Daylight Saving Change Saved No Power 766
Brett writes "Results from energy companies are coming in, and the word is that moving Daylight Saving Time forward three weeks had no measurable impact on power consumption. The attempt by the US Congress to make it look like they were doing something about the energy crisis has been exposed as the waste it is. But the new DST is probably here to stay — letting the bill expire would mean re-patching a lot of systems again next year. So much for saving energy."
But...but.. (Score:5, Funny)
Not statistically significant (Score:5, Funny)
Global brightening is real! (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the original article on this subject, from June 2006:
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/Ma
Re:Who cares, it was brighter! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No it wasn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it's not so much needing the government to trick you into getting up earlier, as it is needing the government to trick your boss into opening your place of work an hour earlier.
Re:Get up early? No way! (Score:4, Insightful)
People who complain about the gubmint are often just complaining about having to deal with other people.
Sure, if I never had to talk to anyone or do anything, I'd get up at dawn and go to bed at sunset too.
But I'd also be living in a cave, and be dead by now.
Re:Get up early? No way! (Score:4, Funny)
Strictly about the money (Score:4, Interesting)
Add to the fray the changing from winter to summer mix (and back at the end of DST) and you have a recipe for charging more for oil. Anyone have gasoline over $3 a gallon where they are right now? And all this BEFORE the Iran conflict with England. The oil companies switch mixtures and "clean" their tanks in the process, every March and every fall. March prices rise through April due to "less supply" but the same demand. The reality is the gasoline goes through at the same rate. It's all supply/demand *on paper.*
September brings Labor Day and "increased travel" for that holiday in the US, but prices CONTINUE to rise after that, due to switching the mix again. Add to that more shopping (more daylight DOES mean more shopping) and lo and behold it's all about the money. What else can we expect from a government that lets the President veto bills from the House and Senate because he wants to keep the Iraq war going, when less than 19% of the US supports the war? Definfitely fed up - but this move is STRICTLY over money.
Quit'cher Bitchin' (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Our patching is done as well. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Quit'cher Bitchin' (Score:5, Insightful)
1) A significant amount of manpower had to be expended in order to assure that the computer systems across the world supporting this change were ready for it.
2) A number of home and business computer systems alike failed to change, sometimes resulting in mischeduled meetings and moderate confusion.
3) Congress wasted time on this bill that could have been spent getting something important done, such as finally hammering out a definate government policy on Stem Cell research, abortions, or actually making a true impact on the energy issue we face.
Time and money were wasted, for an energy revenue of nil. It may not have increased energy costs, but costs in general were incurred.
Look on the bright side... (Score:5, Insightful)
See, that's the glass-half-empty talking. Just look on the bright side: When they were wasting their time turning out this ridiculous waste of time and paper, it meant that they weren't really screwing anything else up!
Please, Congress, do us all a favor: spend your time on things like creating new "National $FOO Week"s. What -- there aren't any free weeks left? Okay, I've got one: why don't you guys try to fix the date of Easter? I'm sure that won't take you too long.
The more idiotic, banal stuff that I know the Congresscritters are doing, the better it makes me feel, because at least I know they're staying out of trouble. It's when they go quiet for a while that I start to worry. The further away they stay from the "real issues," the happier I am. As absolutely fucked as the system we have is, don't you even think for a moment that with hard work and diligence, they couldn't make it at least ten times worse.
Congratulations, Congress, on your brilliant plan. By all means, keep up the great work.
Re:Look on the bright side... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Quit'cher Bitchin' (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, because Congress totally would have accomplished something on THOSE deadlock issues....
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Dude, this is the previous (Republican controlled) Congress we're talking about. They spent the vast majority of their time on vacation. They convened for fewer days than any Congress in a hundred years. I suppose they could have used the time spent debating this bill to do something meaningful, but they weren't exactly hurting for time.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They convened for fewer days than any Congress in a hundred years.
You say that like it's a bad thing...
Congress _not_ imposing their personal culture (lawyer culture at that) on folks living 3K miles away is a much better thing.
Re:Quit'cher Bitchin' (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you mean no manual alarm could cope? How did manual alarms cope before the change? Thats right you set it before you went to bed, This isn't rocket science. One more point. The Time change occurred on Sunday morning at or about 2am. You had a whole day to look at your clock and figure out it was a hour off before you went to be Sunday night. It's not DST fault you were late to work it was your fault. Nice try though
Oh and for the record my cell phone did change on it's own on time.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So did mine ... 2 weeks after the new and improved DST. In fact, math would be much easier if pi were to equal 3. Why don't we just frak around with other constants. While we're at it, e is pretty close to 3.
In short, why should I have to reset my alarm so that you can stay up an extra hour. When you go to bed is your business, not mine. Let's keep the Congress out of it!
Re:Quit'cher Bitchin' (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Modded funny? (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, this "useful" change was nothing but a waste of time, AND clocks. All those clocks/devices that automatically change according to the standardized time? Useless. Software patches? Quite impossible for most.
Looks like the waste management facilities will see a rise in borked electronics because of this - and that does precisely 0 for the environment, too.
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These people in Arizona are going to have NO EXCUSE for oversleeping with all the used alarm clocks they're going to get.
Useful to us! (Score:5, Funny)
Record profits this year, my friend, record profits. You should have invested in manufacturers of automatically changing clocks, watches and timepieces.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Record profits this year, my friend, record profits. You should have invested in manufacturers of chocolate, bon-bons and candy-bars.
Ob. JonStewart (Score:3, Funny)
...or "TIMEBLA"...
--Rob
Re: (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you high? (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, this is a move by congress, no one is bashing "The Administration"
No harm, no foul, huh? How about the time it took to patch my file transfer program. I'm sure my employers don't appreciate the extra money spent. Not to mention tying up our IT staff trying to get time clocks/etc. fixed when the Windows patch f#$%ed up the time then fixed it again two days later. There's two days of pay for the IT staff, not to mention lost time where other things didn't get fixed.
And it's us who look like giant douches for complaining?!!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you don't look like a giant douche for complaining. I think the original poster was responding more to the tone of the summary which seemed... angry that they even attempted something to conserve energy.
I don't think its a liberal/conservative thing, but I do think its a great example of you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't for the government. Had they not changed DST after it was proposed the environmentalists (or rath
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Quit'cher Bitchin' (Score:4, Informative)
A number of countries followed suit out of necessity to stay synchronized with U.S. businesses, rather than because of any particular support for the idea.
Re:Quit'cher Bitchin' (Score:5, Interesting)
I've checked Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], and I didn't see much of any countries that have followed the USA on this initiative other than Canada. Even Mexico didn't follow (assuming the ariticle is accurate).
I live in Canada, and I can tell you that we followed out of economic necessity, and no other reason. Our economy is so tied to America (in terms of cross-border business) that we realistically had no choice. But we certainly don't like it, especially those further north: with the pushing of the clock so much earlier this year, people were heading to work and kids were walking to school in pitch-black darkness again.
And, of course, we had the same PITA tech issues with the time change the Americans had. For Canadians in general, the negatives of this change outweighed the positive by a long shot.
Re:Quit'cher Bitchin' (Score:4, Insightful)
Any oil companies based in Alberta (which observes DST) just have their Saskatchewan employees go to work an hour earlier in the summer. Which proves it really isn't that hard to change your business hours to accomodate the season.
I think this is a case where Saskatchewan is so far "behind the times" that they may be more "modern" than everyone else. With the 9-5 workday losing significance all the time, DST is already becoming less and less relevant anyhow. It will likely continue to be less relevant until it is finally abolished. Hopefully Saskatchewan doesn't decide to adopt it right before it becomes totally obsolete.
As you said, I think Saskatchewan has it right, and I hope that they don't change it just to be like everyone else. Because in this instance, what everyone else is doing doesn't make sense anymore.
Re:Quit'cher Bitchin' (Score:5, Insightful)
Some tiny number of people had to wrestle with Windows inanity (and that's a self-selected group of people who voluntarily took jobs that require wrestling with Windows inanity).
Meanwhile, a huge number of people get a quality-of-life boost from the extra daylight in the evening, which makes it more pleasant to walk home from work, to run late-afternoon errands, or just to enjoy some time outdoors on nice spring and autumn days.
In an ideal world they'd keep pushing it back until the start and end finally met, and then abolish it entirely, leaving the clocks on summer time all year round. But until that time, at least things are a bit better. And next time they change it, you Windows-wrestlers will know what to do.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This would cause problems in northern latitudes during the winter. The sun potentially wouldn't rise until very late in the morning, which would be tres suck. The last time they tried this was during WWII, and there was a noted rise in the early morning accident rate in the winter. Of course, you could also partially blame that on the blackouts, but then without War Time the blackouts wouldn't have had as much impact in the
Change your schedule, not my clock (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you people have any clue what the concept of "noon" is supposed to be? In case you've forgotten, it's supposed to be the time of day when the sun is highest in the sky. It's supposed to be the time when there is as much daylight behind us as is in front of us.
For practical purposes, this isn't exact, but we've done a pretty good job with splitting the world up into 24 time zones so that it's somewhat close.
But not any more! No, now noon is just some arbitrary point during the day when we find it convenient to be. We want more time at the end of the day, so let's just move noon an hour ahead, right?
WRONG! I have a better idea. Instead of dinking around with clocks and redefining what something means that has been around since the beginning of recorded time, why don't we just have businesses shift their hours around?
Imagine how nice this would be. We never change our clocks. Twice a year, government changes its hours. The Post Office, for example, doesn't open at 8:00am during the summer, it opens at 7:00am, and it closes an hour earlier, too. Businesses that choose to do so follow suit and make sure its employees know when to show up. I suspect that almost all of them would, and probably most companies would have a policy that says something like, "When the government shifts its hours, we're shifting ours also."
Everyone's happy. People get their extra hour at the end of the day. No one has to write stupid software patches to account for when DST is. Atlanta, Georgia is always GMT-5, never GMT-4 like it is now. People don't think Arizonans are weird because half the year they're on Mountain time and half the year they're on Pacific. If government wants to change its hours a few weeks earlier next year, there's no issue at all, they can just announce it a few months in advance, and when the time comes, do it.
I'm sorry, but people who think that DST is a good thing are idiots. If you want to change your schedule, change your schedule. But leave my freakin' clock alone.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No you have to either move everything back one hour or nothing, and then you end up with daylight saving time anyway except instead of a simple change of clocks, you have to change every scedule in the country.
Anyway some advantages of DST are more suptle, I know that the tourism industry here in Denmark likes it because it extend the se
Re:Change your schedule, not my clock (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it would be a much larger pain in the ass. So, some businesses follow government time, and some don't. Some shift their schedules, and some don't. How utterly ridiculous. Which option would your business take when half of the other businesses change their hours, and the others don't?
DST is about simplicity: Ok everyone, change your clocks!
The measurement of time is arbitrary in and of itself. By your rationale, we should adjust time daily so that noon is always the point in time when there is *exactly* half a day of sunlight left.
I'm sorry, but people who think that DST is a good thing are idiots.
Possibly, but anyone who endorses your plan doesn't exactly have both oars in the water either.
Re:Change your schedule, not my clock (Score:4, Insightful)
Your world:
1. Having to investigate when every business opens "this" time of the year. Since there's no standard, each business can decide when or if they want to change their schedule.
2. Having to deal with public transportation schedules that may or may not change the same time that your place of business decides to change its schedule.
3. Businesses having to maintain signage that says "Open 9am-11pm November-March, Open 8am-10pm April-October."
4. Someone having to answer the phone constantly at your place of business asking "When are you open?" since they are less likely to memorize your business's flexible hours. (And don't think that an automated attendant that answers the phone with this information is going to prevent this question getting through to a human; it won't.)
5. Getting to have noon magically when the sun is at the highest point in the sky. You know, if you happen to live on the meridian of your time zone where this actually occurs.
Or the real world:
1. Businesses keep reliable and memorizable hours.
2. Public transportation schedules vacillate rarely.
3. Businesses can keep their easy "Open 9am-11pm Every Day" signage.
4. Still have to answer the phone at work explaining your hours, but probably to fewer people since your hours aren't confusing and are a tad easier to memorize.
5. Noon is when it is. Doesn't matter since you can't reliably measure the time by looking at the sun most places in the world anyway.
6. Throw around a frisbee an extra hour after work in the summer when the weather is nice.
7. Change a dozen clocks and watches twice a year at a predetermined time that's widely publicized in the media, probably pre-marked on your calendar, and even changes automatically on machines with well-designed software.
So, um, are all your clocks especially difficult to change or something? Or do you have like 40 thousand of them? Oh, you're a sysadmin who got bit by the DST change? Refer to the end of #7.
Re:Change your schedule, not my clock (Score:4, Insightful)
1
GP's world: Having to investigate when every business opens "this" time of the year. Since there's no standard, each business can decide when or if they want to change their schedule.
Your real world: Businesses keep reliable and memorizable hours.
My real world: Even with DST, businesses have no global standard. Some open at 7am, some at 8am, some at 9am, some at 10am. Some stores close at 5pm, some at 6pm, some at 9pm. Some of them are even open 24 hours a day. Heck, stores in the same mall can have different hours.
2
GP's world: Having to deal with public transportation schedules that may or may not change the same time that your place of business decides to change its schedule.
Your real world: Public transportation schedules vacillate rarely.
My real world: Even with DST, fewer people work in the summer time. A lot of people are on vacation. Many public transportation schedules reflect this by having a different "summer schedule".
3
GP's world: Businesses having to maintain signage that says "Open 9am-11pm November-March, Open 8am-10pm April-October."
Your real world: Businesses can keep their easy "Open 9am-11pm Every Day" signage.
My real world: Even with DST, businesses already maintain signage that says "Open 10am-5pm Monday-Wednesday, Open 10am-9pm Thursday-Friday, Open 9am-5pm Saturday, Open 11am-5pm Sunday.
4
GP's world: Someone having to answer the phone constantly at your place of business asking "When are you open?" since they are less likely to memorize your business's flexible hours. (And don't think that an automated attendant that answers the phone with this information is going to prevent this question getting through to a human; it won't.)
Your real world: Still have to answer the phone at work explaining your hours, but probably to fewer people since your hours aren't confusing and are a tad easier to memorize.
My real world: (See 1 and 3)
Re:Quit'cher Bitchin' (Score:5, Insightful)
There are almost 400 million people in the USA. A tiny number of those are Windows sysadmins.
Re:Quit'cher Bitchin' (Score:4, Funny)
You forgot the fine print:
Margin of error: +/- 33%
Re:Quit'cher Bitchin' (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Quit'cher Bitchin' (Score:4, Funny)
Shocked (Score:3, Funny)
Extra sunshine isn't such a good thing. (Score:3, Funny)
On the flip side though, all the exta sunshine makes crops grow better so it should make farmers happier!
Re:Extra sunshine isn't such a good thing. (Score:4, Funny)
Sure, I could put all of that daylight into a Daylight Savings Bank, but I don't trust those guys. I don't need some big corporation earning fat interest loaning my daylight out to other people and giving me a 0.4% APR on it.
Fine by me... (Score:5, Interesting)
While I had no doubts in my mind that this wouldn't save a dime, I'm still pleased with the fact that because I work 9:30 to 6pm I see daylight on my drive home three weeks earlier than usual. For me, I'd prefer it's this way all year long but I don't have kids that ride a school bus (isn't that the main reason they claim we do this in the first place?)
Re:Fine by me... (Score:5, Informative)
alternatively... (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep it summer time year round if you ask me.
Throwing it out doesn't cost much at all. (Score:5, Interesting)
Getting rid of it altogether requires far less IT effort than moving it. Most systems can just be configured to run on standard rather than auto-daylight time. The rest you can just strip it out - much easier than putting it in or tweaking it every time the legislature gets another hive of bees in their bonnets.
Staying with DST means a major ongoing hassle for any new scheduling application. Do you have any IDEA what a pain it is to program those with DST changes? *I* do: I had to do it for a client. What do you do with the 25 hour day - especially the hour that happens twice? What do you do with the 23 hour day?
I hear the railroads handle it like this:
- In the spring all the trains are suddenly an hour late, and try to make up the time over the next day.
- In the fall they actually STOP them and let them SIT for an hour.
I hear the worst day for commuter traffic deaths is the first Monday of DST. (It's rush hour with ALL the drivers jet-lagged simultaneously.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't approve of DST, do you also not approve of time zones? Both are an attempt to "standardize" day/night conditions to the hours of the day. Some countries--huge ones like China--don't have timezones, so it's obviously possible.
Are you advocating that the US gets rid of timezones too? As you say, it WOULD be easier (for programmers primarily!) to standardize on GMT/UTC.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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The shortest day of the year happens on STANDARD TIME.. DST has no affect on the shortest day of the year!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Do something for the environment today; put as many of your workers as possible on flexitime. You're also likely to end up with a happier workforce, if they spend less tim
Never mind lost productivity... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Even before this change, there was a difference in the start dates of Daylight Saving and Summer Time across the Atlantic; for the last decade, it was a one week difference at the start. Before then, all hell broke loose across Europe, as different countries started and ended at different times. Most of the world outside Europe and No
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I live in California, so I'm on pacific time. Brazil's major cities are, IIRC, two time zones ahead of eastern time. So if I know the time in California, how do I figure out the time in Brazil? Well, I have to know what day of the year it is. It's 5 time zones ahead of me, but it can either 5 hours ahead during the times of the year when the US has switched its time and Brazil hasn't yet switched theirs. Or it can be 4 (US su
I wish they change this stuff more often (Score:4, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Reminds me of Spaceballs (Score:3, Funny)
Fuel Usage (Score:5, Interesting)
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
More effort and labor spent (Score:3, Funny)
After that, I turned on my amp and surround sound system and watched a movie during lunch while blasting away the AC because I got so hot from all the work.
It would mean REMOVING patches... (Score:4, Insightful)
This DST2007 thing has been a real pain in my ass. I know that the US government hates to admit failure, so we won't leave Iraq and we won't back off on DST2007... wish we would though. It has caused a lot of problems.
Re:It would mean REMOVING patches in Firmware (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a lot of firmware that has not been patched or acknowledged due to low priority.
I have a Linksys wireless router. Due to the difficulty getting kids offline to get ready for bed, I use the scheduler in the router to drop the connection. No nagging, begging for 5 minutes more 30 minutes later, etc.
A week before the time change, I downloaded the latest firmware update and installed it.
The changelog made no mention of the DST change so I checked the
Carbon-offset (Score:4, Funny)
Prior experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Prior experience (Score:4, Interesting)
And this year the candy companies hit the holy grail. An hour more light for halloween, and trick-or-treating.
With "flex" time, this is senseless. (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, our company works from 7am to 7pm (9 hour shifts w/ hour lunches).
Basically, if you get up early, you take a 7am shift- if you get up late, you take a 10am shift.
I don't see why they can't leave the clocks alone and places will just shift their hours if it matters.
end DST (Score:3, Informative)
STANDARDTIME.COM SAYS: If we are saving energy let's go year round with Daylight Savings Time. If we are not saving energy let's drop Daylight Savings Time! [standardtime.com]
Enough of this daylight time, reset-the-clocks insanity. Just stop the madness.
Congress member names (Score:4, Informative)
Daylight Saving Mystery (Score:5, Funny)
It was mostly about peak shaving, I thought (Score:5, Insightful)
People use the most energy right after they get home from work, basically; TV, computers (like me right now), cooking and other household operations.
Removing added lighting needs AT THAT TIME reduces the maximum generating capacity you need available to meet the peak demand. Which means they build a new power plant for your area in 2014 instead of 2012, or whatever. The time-cost of money means real savings on your power bill - even at constant total kWh consumed.
Re:It was mostly about peak shaving, I thought (Score:4, Informative)
You're right that it travels to the earlier morning hours, but what travels is not the peak usage but the net difference in energy usage. So the evening hours are still peak use time - people are still going to use much more energy prepping dinner/watching evening tv/checking blogs than in the morning - but the morning peak has increased slightly. The afternoon/evening peak energy use is also usually reflected in the electricity prices, so it costs the consumer more per unit of energy in the afternoon and evening than it does in the early morning. So while there is not a net energy savings, there may be some cost savings. Granted, it will be miniscule to the average household energy consumer, but it is present. Unfortunately the way we tend to work in the US is if we have anything "extra" we decide it must be there to use, instead of save. And as others have stated, there is probably more of a cost in lost productivity because of the bi-annual clock change than a net savings of anything one would care to measure.
Personally I've always been of the mind that after electric lighting went into widespread use it was time to do away with DST one way or another, I'd prefer to just set the clocks ahead 30 minutes one year to split the difference then never change them again.
Took this opportunity to change our clocks to GMT (Score:5, Interesting)
* Systems that dual-boot windows and linux no longer make oopses with DST transitions
* our company does more and more projects across different timezones across the country and internationally, and it gets real confusing real fast to have everything in Eastern, Pacific, Arizona (they don't observe DST), Melbourne, and the UK.
* we're an aviation company, so most of us are already used to it
* most of our computers are on closed networks anyway
So Congress is really doing us a favor by driving us towards a global economy with a common accessible timebase already established for maritime and aviation uses. Even if that's not what they intended
Re:It's also been unseasonably warm (Score:5, Insightful)
You can with a change in DST that is supposed to save energy on both ends, and only affects one month on each end.
For other things, maybe not.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We have quite a few; first, its supposed to reduce it by reducing daily demand, and its supposed to do it generally across the nation. You don't need multiple years of data to get a decent idea of what is going on with that; you can look at the data from one month daily and by region, and see to what degree it appears to be true. Or you could look at the overall average over all regions and days, and see that the number is not different that what would have been expe
Extrapolating from Chef Boyardee is not allowed. (Score:3, Funny)
After all, if it was good enough for the Founding Fathers it's good enough for patriotic Americans, eh? Anybody that says otherwise is clearly a liberal who is soft on terrorism and hates America.
I don't. (Score:5, Funny)
Get up earlier. (Score:3, Insightful)
The government's laws should be about encouraging businesses to set working hours to match the sun, not changing fundamental measurement systems to trick people into getting up earlier.
Re:I like the extra daylight though (Score:5, Funny)
Now if they would only legislate it so the sun didn't set at all.
I do not get this. My wife makes the same sort of comments. I tell her to put the baby to bed at 9pm if it's still too light at 8pm and she says the baby will be cranky because she is staying up too late.
I used to try to explain. Now I just nod.
Re:Amen (Score:5, Insightful)
I never understood school schedules. It has been shown that teenagers naturally wake up later in the day, and that elementary school students wake up earlier. Yet it is the elementary schools that start at 8:30 and the high schools that start at 7:30. Why not make school like work, where it runs 9-5, on a schedule more matching that of the parents? Some will counter that high school students have jobs in the evening, so let them start earlier. Why should jobs drive school schedules?
that's impractical, unfortunately (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Amen (Score:5, Interesting)
Then you haven't thought about it much.
Early to bed, early to rise. School schedules reflected our agricultural heritage, which is often why summers are off, still.
"It has been shown that teenagers naturally wake up later in the day, and that elementary school students wake up earlier."
These are more recent studies, like in the last 10 years or so. Once schedules are set, things are hard to change, as there is a certain expectation.
"Yet it is the elementary schools that start at 8:30 and the high schools that start at 7:30. Why not make school like work, where it runs 9-5, on a schedule more matching that of the parents?"
Obviously you haven't worked a hard day in your life. 9-5 is more white collar. Blue collar traditionally was 7-3 for 1st shift. 2nd shift was 3-11pm. For example, where I am, the white collar rush time in the morning is heaviest at about 8:30am. However, most of my neighbors are out the door before 7, and the dump trucks start their banging 10 minutes after 7.
"Some will counter that high school students have jobs in the evening, so let them start earlier. Why should jobs drive school schedules?"
Your older student can take care of themselves if they arrive home around 2.5-3pm. The 2nd grader can be met at 3:15-3:30 by the parent that got off work. Or if the elementary school student has an older sibling, watched by them since the latter got home first. Or, without an older sibling, something that used to be done was that you hired a short watch babysitter, usually a high schooler. Most parents are concerned with what happens after school.
A high schooler can drop off his elementary school sibling, or the white collar see the same off on the way to work. The blue collar with the elementary aged child usually had a stay at home wife, or she worked a more service or white collar job and could see the child off later.
As well, most elementary school students usually don't have after school activities, like theater, marching band, or sports. This gives high school students who want to do those activities time to do them, and still make it home for the family dinner. If they started later, you wouldn't have a nice family meal, since they, as you were earlier quoting studies, are a good thing according to most studies.
And yes, jobs do matter. A lot. High school usually lets out by 2:45. This allows high schoolers to hit the 2nd shift if blue collar (3-11), or the 2nd shift if they work in the service industry like fast food (depends, but usually 2.5-3.5pm to closing which is typically 9-10). Doesn't sound like a big deal to you, if mommy and daddy paid for your toys and food, but for a lot of on the edge students, if you can't have an afternoon job, they would drop out. At least this allows those interested in sports to partake, as well as those who need the jobs or the training to also get it while still in high school.
btw, those sleep studies I don't think accurately accounted for natural light variances, in which case daylight savings actually works against how the teen mind would prefer.
Re:there are other benifits to the new DST change. (Score:4, Funny)
Wrong web site...
We're struggling with sun glare on the screen while firing up Counter Strike...
Selfish Bastard (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who cares about energy savings (Score:5, Insightful)
I _really_ dislike getting up before dawn. I mean deep viceral psychological bio-cycle "why am I getting up at night" kind of dislike. Just when dawn was arriving at a decent time, you "I want more light so I'll force everyone else to change their schedules" people make me get up at 5:00AM EST instead of 6AM (and now you're talking about pushing it back to 4:00AM?!?).
The clock reflects astronomical realities of earth/sun positioning. Noon is supposed to mean the sun is overhead, mid-day. Cocky people then decide they don't like that arrangement, and declare what _is_ shall be different from what they _want_ reality to be. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, and calling dung a "rose" doesn't make it smell any better. Calling 5:00AM "6:00AM Daylight Saving Time" doesn't change the fact that it's really 5:00AM, and the combination of light and circadian rhythms means it's still time to sleep.
It's almost enough to make me move to Arizona where they ignore this nonsense.
Seriously, man - it really messes up my internal clock. Midnight to six is my time to _sleep_; mess with that, and you're messing with my ability to function.
You want more light? YOU get up earlier. Leave my clock alone; I'll be a lot more productive that way.
Re:Who cares about energy savings (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Eliminate DST ... and Time Zones too (Score:4, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time [wikipedia.org]
Re:Eliminate DST ... and Time Zones too (Score:5, Insightful)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2261
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=15840
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't have to do any calculations. Why would you ever deal with two time zones? I presume because you are in one and talking to someone in another, or you are traveling from one to another. If you are talking to someone, you ask them what their hours of operation are, and
Re:Eliminate DST ... and Time Zones too (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't have to deal with multiple timezones then what the bloody hell do you care about what time it is in a different timezone?!?
"what time do I wake up in the morning?" and that's not a calculation, but an answer you get handed to you when you get off the plane or ask a local.
Nonsense. "The store closes at 5." "The store closes at 9." You know the former means "early evening" and the latter means "late evening" because we use time zones. Replace that with "The store closes at 0300," and suddenly you haven't a clue. Sure, you can figure out that local "noon" is 1800, therefore it closes at the equivelant of 9PM, but is that really easier?
Yes, one of the side effects is that some locales border timezones and have to do a minor calculation to figure out what time the stores close in the adjacent timezone, but that wouldn't go away with everyone using UTC -- you'd still have to remember that it's an hour earlier/later.
Don't get me wrong, DST is a ridiculous "solution," but discarding local time is equally ridiculous.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I do care if a number contains alphabetical suffixes. If we rationalize on something like GMT, might as well use a proper 24-hour time.
Re:Eliminate DST ... and Time Zones too (Score:5, Insightful)
That's funny. Standard time and the resulting time zones came about because there were more interactions on a national and even global scale, thanks to railroads, telegraphs and radio. Keeping the time difference between two points an integer number of hours is far more preferable to what preceded it: everybody using local mean time for their own meridian. Would you like to keep track of the ~12 minute time difference between New Orleans and Chicago? The ~16 minute difference between San Francisco and Los Angeles? The ~12 minute difference between New York and Boston?
"They're just a PITA -- time is an arbitrary number anyway, so who cares if the clock says 6pm or 6am when you wake up?"
We're a diurnal species. If mechanical time did not approximate solar time to some degree, the former would be abandoned for the latter.
"Imagine having every computer (and every log, timestamp, calendar, etc.) in the world on GMT. Imagine scheduling conference calls and not having someone confuse which time zone it was scheduled for."
Imagine a world where not everybody's job involves timestamps, computer logs, or conference calls. Or, instead of imagining, experience reality a little instead.
At any rate, if it works so well, use your life as an example and set all your personal timepieces to UTC.
Re:Don't foget about October.... (for the children (Score:3, Informative)
So stupid. I was never molested when trick-or-treating as a child because the predators couldn't see me in the dark.
On the Flip Side (Score:4, Informative)
On the flip side, however, it means that there's six more weeks in the year when it is still dark when we go to work... the other side of the coin.
Re:This just in (Score:5, Insightful)
BZZZZT! You lose. Maybe you should wind back the clock and note who was in control of Congress when this bill was signed. Can you guess which party had control of both the House and the Senate at the time?