Daylight savings time is possibly one of the most asinine and needlessly convoluted things ever conceived. Just how ridiculous is it?
To start, DST is incredibly non-standardized, not just internationally, but domestically as well. 48 states observe DST, and 1 (Hawaii) does not. Astute arithemeticians will note that this does not account for all 50 states. The majority of Arizona does not observe DST, with the exception of the Navajo Nation does. It works out to approximately 48.1 states observing DST, and 1.9 states not observing DST. Many other nations also have inconsistent DST procedures in different parts of the country.
Internationally, DST is implemented anywhere from the end of February to the beginning of April, or the end of September to the beginning of November the other way. Even more confusingly, moving the clock forwards/backwards is reversed between the Northern and Southern hemispheres. This leads to some incredibly weird discrepancies for those who happen to work or travel (or more pertinently for us, watch ESPORTS events) across countries and hemispheres with differing policies around DST adjustments.
Why do we even have DST? Supposedly, it leads to more exploitation of sunlight hours, and can save energy or something silly like that. Studies differ greatly on the actual benefits of DST (energy usage patterns differ drastically today when compared to the early 20th century), and agriculture and evening entertainment industries among others are firmly opposed to it. Nightowls such as myself see little use for sunlight anyways, since the warm glow of a computer monitor is all we need.
The real reason we have DST? A New Zealander by the name of George Vernon Hudson, who was an amateur entomologist, valued daylight hours for his hobby, and proposed a 2-hour DST system. Independently, Englishman William Willett pushed for DST because he was an “avid golfer...[who] disliked cutting short his round at dusk.” In short, the global population has to suffer the consequences of one of the most needlessly complicated and useless systems ever devised because some New Zealand dude wanted to catch more bugs and some British dude wanted to play more golf 100 years ago.
More DST anecdotes:
-Russia implemented permanent DST in 2011. Three years later, the Russian government realized what a terrible idea that was and abolished DST altogether.
-DST did not actually come into law in England during Willett’s lifetime, but Germany and Austria-Hungary adopted it in 1916 as a way to conserve coal during WWI, believing (falsely?) in DST’s ability to cut down energy use. Not to be outdone, the Allied nations immediately adopted DST in response.
-In some (but not all) Muslim countries that observe DST, DST is interrupted during the month of Ramadan to better accommodate the Ramadan fast. So it’s like they have DST but also not.
Well, the DST is just the greatest self-loathing our civilization has ever produced. It's an unintentional commentary on how stupidly superficial our thinking is. Because it does absolutely nothing else than change a number on a clock. It doesn't - in itself - save energy, change when we do anything, it only changes a number that appears when we do it. We could achieve an absolutely identical result if we just did things that are anyhow dependent on sunlight at different times in different parts of the year. But we are much more willing to follow a number on a digital display than the reality of the nature ...
It's the same as with one of my friends, who has a tendency to get up late. OK, I get it, you have some physiological schedule related to the light/darkness cycle that works for you and I know how difficult is to sleep when you don't feel like that - but what does that have to do with a number on your watch?. Then we travel around the world together - and that's a thing that shifts your internal clock all the ways around, but he still refuses to set alarm sooner than 8 o'clock in the morning of the local time - the time that has no past relevance for him whatsoever and what's more, is in many places of the world shifted by a random amount in either direction with respect to the local solar time. But it's a number on the watches and he must follow it anywhere!!! If I lied to him and never told him what the local timezone is, I could easily convince him to get up three ours earlier and he won't ever notice something wrong is happening to him ...
By the way the notion of "permanent DST" is nonsense, when the time is shifted constantly, it's just your timezone offset from the natural solar time (meaning that the Sun does not pass the local meridian at noon citizen time) and that happens in a great number of countries - by this logic, for example Spain has "permanent DST" as a country firmly in the GMT territory but observing CET etc... Incidentally, in Spain it is quite useful because that country is full of people who just can't stand watching single-digit time readings, so the shift keeps them at least in better sync with daylight.
The pain of hemisphere-reversal used to be very real for me as I travel a lot from Europe to Argentina, usually via Chile and the confusion of timezones between those three places used to be phenomenal (thank got for automatic time-sync on my smartphone, I would have missed numerous flights if it weren't for this feature) but luckily both Chile and Argentina have stopped shifting their time. What's even better, Argentina kept the "winter" time while Chile kept the "summer" zone, bringing both of the into the same UTC-3 setting and removing any differences once for all!
Isn't the purpose of it to keep the brightness of various times of day somewhat consistent as the year goes by? (gets darker earlier in winter more day during summer)
We here in Sakatchewan, Canada do not observe DST. When I first moved here almost 7yrs ago I found it strange. Now I find the rest of the country strange.
Apparently they tried to implement it here a few years ago to try and reduce the traffic flow (?!?) but it failed so miserably they didn't follow through. Or so my mother tells me, I have no idea if there is any truth in it. imo instead of turning back/forward a clock people should instead adjust their hours of work. If you're used to going to work at 7am - 5pm and then you can't because seasons etc then you change your hours from 8am - 6pm or whatever. Why not? I dunno, never having lived with it I don't understand it.
On March 02 2015 01:31 dravernor wrote: Apparently they tried to implement it here a few years ago to try and reduce the traffic flow (?!?) but it failed so miserably they didn't follow through. Or so my mother tells me, I have no idea if there is any truth in it. imo instead of turning back/forward a clock people should instead adjust their hours of work. If you're used to going to work at 7am - 5pm and then you can't because seasons etc then you change your hours from 8am - 6pm or whatever. Why not? I dunno, never having lived with it I don't understand it.
hahaha you have just made everyone who turns the clocks look incredibly stupid.
Exactly, government, people and business can easily solve the problem without needing to do something stupid like turning the clock
Hmm interesting points Cheep. I always thought DST was a throwback to the time when mostly everybody farmed their own food and whatnot. Like it specifically had to do with harvest schedules and getting that extra daylight in for work before electricity became a thing and the whole "wake up at dawn, go to bed at dusk" schedule started to get thrown out.
I didn't realise that people cared that much about dayight saving time. My experience in Denmark is that most people like it because it takes an hour of daylight from the earliy morning where you're going to be asleep anyway and gives you one in the evening when you're awake instead. In fact, the people who advocate against daylight savings here are largely considered quite silly (I mean, this is their website, come on...).
On March 01 2015 17:28 Carnivorous Sheep wrote: Daylight savings time is possibly one of the most asinine and needlessly convoluted things ever conceived. Just how ridiculous is it?
I agree with your comments about the 'end result' of DST. However, I think it's wrong to attribute the problems to the conception of DST. How it was conceived and what problems we now experience are fairly detached.
To start, DST is incredibly non-standardized, not just internationally, but domestically as well.
This is an example of the implementation, rather than the concept, being suspect.
Why do we even have DST? Supposedly, it leads to more exploitation of sunlight hours, and can save energy or something silly like that.
Once again, I agree entirely with your criticisms of DST. However, it does not seem that you fairly characterized the benefits of DST when qualifying your thesis.
In short, the global population has to suffer the consequences of one of the most needlessly complicated and useless systems ever devised because some New Zealand dude wanted to catch more bugs and some British dude wanted to play more golf 100 years ago.
Wow, those must have been some hugely influential dudes!
In summary, I enjoyed your piece about DST, although it was a little overly biased. One would have trouble denying this fact when looking at the closing remark:
In 1940, Walter Benjamin Wrote: The consciousness of exploding the continuum of history is peculiar to the revolutionary classes in the moment of their action. The Great Revolution introduced a new calendar. The day on which the calendar started functioned as a historical time-lapse camera. And it is fundamentally the same day which, in the shape of holidays and memorials, always returns. The calendar does not therefore count time like clocks. They are monuments of a historical awareness, of which there has not seemed to be the slightest trace for a hundred years. Yet in the July Revolution an incident took place which did justice to this consciousness. During the evening of the first skirmishes, it turned out that the clock-towers were shot at independently and simultaneously in several places in Paris. An eyewitness who may have owed his inspiration to the rhyme wrote at that moment:
Qui le croirait! on dit, qu'irrités contre l'heure De nouveaux Josués au pied de chaque tour, Tiraient sur les cadrans pour arrêter le jour.
[Who would've thought! As though Angered by time’s way The new Joshuas Beneath each tower, they say Fired at the dials To stop the day.]
I think your blog is very egocentric, just because you don't like it, it doesn't mean its bad.
The reason that some countries enter DST first than others, is because we are located at different latitutes, so we may need it/don't need it at a different point in time that you do. Some countries, around the ecuador, probably don't need it at all. However i agree in that 48.1 states having it and 1.9 states not having it is stupid, just like a lot of laws are on the US (and mexico and probably other places) because of the "autonomy" of every state.
In the Netherlands we have synced our clock with Germany with trains, trade and traffic and all. But this means that the sun is at its highest point at ~12:45 I believe. Which makes DST not really necessary. Witch DST the high point is at 13:45 which seems silly. Personally I like the extra light at the end of the day. But I think we could do without or collectively switch to DST permanently?
On March 02 2015 10:30 Sjokola wrote: In the Netherlands we have synced our clock with Germany with trains, trade and traffic and all. But this means that the sun is at its highest point at ~12:45 I believe. Which makes DST not really necessary. Witch DST the high point is at 13:45 which seems silly. Personally I like the extra light at the end of the day. But I think we could do without or collectively switch to DST permanently?
yisss
On March 02 2015 07:01 Mindcrime wrote: DST owns. fuck standard time
This was meant to be a collection of interesting facts about the origin/practice of DST, which I did not know until last night and I assume are new to many readers as well. The grossly exaggerated comments expressing hatred of DST were for comedic and dramatic effect and should not be read as a detail and logical takedown of DST.
I do think DST is needless in this day and age though, and only adds confusion.
And what's up with this inconsistency in Australia/Canada/Arizona?
But seriously I think DST is outdated in these days of electric lighting and steam locomotives.
It's a state issue, the states have held referendums on it but it did not pass. In WA there have been 3 referendum on DS since 1984, general consensus now is that since WA's timezone is the same as Singapore and China it makes good business sense to remain in the current zone.
Stephen Colbert already asked how is DST still a thing. It seems to stem from the general misconception that it was originally for the farmers, but was actually for something else I forgot, and people were somehow making mucho money off it.
I love it when I gain an hour and absolutely HATE it when I lose it. There's also evidence pointing to a significant increase in traffic accidents the day after we lose an hour due to the decrease in sleep, I wouldn't mind doing away with DST altogether. You're going to have to go through the lobbyists that profit from it first though.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Victory-Cigar-Congress-Passes-DST.jpeg/432px-Victory-Cigar-Congress-Passes-DST.jpeg)
![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/DaylightSaving-World-Subdivisions.png)
