Frazz by Jef Mallett for December 31, 2023

If you set your clock back one hour on Dec 31 at 2400, you’ll then wait an hour to set it forward. You get two New Year’s Eve countdowns! That’s a win-win.

I have a better idea. Leave the clocks where they are now. Drop daylight savings time.

Well, no. It has to make at least marginally MORE sense than the existing system. Which I admit is a very low bar.

Now if you wanna get involved with something that’s cool and has NO chance of every happening, you might take up speaking Esperanto. Or calendar reform: If you had 13 4-week months plus a special “year day” and a “leap” day almost every four years that have no weekday name associated with them. That would fit the Earth’s astronomical year as well as the current system AND… every “event” such as your birthday or some holiday would always occur on the same day of the year AND the week. Except Easter and other holidays that depend on a lunar calendar. The typical reform plan puts Year Day between December 28 and January 1st (assuming the extra month goes somewhere else) and Leap Day in the middle of the 7th month. Though you could just have a double year day instead.

By that logic they should change clocks back at July 4th !

When we get to the “Spring Ahead!” time change, just move ahead a half an hour and then don’t bother changing anymore.

Standard time is God’s time and God’s time is America’s time. /s. But I am for standard time.

And since the current system makes no sense any system is just as sensible.

It was my understanding when the government changed the dates, that the date for going back to real time (standard time) was changed to after Halloween so the candy lobby would make more money since there would be more time after parents got home from work before it got dark.

What we need is a good run up to a world conflict. My folks and Grand folks used to talk about War Time and Double War Time.“Daylight Saving Time Once Known As ‘War Time’”, an article in the USDOD archive, spells it out: >

Regardless of daylight savings time or not. I will be up and walking in the nautical twilight, about 15 min before Civil Twilight, so that is about 45 minutes before sunrise. I am wanting to know if New Years morning has less traffic than xmas morning had!

The rhythm of life, non sensical as it may seem.

Original un time, EST, was good enough for a very long time. But somebody just had to fiddle with things, just to have something to do.

Reminds me of the people who produce software that works well in its original config, then just keep tweaking until it’s unworkable for Mr/Mrs average, which despite advertising to the contrary, most of us are.

Heard that Congress is trying to pass a bill to leave them on daylight savings time all year starting in November. I would rather they left it on natural time like it is now.

That sets the bar low. Then again, you can always arbitrarily reset it.

A bunch of people arguing that what would work best for them is “natural” and “sensible”, and anyone who would suffer under their “solution” should just “deal with it”.

Many think that daylight saving time was conceived to give farmers an extra hour of sunlight to till their fields, but this is a common misconception. In fact, farmers have long been opposed to springing forward and falling back, since it throws off their usual harvesting schedule.

The real reasons for daylight saving are based on energy conservation and a desire to match daylight hours to the times when most people are awake. The idea dates back to 1895 when entomologist George Vernon Hudson unsuccessfully proposed an annual two-hour time shift to the Royal Society of New Zealand.

The first real experiments with daylight saving time began during World War I. On April 30, 1916, Germany and Austria implemented a one-hour clock shift to conserve electricity needed for the war effort. The United Kingdom and several other European nations adopted daylight saving shortly after that, and the United States followed suit in 1918. (While Germany and Austria were the first countries to implement daylight savings, the first towns to implement a seasonal time shift were Port Arthur and Fort William, Canada in 1908.)

Most Americans only saw the time adjustment as a wartime act, and it was later repealed in 1919. Standard time ruled until 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt re-instituted daylight saving during World War II. This time, more states continued using daylight saving after the conflict ended, but for decades there was little consistency with regard to its schedule. Finally, in 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which standardized daylight saving across the country and established its start and end times in April and October (later changed to March and November in 2007).

it was for the farmers, next for the children and it still does not make sense so drop it to standard time

There was a study quite a few years ago that suggested that switching back and forth does damage to growing brains such that there was a significant decrease in intelligence in graduating high school students. (Which suggests that the real purpose of DST is to maximize politicians’ incumbency). It’s nice to see that it doesn’t seem to have done Caulfield too much damage…yet.

PR China has ONE TIME ZONE for the whole massive country. Efficient, but doesn’t sound very fun. And not a DST change, but India’s timezone is GMT +5:30 (a half hour difference); Nepal is GMT +5:45.

With DST it is still 90+ at 8 (in Texas and other Southern states) and too hot to take the dogs on an after dinner walk or engage in any other outdoor activity.

Why stop there Caufield ? Let’s just change the clocks every February 29th.

Both changes are at the halfway point between the solstice and the equinox.

How soon we forget. There was an article in the news years ago when we moved the clock settings from the April to March dates, and it was all about the Putt-Putt Golf places and the Convenience stores wanting more daylight time so they could get customers who were afraid of the dark. If there was $$$ to be made by changing the system to whatever, it would have already happened. The fact it hasnt’t yet, means a lot of big money businesses haven’t yet got together to figure out a way to squeeze some more cash out of us.

Daylight saving time needs to die.

Anyone that wants an extra hour of sunlight in the evening can get up an hour earlier every morning and let the rest of us sleep in.

Just follow China’s way of dealing with time zones. There are 5 different tine zones in China but only one official time. When it’s 9AM on the east coast of China it’s 9AM in the rest of China. I live in Arizona, we don’t bother with DST. We just deal with it getting darker earlier in the winter.

Millions of years of evolution have conditioned our bodies to operate on a sun-driven schedule—until the advent of artificial lighting (really, the electric light, as oil lamps were expensive and gave pitiful amounts of actual illumination), we rose around sunrise and started winding down at sunset. We had no problems because the rhythm of nature changed slowly and continuously. This is still deep in our biological make-up.

“Standard time” is well adapted to the short days/long nights of the winter season. “Daylight time” is well adapted to the long days/short nights of summer. The problem is the abrupt transition between the two, something that is the result of our limited time-telling technology. With smart devices and global communication networks, we have the technology to shift time on a daily or weekly basis so that our active “day” begins and ends in a proper synchronization with the environment and our bodies, while still maintaining a consistent answer to the question “what time is it?” (which really means “when are we going to get together to work, learn, party or whatever?”).

We won’t do this, of course. But we could.

9 to 5 jobs— or 8 to 4 for that matter— rarely exist except as core hours. In this century, many companies run 24-7. A lot of service industries work on flex-time, and it’s not uncommon to ask workers to be available at different hours.

The daylight saving argument, in my opinion, is really about morning vs evening people than about any tradition. “The farmers started it,” or “think of the school children standing out in the dark” are emotional arguments used to support personal preference.

Full disclaimer here—I am an extreme night owl. I prefer having more light at the end of the day. But I have friends who get up before dawn (when I am usually still awake) so they can feed their livestock, and/or squeeze in a trail ride before work.

I also had a co-worker who shared my job description. He liked to be on the road at dawn and home by 2. I preferred to start late and work until 7. We overlapped in the middle of the day. From a customer standpoint, it was the best of both worlds. My co-worker saw those people who wanted to have their appointments in the morning before they left for work. I was those who preferred late afternoon appointments.

Better yet, get rid of all time zones worldwide. Put the globe on one time for everyone. It’s called the Universal Time Clock. Airlines and airports worldwide use this system for its transparency and simplicity. Make it a 24-hour clock with no AM or PM. Who says dawn needs to be roughly 6 am? Or midday needs to be 12 noon?

“I don’t have to run faster than the lion, I only need to outrun YOU.”

HAPPY 2024!!

https://www.youtube.Com/watch?v=3VxjTue0wFU

DST lasts 8 months and standard time for 4 months. So how is the standard only four months and the exception 8 months? I think someone is trying to redefine words again.

I live where it’s a different time on either side of the river. You have to remember what you’re doing on which side of the river. Pain in the butt.

Even better idea…permanent daylight savings time…as has been passed in the Senate and stalled in the House for 3 years.

Set it back an hour one year, set it ahead the next.

The existing system has flaws, but his idea makes no sense at all.