered by the stomach count. 

It still seems that the midnight connotation being opposite the sun high point makes sense from an astronomical perspective. Thus the sun time before and after noon is the same daily but varies by season. 

Maybe the real solution to having more sun time before and/or after work is to have less work. That will get my vote.

On March 16, 2022 8:06:05 AM EDT, Derek Atkins via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>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
>
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