Daylight Saving Time

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Sorry, OT, it's not that simple. In some states, DST goes county-by-county. Apparently Indiana is one of those states. Mountain is, I think, state by state; Arizona doesn't do daylight savings, but New Mexico does, as does Colorado and Nevada. I don't know about the rest.

Like I said earlier, we like a little anarchy, from time to time.

[OperaTenor]

Knock me over with a feather!

[Schmeelkie]

Heard that next year the US is doing spring forward a week early and fall back a week late. The airlines are pissed cause they have to figure out their schedules as they'll be off for a week from the rest of the world (or at least Europe...). And, especially in the north, some kids will be waiting for the bus in the dark... I'm just hoping that it'll be something I can explain to Pumpkin soon....he's adjusted now, but it wasn't easy.

[lliam]

Originally posted by treebeau:
They should do the time change on Saturday instead of Sunday, so people have another day to catch a clue.

Regards,
Tim B.

Better still, why not just leave the damn clocks alone. That's the opinion of most people in the UK.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Originally posted by lliam:
... why not just leave the damn clocks alone. That's the opinion of most people in the UK.

What? And miss a perfectly good opportunity to confuse people? Are you nuts?

This is what we live for!!!! Anarchy, confusion, and disorder everywhere!!!

[barfle]

If the idea was to get another hour of afternoon in the summer, why not just get the whole afternoon all summer, and go home at lunchtime?

Spring fever: when the iron in your blood turns to lead in your butt.

[piqaboo]

Altoid adjusted ok. We kept her up 90 min past her usual bedtime on Sat, and made that a very active 90 min.
She slept to the usual time Sunday, napped a bit longer than usual and was still plenty tired and ready for bed by the usual time on Sunday.
I'm lucky; when it comes to sleep, she takes after me. She likes a lot of it.

It helped that we darkened her room a bit by covering the skylight.
It also helps that bedtime was still after sunset.
Hows that work for Pumpkin?

[lliam]

[quote]Originally posted by Selma in Sandy Eggo:
[b] [quote]Originally posted by lliam:
[b] ... why not just leave the damn clocks alone. That's the opinion of most people in the UK.

[monkeymd2b]

Well, on top of the usual 1 hour change for daylight saving time, my body had to figure out how to add the 3 hours from traveling to hawaii. I ended up taking a nap in the afternoon (which was about 6 pm in oregon) only because I passed out while watching tv. And it was raining super hard. This week has been going by fast. I finally sat out in the sun and got a nice little burn on my arms while reading my book. Otay, back to tv...

[analog]

In these days of instant communication around the world, i think it'd make sense for the whole world to go on universal (Greenwich Mean?) time. We could rotate the face on local clocks so as to keep the hands straight up at midday.

That should confuse things.

[Shapley]

OT,

RE: Time zones.

I think Arizona and Hawaii do not participate in Daylight Savings time.

I have to stand corrected on Indiana. According to Infoplease.com, Indiana changed the practice last year, and now the entire State observes daylight savings time.

V/R
Shapley

[DavidS]

I can understand there not being much point in instituting Daylight Savings Time in a latitude such as Hawaii's - there probably isn't much difference between the length of winter and summer daytimes there. (GCR: correct me if I'm wrong!)

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

I'm not sure about Hawaii, at all. Seems to me that the time difference between my phone and my sister-in-law's stays constant at three hours; if they didn't do Daylight Savings, wouldn't it be a four hour difference for half the year?

The time difference between my phone and my aunt in Albuquerque is steady at 1 hour; they do DST. Same story with the sister in Denver; they do DST. If I call the stepdaughters in Phoenix, they are the same time as I am for the warmer half of the year, one hour different the cooler half of the year. The cousin in New York stays steady at a three hour differential, so I figure New York does DST.

Major life events usually involve lots of family phone calls; my life would be easier if this didn't involve quite so many time zones and variable time differentials. :scowl:

[Shapley]

Selma, Here's what infoplease.com has to say:

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/daylight1.html

The federal law that established "daylight time" in this country does not require any area to observe daylight saving time. But if a state chooses to observe DST, it must follow the starting and ending dates set by the law. From 1986 to 2006 this has been the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October, but starting in 2007, it will be observed from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November, adding about a month to daylight saving time. (See: New Federal Law.)

No More Sunlight in Arizona and Hawaii
Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo Nation) and Hawaii and the territories of Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa are the only places in the U.S. that do not observe DST but instead stay on "standard time" all year long. And if you've spent any time in the sweltering summer sun in those regions you can understand why residents don't need another hour of sunlight.

The Dawning of DST in Indiana
Until April 2005, when Indiana passed a law agreeing to observe daylight saving time, the Hoosier state had its own unique and complex time system. Not only is the state split between two time zones, but until recently, only some parts of the state observed daylight saving time while the majority did not.

Under the old system, 77 of the state's 92 counties were in the Eastern Time Zone but did not change to daylight time in April. Instead they remained on standard time all year. That is, except for two counties near Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Ky., which did use daylight time.

But the counties in the northwest corner of the state (near Chicago) and the southwestern tip (near Evansville), which are in the Central Time Zone, used both standard and daylight time.

The battle between the old system and DST was contentious and hard-won—bills proposing DST had failed more than two dozen times until finally squeaking through the state legislature in April 2005. As of April 2, 2006, the entire state of Indiana joined 48 other states in observing Daylight Saving Time. But it wasn't quite as simple and straightforward as all that—telling time in Indiana remains something of a bewildering experience: eighteen counties now observed Central Daylight Time and the remaining 74 counties of Indiana observe Eastern Daylight Time.

New Federal Law—Springing Forward in March, Back in November
Months after Indiana passed the law that got it in step with the rest of the country, the federal government announced a major change in Daylight Saving Time. In Aug. 2005, Congress passed an energy bill that included extending Daylight Saving Time by about a month. Beginning in 2007, DST will start the second Sunday of March and end on the first Sunday of November.

I'm not sure how definitive their information is. I suggest a road trip to verify it.

V/R
Shapley

[Shapley]

Here's what Binjamin Franklin has to say regarding DST:

http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/franklin3.html

V/R
Shapley

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Ben Franklin had his tongue so far in his cheek on that article, he probably walked crooked for a week. I'm sure that before he noticed, the French had no idea that the sun gave light as soon as it rose.

Infoplease seems to agree with the lady whose plants are dying from the excess sunshine that our mechanical devices somehow affect the insolation of the planet.

[monkeymd2b]

Well, that post from infoplease prolly answered your question selma but the time diff between hawaii and the west coast is either 2 or 3 hours. Much easier to adjust to these time differences when I get my vacation than when I was in new orleans. That was painful. But then again, it did have the benefit of my dad being able to call me to wake me early on my exam days since he was getting home from working at the airport at just around the time I wanted to be up for those tests. He was the extra back up alarm clock to the other back up alarms I had set on those days.
Well, vacation is wrapping up. And I have a full day of clinic on monday. I love clinic, I just hate writing the notes.

[dai bread]

I do enjoy Benjamin Franklin's writing. It's archaic, but it's lively and moves with a swing, unlike most from that period. That article above is wonderful, and should be reprinted as an April Fool's joke.

In this country, we had a permanent half-hour of daylight saving from 1930 something I think. It was probably to bring us an nice even 12 hours ahead of GMT. The extra hour we have in "summer" now (it runs from mid-Spring to early Autumn) was pushed thorough by assiduous lobbying by 2 real estate agents who wanted longer evenings to take clients around houses for sale.

I sometimes wonder why we can't have GMT world-wide. Does the sun really have to rise at about 0600 hours everywhere? Would it really hurt if dawn was at 1200?

Mind you, the Spring festival of Easter is coming up. We still celebrate it in March/April, like everybody else, when it really should be September. I guess old habits die very hard.

[DavidS]

dai - would you also recommend abolishing the International Date Line, and having the date all round the world advance at 12 midnight GMT?