4 replies to this topic

[Emax]

Just in case you've not remembered, the clocks changed last night. Thanks to Ben Franklin and Franklin Roosevelt, we all get our schedules changed twice per year - once on the first Sunday in April and again on the last Sunday in October. "spring forward, fall back" - as your second-grade teacher used to say.

If you have all this committed to memory, you can now forget it. Beginning next year (in the U.S.), the clocks will change on the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November. "spring forward, fall back" will still apply.

The rational for DST is to save energy by taking advantage of longer and later daylight hours during the Summer season. More than a billion people in seventy countries around the world observe DST. The majority of Saskatchewan and parts of British Columbia do not. In 1996, Mexico and members of the EU agreed to observe a "summertime period" - but on a different schedule. Three large regions of Australia and all of China do not participate - neither do certain areas of the United States.

I find all of this a real bother. Wouldn't it be better if we all ran on the same time? Pick one - any one - the presently accepted standard is Greenwich Mean Time. So what if the clock says 2 am when you get up and 4 pm when you go to bed. At least it would always be the same for your region. If your employer wants you to come to work one hour earlier for a portion of the year, the so be it. We do that now anyway.

Anybody with me on the notion of world-wide standardized time? The abolition of DST?

[edmontonguy]

I for one am greatly in favour of Daylight savings time. Being as northerly as I am in Edmonton the daylight hours fluxuate heavily and daylight savings time acts to restore the somewhat skewed daytime hours of sunlight. The sun is barely rising before eight o'clock and for those who depend on having sunlight to work at eight would soon be out of luck. I guess for my life it doesn't affect me too much but it makes for at least a nice sunlight commute until the winter daytime hours become so very short.

[skier691]

While the benifits of gaining a little light is nice right now, in a couple weeks it'll be dark again, and with it being even shorter starting next year, it does seem like hassle. I bet its even more of a hassle for companys and people living near the areas that don't participate. We(They) can't decide on which language to speak here, so why standardize the time, seems to easy.

[Emax]

"We(They) caWe(They) can't decide on which language to speak here, so why standardize the time, seems to easy.

Wow! Who shit in your hot tub?

This post has been edited by Emax: 05 November 2006 - 11:08 AM

[liftmech]

Get rid of DST. Seems silly to adjust clocks when one could just adjust one's schedule.Before standard time as we know it, with time zones and such, people changed their hours to suit daylight anyway. They didn't change the clocks.