A White House Petition: should daylight savings time end permanently?

by chicagobob • 15 years ago

14 18 15 years ago

wavephorm2• 15 years ago

While we're at it how about we just eliminate timezones completely and just use UTC.

dlsspy3• 15 years ago

That one's a bit tough since it really only affects people who are working far apart -- at which point you can just agree on what time something is.

For example, it's great to think of noon as being the middle of the day no matter where you are. There are clearly advantages the other way around as well.

DST is just disruptive, though. "Hey everybody! Let's have two ones o'clock this morning!" That created all kinds of confusion in my house last night when things were running at one I didn't expect to be running until two.

wavephorm2• 15 years ago

Timezones affect every date/time selection box on the internet, every flight ticket, every cross-zone ticket or schedule of any kind...

Timezones are an unnecessary overhead in the digital age.

jeffool2• 15 years ago

I think we should also officially adopt yyyy.mm.dd.hh.mm and the 24hr clock. (I forget the official name of that formatting, and I'm on my phone, so I'm lazy.)

And the International Fixed Calendar, too.

Also, metric.

DerekL• 15 years ago

You're probably thinking of ISO 8601.

dlsspy3• 15 years ago

You spelled the name of the thing you're trying to abolish incorrectly. :/

gte910h4• 15 years ago

I'd contend the name of the thing is now actually "Daylight Savings Time" instead of "Daylight Saving Time" as it was originally put into law.

Language is descriptive. If everyone calls a thing X, it is, by definition, called X.

dlsspy3• 15 years ago

"Everybody" disagrees with you:

https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...

bluemoon• 15 years ago

While there are many studies that have conflicting results on whether it reduces energy, it does affect the circadian rhythm

chicagobob2• 15 years ago

That touches on my main point. I think relatively speaking it has outlived its usefulness, but twice a year its very disruptive to my family's daily schedule for a few days. My kids are too young to understand it and just know that their day is off somehow.

nullsub• 15 years ago

it's arguably never been less disruptive to switch from DST to EST. the only clock in my life that doesn't auto-sync to some global standard is the timex on my wrist.

gte910h4• 15 years ago

More importantly, Daylight Saving Time kills people every spring:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/12/eveningnews/main62...

That alone is enough reason to stop it.

bunderbunder• 15 years ago

On the other hand, that article points out that it proceeds to save lives (in the form of reduced traffic fatalities) during the rest of the time that it's in effect. And the springtime negative effects are due to the change to DST, not DST itself.

The better goal, perhaps, would be end standard (winter) time, not daylight saving (summer) time.

gte910h4• 15 years ago

I don't care which time we stick to, as long as we stop changing it.

bootz15• 15 years ago

Let's add an hour every year. I like that idea!

A White House Petition: should daylight savings time end permanently?

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