6 ms·

Georgia is putting DST on the ballot this November. Voters will have a choice to stay with DST, going to standard time year around, or asking Congress for permi

Georgia is putting DST on the ballot this November. Voters will have a choice to stay with DST, going to standard time year around, or asking Congress for permission to stay on DST year around. My guess is none of the options will receive a majority vote but year around DST will get the plurality. Since that requires Congressional approval and the ballot referendum is non-binding, nothing will change as a result. Having discussed the issue over the years, it's also a bit sad realizing how people don't understand that this doesn't actually create an extra hour of sunlight, it just shifts an hour of pre-noon sunlight to be afternoon sunlight. A surprisingly large number of people are quite insistent that it creates more sunlight per day, citing longer daylight hours during the summer months as proof.

mjevans 7y ago
Vote for no more adjustments, I don't care if that's UTC, nation wide 'Eastern', DST or not DST... just leave things the same all year. I've got a slight preference for everyone going UTC with no DST so that meetings and events are easier to schedule across the world. UTC would be great if it weren't for how everyone wants to think of E.G. 8AM or 9AM or whatever as a common start time and then uses DST to try and adjust the clocks rather than the times people do things. The current time isn't particularly useful either, noon isn't even directly tied to the solar apex in most places (due to the timezones and more complex orbit / tilt interactions).
- blackguardx 7y ago
  They already do this in China. They have one time zone, but people in Western China don't actually shift their schedules. That means that a 9:00 AM start time for work is actually more like 6:00 AM Solar Time. All of China's timezone is keyed to Beijing time.
  - James_Henry 7y ago
    Do they really not change their schedules? and how much of that is similar to the fact that someone on the west coast may need to operate on east coast time due to financial markets, customers, etc?
- samatman 7y ago
  Right now, if I want to schedule a meeting with London, I have two steps: figure out a good time for me, check if it's reasonable in London, adjust if necessary. If London was in the same time zone, I'd have to ascertain, somehow, what 0800 actually means in terms of the workday, and multiply that across every time zone I have to confer with (and there are a lot). No thanks. I like knowing that 5 pm means more-or-less the same thing everywhere except Western China, which happily enough doesn't really come up in my day-to-day life.
  - James_Henry 7y ago
    You have to look it up either way, so I don't really understand why it would really be too much harder. For an example, if you are on the west coast you'd learn that 17 to 2 are good hours for you. Suppose on the day in question you know that 1 is the best time for you. Then you'd look at London and note that 9 to 18 are probably good for them. So you'll have to adjust. I don't see what new steps are introduced. You are right that it is nice to now what 5 pm means pretty much everywhere but Western China, but that same sentiment can be expressed by saying early evening everywhere including Western China.
    - naniwaduni 7y ago
      > I don't see what new steps are introduced. Even in the best case, you don't really manage simplify anything, you apply the same offsets, except now everyone on the west coast wakes up on one weekday and goes to sleep on the next, not just the ones who get to bed after midnight. The change happens right at the end of the business day, rather than outside business hours. Every day.
      - samatman 7y ago
        "Cool what are you doing Tuesday night?" "Uh do you mean... calendar Tuesday, or uh Tuesday Tuesday?" Repeated over half of the globe, forever. I do a lot of remote meetings with people all over the globe, I work for a remote company, and I do. not. want. this.
- dmckeon 7y ago
  If a country does any no-adjustment approach nationwide, people may want a single common day of the month to do daylight sensitive schedule adjustments, such as outdoor sports practices. I propose overnight on the first Sunday of a month. For example, the week before, in spring (Northern hemisphere) soccer (or whatever activity) practice is at 16:00, the week after at 16:30 or 17:00 or whatever. In fall, the reverse, but the schedules all change on the same day. (Outliers will happen - this is a 90:10 suggestion, not 100:0.) Think of all the families with 2 or 3 kids who have 2, 3, or 4 different activities each week, all at different times. Do we really want their schedules to potentially change in every week of the month? Yes, super-soccer mom or dad could cope, but why not try to keep it simpler?
- ska 7y ago
  > UTC would be great if it weren't for how everyone wants to think of E.G. 8AM or 9AM or whatever as a common start time You mean people want to think about hours in a way that is useful to them where they live? Doesn't sound crazy. If everyone moved to UTC you wouldn't solve any real problems. Sure, everyone in New York could get used to their day starting at noon or whatever (to what benefit?) but if you wanted to schedule a meeting with someone in spain (or california) you would still have to figure out the time change to make it a reasonable time for you both. Any way you slice it, you're just pushing the problem around to different places.
  - James_Henry 7y ago
    Everyone moving to UTC could make people start thinking about what time is actually appropriate to start the day instead of defaulting to 8 or 9 am. A lot of people might not want to think about that, but it could end up quite a bit better for public health.
  - nulbyte 7y ago
    > Any way you slice it, you're just pushing the problem around to different places. There isn't a problem. There are many problems. Changes in strategy don't have to solve them all. It is entirely reasonable to prioritize which problem(s) get more attention when there are more than one. That's what this is about, prioritization, and an implicit recognition that one size does not fit all.
  - GoblinSlayer 7y ago
    >If everyone moved to UTC you wouldn't solve any real problems. At least people will be less inclined to use local time for non-local schedule, and will be able to tell time unambiguously.
  - scrollaway 7y ago
    Your day "starting" at 00:00 sounds a lot easier to reason about than the day starting at 08:00. We did get used to the day starting at a weird time for no particular reason, and whenever you change jobs you'll get used to a slightly different time anyway. I don't see how it's more useful the way it is now than any other way. This is like trying to justify that moving summer holidays by one day would disrupt everyone's way of thinking.
- James_Henry 7y ago
  Honestly, this comment is spot on. I think people don't realize that the fact that we are so accustomed to the 8 or 9 am meaning the start of the school or work day is not good for public health. If we had UTC or some nation wide time like China there might be more thought about when to actually start things and where the sun is actually at. The article points out that western edges of time zones are hit harder by clock changes. Other research also shows that they are in general sleeping less on western edges because the sun goes down later and they still have to get up at the same time as eastern edges. Because of this, while all-year DST would be better than what we have, it is still worse for public health than all-year standard time which is maybe worse than UTC (as people will start thinking more about the sun and maybe in 30 minute chunks instead of hours).
munk-a 7y ago
I wouldn't be quite so fatalist - if there is a strong push for getting rid of seasonal time shifts then, if congress refuses this request, there will probably be a pretty big stink. Non-binding resolutions are non-binding... but they also represent the will of the people and politicians that gleefully ignore non-binding resolutions do so with a risk of failing to be re-elected.
Jedd 7y ago
Are you absolutely sure people aren't having a lend of you? Or that there's a translation problem -- that they're insisting that it 'creates' an hour of sunlight during the part of the day that's most useful for them? (Implicitly acknowledging they lose that at the other end.) If it's not these, then I weep. People's view of how the world (and moon) fits within the solar system must be severely broken.
- zenexer 7y ago
  The most intelligent person I know refused to believe me when I said that there would be fewer daylight hours in the winter when he visited me in the north. Of course, he was smart enough to research it on his own and come to the correct conclusion, but it was an entirely foreign concept to him. That being said, I also know plenty of people who understand the concept perfectly, but also insist they will "gain" an hour of sunlight in their day if we use DST year-round. Why? Because they're right! Where I live, in the winter, the sun rises before many people wake up, but sets in the early afternoon. Keep DST year-round, and you experience an extra hour of sunlight--even if you're not technically gaining it. One could argue that we should simply be waking up earlier and going to bed earlier, but that's a hard pattern to follow when nothing is open early in the morning.
  - mikekchar 7y ago
    I've actually adopted the Japanese Buddhist clock. There are 12 hours: 6 during daylight hours and 6 during night time hours. The actual time of each hour depends on the season and the latitude. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_clock#The_traditional_Japanese_time_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_clock#The_traditional... I really like it. There is actually an Android app on Fdroid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aragaer.jtt/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aragaer.jtt/ although it unfortunately doesn't have alarms -- I really need to get off my butt and contribute that feature. I set my alarm so that I get up in time to go for a walk at sunrise.
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  unfortunately, I'm sure. Really dumb things like the Earth is flat are catching on and one member of my extended social circle is absolutely sure that the Earth is bigger than the Sun. She's a holistic healer but has a psychology degree from a flagship state university. These are people who don't build facts from bottom up but rather support their version of facts based on intuition and desire. Though we all do this to a degree, some will change if confronted with solid evidence but many simply will forever stick with what they feel is true, including that changing the clocks creates an additional hour of sunlight. Even pointing out that it is not as light when they get up Sunday morning after the clock change as it was at the same time the day before, they don't care because they know in the summer it is bright at that time in the morning. The tilt of the Earth on its axis is as fantasy to them as the flat Earth is to the rest of us.
ArlenBales 7y ago
DST doesn't create more sunlight, but it absolutely creates more opportunities to get sunlight, allowing more time to enjoy outside activities after work. e.g. physical exercise. I commute to work everyday on my bicycle through a large city park, all year long, rain or shine, night or day. It's about 3.5 miles one way. I've been doing this for roughly 5 years. I personally look forward to DST just for warmer commute home and not having to night ride with bike lights. It's astonishing the difference in outside activity I've seen when DST is observed or not. When DST is not observed, outside activity in the park on my commute effectively evaporates at 5PM except for headlamp runners (which, curiously, are mostly groups of older folks). When DST is observed, outside activity flourishes well until 8PM. I have not observed any difference in morning outside activity on my commutes with or without DST. I think people are just more likely to do outside activities in the evening as opposed to the morning, most likely because mornings are colder (far colder in the winter), and on weekdays most start work in the morning and/or have to drop their kids off at school, leaving little time in the morning for outdoor activities.
- GoblinSlayer 7y ago
  To get more time in the morning I wake up earlier.
- lutorm 7y ago
  Are you saying you see this difference between the week before and the week after the DST transition? Because obviously there will be more activity outside in the evening in general when DST is observed, because that is in the summer. That would be the case even if there was no DST transition.
tzs 7y ago
> Georgia is putting DST on the ballot this November. Voters will have a choice to stay with DST, going to standard time year around, or asking Congress for permission to stay on DST year around. At least Georgia is far enough south that year around DST might not have any serious negatives. There are people trying to do that here in Washington which is far enough north that it has serious negatives. Year around DST would put sunrise in the middle of winter at nearly 9 AM at Seattle's latitude, putting nearly everyone's morning commute deep in the dark. Without DST in the winter, of course, the commute home is in the dark, but I'd argue that this is better for three reasons. 1. Evening dark is generally warmer than morning dark. There is less chance of ice on the roads. It will have been melted by sun or rain during the day, and won't reform until it gets cold again in the early morning. 2. The evening commute tends to be more spread out than the morning commute. Putting the morning commute in the dark combines the worst conditions with the highest density. Putting the evening commute in the dark instead combines the worst lighting with lower density so is probably safer. 3. The morning commute overlaps with children going to school. The evening commute is mostly after children are home. Sunrise at 9 AM is also bad for our sleep cycles. Our cycles sync to sunrise. The earlier we have to get up relative to sunrise the less healthy it is. (This could be fixed under year round DST by having businesses open/close later in winter, so our commutes happen later, but then we are essentially where we are now except we do it by changing schedules twice a year instead of changing clocks). Furthermore, in the middle of winter here DST would not really actually get you much, if any, extra usable daylight after work. By the time you get home and have dinner, it is still going to be getting dark. Feb 1 sunset this year was at 5:10 PM, for example. Year around DST would make that 6:10 PM.
axaxs 7y ago
They literally can't stay on DST. Florida already basically passed this, but it's held up in Congress as is tradition. Check out the Sunshine Protection Act. So, right now states can't stay on DST because federal law doesn't currently allow it. It does however allow permanent standard time, and petitioning for change of time zone. So, I wish Georgia, Florida, et al would just give Congress a big middle finger by switching to permanent Atlantic Standard Time. Maybe then they'd realize how silly this all is.
- nulbyte 7y ago
  > So, I wish Georgia, Florida, et al would just give Congress a big middle finger by switching to permanent Atlantic Standard Time. Maybe then they'd realize how silly this all is. States can't unilaterally adopt a different time zone. The boundaries are regulated by the feds.
  - GoblinSlayer 7y ago
    Then they can shift work hours :) who cares what numbers clock shows.
  - axaxs 7y ago
    Correct, but they can actually petition the feds to change their time zone. Whether or not that is likely, I don't know. It seems like something that would be very rare.
    - nulbyte 7y ago
      They can, yes, but not much of a middle finger.
ComputerGuru 7y ago
Illinois already passed a bill to do the same just this year, but I don’t know what the deal is with Congress. I think only Arizona currently has permission.

mjevans 7y ago

Vote for no more adjustments, I don't care if that's UTC, nation wide 'Eastern', DST or not DST... just leave things the same all year. I've got a slight preference for everyone going UTC with no DST so that meetings and events are easier to schedule across the world. UTC would be great if it weren't for how everyone wants to think of E.G. 8AM or 9AM or whatever as a common start time and then uses DST to try and adjust the clocks rather than the times people do things. The current time isn't particularly useful either, noon isn't even directly tied to the solar apex in most places (due to the timezones and more complex orbit / tilt interactions).

blackguardx 7y ago
They already do this in China. They have one time zone, but people in Western China don't actually shift their schedules. That means that a 9:00 AM start time for work is actually more like 6:00 AM Solar Time. All of China's timezone is keyed to Beijing time.
- James_Henry 7y ago
  Do they really not change their schedules? and how much of that is similar to the fact that someone on the west coast may need to operate on east coast time due to financial markets, customers, etc?
samatman 7y ago
Right now, if I want to schedule a meeting with London, I have two steps: figure out a good time for me, check if it's reasonable in London, adjust if necessary. If London was in the same time zone, I'd have to ascertain, somehow, what 0800 actually means in terms of the workday, and multiply that across every time zone I have to confer with (and there are a lot). No thanks. I like knowing that 5 pm means more-or-less the same thing everywhere except Western China, which happily enough doesn't really come up in my day-to-day life.
- James_Henry 7y ago
  You have to look it up either way, so I don't really understand why it would really be too much harder. For an example, if you are on the west coast you'd learn that 17 to 2 are good hours for you. Suppose on the day in question you know that 1 is the best time for you. Then you'd look at London and note that 9 to 18 are probably good for them. So you'll have to adjust. I don't see what new steps are introduced. You are right that it is nice to now what 5 pm means pretty much everywhere but Western China, but that same sentiment can be expressed by saying early evening everywhere including Western China.
  - naniwaduni 7y ago
    > I don't see what new steps are introduced. Even in the best case, you don't really manage simplify anything, you apply the same offsets, except now everyone on the west coast wakes up on one weekday and goes to sleep on the next, not just the ones who get to bed after midnight. The change happens right at the end of the business day, rather than outside business hours. Every day.
    - samatman 7y ago
      "Cool what are you doing Tuesday night?" "Uh do you mean... calendar Tuesday, or uh Tuesday Tuesday?" Repeated over half of the globe, forever. I do a lot of remote meetings with people all over the globe, I work for a remote company, and I do. not. want. this.
dmckeon 7y ago
If a country does any no-adjustment approach nationwide, people may want a single common day of the month to do daylight sensitive schedule adjustments, such as outdoor sports practices. I propose overnight on the first Sunday of a month. For example, the week before, in spring (Northern hemisphere) soccer (or whatever activity) practice is at 16:00, the week after at 16:30 or 17:00 or whatever. In fall, the reverse, but the schedules all change on the same day. (Outliers will happen - this is a 90:10 suggestion, not 100:0.) Think of all the families with 2 or 3 kids who have 2, 3, or 4 different activities each week, all at different times. Do we really want their schedules to potentially change in every week of the month? Yes, super-soccer mom or dad could cope, but why not try to keep it simpler?
ska 7y ago
> UTC would be great if it weren't for how everyone wants to think of E.G. 8AM or 9AM or whatever as a common start time You mean people want to think about hours in a way that is useful to them where they live? Doesn't sound crazy. If everyone moved to UTC you wouldn't solve any real problems. Sure, everyone in New York could get used to their day starting at noon or whatever (to what benefit?) but if you wanted to schedule a meeting with someone in spain (or california) you would still have to figure out the time change to make it a reasonable time for you both. Any way you slice it, you're just pushing the problem around to different places.
- James_Henry 7y ago
  Everyone moving to UTC could make people start thinking about what time is actually appropriate to start the day instead of defaulting to 8 or 9 am. A lot of people might not want to think about that, but it could end up quite a bit better for public health.
- nulbyte 7y ago
  > Any way you slice it, you're just pushing the problem around to different places. There isn't a problem. There are many problems. Changes in strategy don't have to solve them all. It is entirely reasonable to prioritize which problem(s) get more attention when there are more than one. That's what this is about, prioritization, and an implicit recognition that one size does not fit all.
- GoblinSlayer 7y ago
  >If everyone moved to UTC you wouldn't solve any real problems. At least people will be less inclined to use local time for non-local schedule, and will be able to tell time unambiguously.
- scrollaway 7y ago
  Your day "starting" at 00:00 sounds a lot easier to reason about than the day starting at 08:00. We did get used to the day starting at a weird time for no particular reason, and whenever you change jobs you'll get used to a slightly different time anyway. I don't see how it's more useful the way it is now than any other way. This is like trying to justify that moving summer holidays by one day would disrupt everyone's way of thinking.
James_Henry 7y ago
Honestly, this comment is spot on. I think people don't realize that the fact that we are so accustomed to the 8 or 9 am meaning the start of the school or work day is not good for public health. If we had UTC or some nation wide time like China there might be more thought about when to actually start things and where the sun is actually at. The article points out that western edges of time zones are hit harder by clock changes. Other research also shows that they are in general sleeping less on western edges because the sun goes down later and they still have to get up at the same time as eastern edges. Because of this, while all-year DST would be better than what we have, it is still worse for public health than all-year standard time which is maybe worse than UTC (as people will start thinking more about the sun and maybe in 30 minute chunks instead of hours).

munk-a 7y ago

I wouldn't be quite so fatalist - if there is a strong push for getting rid of seasonal time shifts then, if congress refuses this request, there will probably be a pretty big stink. Non-binding resolutions are non-binding... but they also represent the will of the people and politicians that gleefully ignore non-binding resolutions do so with a risk of failing to be re-elected.

Jedd 7y ago

Are you absolutely sure people aren't having a lend of you? Or that there's a translation problem -- that they're insisting that it 'creates' an hour of sunlight during the part of the day that's most useful for them? (Implicitly acknowledging they lose that at the other end.) If it's not these, then I weep. People's view of how the world (and moon) fits within the solar system must be severely broken.

zenexer 7y ago
The most intelligent person I know refused to believe me when I said that there would be fewer daylight hours in the winter when he visited me in the north. Of course, he was smart enough to research it on his own and come to the correct conclusion, but it was an entirely foreign concept to him. That being said, I also know plenty of people who understand the concept perfectly, but also insist they will "gain" an hour of sunlight in their day if we use DST year-round. Why? Because they're right! Where I live, in the winter, the sun rises before many people wake up, but sets in the early afternoon. Keep DST year-round, and you experience an extra hour of sunlight--even if you're not technically gaining it. One could argue that we should simply be waking up earlier and going to bed earlier, but that's a hard pattern to follow when nothing is open early in the morning.
- mikekchar 7y ago
  I've actually adopted the Japanese Buddhist clock. There are 12 hours: 6 during daylight hours and 6 during night time hours. The actual time of each hour depends on the season and the latitude. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_clock#The_traditional_Japanese_time_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_clock#The_traditional... I really like it. There is actually an Android app on Fdroid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aragaer.jtt/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aragaer.jtt/ although it unfortunately doesn't have alarms -- I really need to get off my butt and contribute that feature. I set my alarm so that I get up in time to go for a walk at sunrise.
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
unfortunately, I'm sure. Really dumb things like the Earth is flat are catching on and one member of my extended social circle is absolutely sure that the Earth is bigger than the Sun. She's a holistic healer but has a psychology degree from a flagship state university. These are people who don't build facts from bottom up but rather support their version of facts based on intuition and desire. Though we all do this to a degree, some will change if confronted with solid evidence but many simply will forever stick with what they feel is true, including that changing the clocks creates an additional hour of sunlight. Even pointing out that it is not as light when they get up Sunday morning after the clock change as it was at the same time the day before, they don't care because they know in the summer it is bright at that time in the morning. The tilt of the Earth on its axis is as fantasy to them as the flat Earth is to the rest of us.

ArlenBales 7y ago

DST doesn't create more sunlight, but it absolutely creates more opportunities to get sunlight, allowing more time to enjoy outside activities after work. e.g. physical exercise. I commute to work everyday on my bicycle through a large city park, all year long, rain or shine, night or day. It's about 3.5 miles one way. I've been doing this for roughly 5 years. I personally look forward to DST just for warmer commute home and not having to night ride with bike lights. It's astonishing the difference in outside activity I've seen when DST is observed or not. When DST is not observed, outside activity in the park on my commute effectively evaporates at 5PM except for headlamp runners (which, curiously, are mostly groups of older folks). When DST is observed, outside activity flourishes well until 8PM. I have not observed any difference in morning outside activity on my commutes with or without DST. I think people are just more likely to do outside activities in the evening as opposed to the morning, most likely because mornings are colder (far colder in the winter), and on weekdays most start work in the morning and/or have to drop their kids off at school, leaving little time in the morning for outdoor activities.

GoblinSlayer 7y ago
To get more time in the morning I wake up earlier.
lutorm 7y ago
Are you saying you see this difference between the week before and the week after the DST transition? Because obviously there will be more activity outside in the evening in general when DST is observed, because that is in the summer. That would be the case even if there was no DST transition.

tzs 7y ago

> Georgia is putting DST on the ballot this November. Voters will have a choice to stay with DST, going to standard time year around, or asking Congress for permission to stay on DST year around. At least Georgia is far enough south that year around DST might not have any serious negatives. There are people trying to do that here in Washington which is far enough north that it has serious negatives. Year around DST would put sunrise in the middle of winter at nearly 9 AM at Seattle's latitude, putting nearly everyone's morning commute deep in the dark. Without DST in the winter, of course, the commute home is in the dark, but I'd argue that this is better for three reasons. 1. Evening dark is generally warmer than morning dark. There is less chance of ice on the roads. It will have been melted by sun or rain during the day, and won't reform until it gets cold again in the early morning. 2. The evening commute tends to be more spread out than the morning commute. Putting the morning commute in the dark combines the worst conditions with the highest density. Putting the evening commute in the dark instead combines the worst lighting with lower density so is probably safer. 3. The morning commute overlaps with children going to school. The evening commute is mostly after children are home. Sunrise at 9 AM is also bad for our sleep cycles. Our cycles sync to sunrise. The earlier we have to get up relative to sunrise the less healthy it is. (This could be fixed under year round DST by having businesses open/close later in winter, so our commutes happen later, but then we are essentially where we are now except we do it by changing schedules twice a year instead of changing clocks). Furthermore, in the middle of winter here DST would not really actually get you much, if any, extra usable daylight after work. By the time you get home and have dinner, it is still going to be getting dark. Feb 1 sunset this year was at 5:10 PM, for example. Year around DST would make that 6:10 PM.

axaxs 7y ago

They literally can't stay on DST. Florida already basically passed this, but it's held up in Congress as is tradition. Check out the Sunshine Protection Act. So, right now states can't stay on DST because federal law doesn't currently allow it. It does however allow permanent standard time, and petitioning for change of time zone. So, I wish Georgia, Florida, et al would just give Congress a big middle finger by switching to permanent Atlantic Standard Time. Maybe then they'd realize how silly this all is.

nulbyte 7y ago
> So, I wish Georgia, Florida, et al would just give Congress a big middle finger by switching to permanent Atlantic Standard Time. Maybe then they'd realize how silly this all is. States can't unilaterally adopt a different time zone. The boundaries are regulated by the feds.
- GoblinSlayer 7y ago
  Then they can shift work hours :) who cares what numbers clock shows.
- axaxs 7y ago
  Correct, but they can actually petition the feds to change their time zone. Whether or not that is likely, I don't know. It seems like something that would be very rare.
  - nulbyte 7y ago
    They can, yes, but not much of a middle finger.

ComputerGuru 7y ago

Illinois already passed a bill to do the same just this year, but I don’t know what the deal is with Congress. I think only Arizona currently has permission.