All I can say in response to this post from Paul Campos is that I had to be outside at 6:15 today, and it was still dark so I had to turn on the light on my bike. Also when I was a kid they had daylight time all year round one year and we had to walk to school in the dark.
Also, it’s annoying when you’re setting up a meeting in May or whatever and someone says it’s gonna be 10am EST and I have to either be Mister Picky and say, “Do you mean EDT?” or else just hope they didn’t schedule it as EST on their calendar somehow.
Really, though, if daylight is so damn wonderful, why not just leave the sun on all day long. Sure, it wastes some energy having it burning all through the night, but from an economic perspective the increased productivity will more than compensate for whatever small fraction of GDP is eaten up by global warming.
If the Earth was tidally locked to the sun (had a day side and night side), the average temperature would actually decrease due to Holder’s inequality. More uniform illumination -> higher average. Of course in that case perhaps something else would change to more evenly distribute the energy like the high CO2, thick atmosphere of Venus.
Shouldn’t your bike route be re-engineered to maximize or even create phantom congestion, so as to minimize your risk of accidents?
Rsm:
Good point! It might put me at risk, but I have to think of the greater good.
Pull a cart behind you with 100+ phones in it. Google will route all other traffic away from the congestion.
https://www.google.com/search?q=100+phones+in+a+wagon
Robin:
No, that’s the opposite of congestion! The phones will deter cars from coming onto the street, but then the few that do come, will drive fast and run me over.
What if I drive carefully, enjoyed the empty roads during lockdown, and last experienced an accident in congested traffic (rear-ended by a mobile plumber van in 2019 or so)? Should the greater good prevent me from driving in uncongested areas, when I am not your target? Actually, is my experience of having no accidents during the last two years really pretty common?
At what point does the greater good (proved by a just-so story) get to ban me from innocent, nonviolent pursuit of happiness?
Rsm:
I have no idea what you’re talking about but it really seems that you’re here to pick fights, and if so I really really recommend you switch to twitter, as that’s a much better platform for that. There you can find thousands of people who will be happy to argue with you.
Why do I feel like Socrates being told to get lost by yet another sophist?
Would Diogenes the Cynic empathize with my continuing quest to find a true human (though not on twitter, which has long since banned me)?
Maybe just say what you mean instead of throwing jabs from behind rhetorical leading questions all the time. When was the last time you wrote something that wasn’t a rhetorical question? That is an actual question, by the way, in case you forgot what those are—I do not have the answer and am seeking information.
Comparing yourself to Socrates is illuminating. Nobody appointed you teacher, and everybody else has learned to read and write—get with the times, old man.
Marco Rubio has been trying to get a “permanent DST” bill passed for a few years. It was most recently introduced in March 2021 with bipartisan sponsorship in the Senate (Wikipedia).
Looks like it got through the Senate and now goes to the president for his signature.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/15/politics/senate-daylight-saving-time-permanent/index.html
You joke but Newt Gingrich wanted to use space mirrors to destroy the night.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2011/dec/12/david-brooks/david-brooks-says-newt-gingrich-once-proposed-putt/
I don’t mind getting up an hour later but I hate getting up an hour earlier. Here’s my solution.
Alternative Daylight Saving Time: Twice a month we set the clocks back an hour. At the end of the year, we’re back where we started.
I acknowledge there may be some downsides, but I’m willing to make the sacrifice.
Go to work for NASA on a Mars mission. A day on Mars is ~40 minutes longer than an Earth day. So you’ll slowly go in and out of sync with Earth days.
We need to admit that there’s a downside to Daylight Saving Time.
When DST was hot in the news back in the 1950s and 1960s, the major arguments had to do with the fading of the drapes and the milking of the cows. In Wisconsin, somehow discussion included yellow being God’s color for butter and hence, margarine was not allowed to be colored yellow.
I was once told that the Romans had an elegant solution. Sunrise to sunset was always 12 hours. Just say that sunrise is always 6AM and sundown is always 6PM. Live accordingly!
A quick Google search suggests that daylight hours in Rome vary from ~9 in the winter to ~15 in the summer. So not sure how this would work. https://www.statista.com/statistics/733780/daily-sun-hours-in-rome-in-italy/
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Ancient_Roman_time_keeping_hora_vigilia_duration.gif
Yes, and in Copenhagen it’s from 7 to 17 hours of daylight. The working day (let’s say 9 to 5) is usually 8 hours. Let’s say 2/3s of the day. So in December I’d be putting in 4.5 hour workdays. But in June it’d be 11.5 hours. Something like that.