Spring Forward on Sunday morning ...

[MN-Skeptic]

Winter sucks in Minnesota and having the sun set at 4:31pm just makes it worse. I personally don't care if the sunrise moves from 7:33am to 8:33am in December. I'm a strong proponent of keeping DST all year round up here.

Part of the issue is the length of days. In Minneapolis, our shortest days are about 8 hours 45 minutes. Compare that to Dallas whose shortest day is about 10 hours. Their earliest winter sunset in standard time is 5:31pm. An hour later than Minneapolis.

[Gene Kooper]

We tried this once before in 1974. That experiment was short-lived largely because of safety concerns. By that I mean the dangers of school kids waiting for their bus in the dark.

My preference is to eliminate DST. If you want to see the Sun for an hour more each day get up an hour earlier.

ETA: Ninjaed by Estiveo.

[realist]

Is stupid. I remember when we did that in the 70s. Getting to school in the dark was not fun.

If they want to do year round standard time, fine.

[Lani]

WASHINGTON — After losing an hour of sleep over the weekend, members of the United States Senate returned to the Capitol this week a bit groggy and in a mood to put an end to all this frustrating clock-changing.

So on Tuesday, with almost no warning and no debate, the Senate unanimously passed legislation to do away with the biannual springing forward and falling back that most Americans have come to despise, in favor of making daylight saving time permanent. The bill’s fate in the House was not immediately clear, but if the legislation were to pass there and be signed by President Biden, it would take effect in November 2023.

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, rose on the Senate floor on Tuesday to speak in favor of his bill, called the Sunshine Protection Act, which would end the practice of turning clocks back one hour to standard time every November, making daylight saving time, which currently begins in March, last throughout the year.

“One has to ask themselves after a while: Why do we keep doing it?” Mr. Rubio said, adding, “The majority of the American people’s preference is just to stop the back-and-forth changing.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/15/us/p ... 48368741aa

[raison de arizona]

Is stupid. I remember when we did that in the 70s. Getting to school in the dark was not fun.

If they want to do year round standard time, fine.

We’re on permanent standard time in AZ, so I would agree. The wife, who works on Eastern time, had her 7:30am meetings changed to 6:30am ones. Needless to say, she would agree also.

[MN-Skeptic]

We tried this once before in 1974. That experiment was short-lived largely because of safety concerns. By that I mean the dangers of school kids waiting for their bus in the dark.

Start school an hour later.

[AndyinPA]

We tried this once before in 1974. That experiment was short-lived largely because of safety concerns. By that I mean the dangers of school kids waiting for their bus in the dark.

Start school an hour later.

That would be a win-win for kids, parents, and teachers.

[Phoenix520]

A couple of years ago our state passed a bill saying middle schools can’t start earlier than 8 and high schools no earlier than 8:30. Zero periods are excluded. The deadline to implement is July 2022.

[pipistrelle]

We tried this once before in 1974. That experiment was short-lived largely because of safety concerns. By that I mean the dangers of school kids waiting for their bus in the dark.

Start school an hour later.

I do NOT want standard time year round. It’s not practical here.

[Estiveo]

Make the 42nd parallel the dividing line. North gets DST year round, South gets Standard Time.

Or, hear me out, we just leave it as is and let each state decide what they wanna do with it.

[Reality Check]

Make the 42nd parallel the dividing line. North gets DST year round, South gets Standard Time.

Or, hear me out, we just leave it as is and let each state decide what they wanna do with it.

The former idea has some merit. The latter would lead to chaos.

[Estiveo]

Make the 42nd parallel the dividing line. North gets DST year round, South gets Standard Time.

Or, hear me out, we just leave it as is and let each state decide what they wanna do with it.

The former idea has some merit. The latter would lead to chaos.

I'm hoping for California to spring forward an hour on the 15th every month from February thru July, then back an hour on the 3rd Tuesday of every month from August thru January, but reset to GMT -8 on the day before Thanksgiving every third year. Just, y'know, to piss everyone off.

[bob]

Washingtonian: The US Tried Permanent Daylight Saving Time in the ’70s. People Hated It:

The sun rose at 8:27 AM on January 7, 1974. Children in the Washington area had left for school in the dark that morning, thanks to a new national experiment during a wrenching energy crisis: most of the US went to year-round daylight saving time beginning on January 6. “It was jet black” outside when her daughter was supposed to leave for school, Florence Bauer of Springfield told the Washington Post. “Some of the children took flashlights with them.”

The change would benefit Americans in the long run, predicted Steve Grossman of the Department of Transportation. Yes, accidents in the morning darkness may become more common, he said, but longer daylight hours could mean eliminating the hazards of evening commutes: “stress, anxiety, and many drivers have had a couple of drinks,” as he told the Post. Outside the capital, others vowed defiance: Robert Yost, the mayor of St. Francis, Kansas said his town’s council “felt it was time to put our foot down and stop this monkey business.”

* * *

And yet the early-morning darkness quickly proved dangerous for children: A 6-year-old Alexandria girl was struck by a car on her way to Polk Elementary School on January 7; the accident broke her leg. Two Prince George’s County students were hurt in February. In the weeks after the change, eight Florida kids were killed in traffic accidents. Florida’s governor, Reubin Askew, asked for Congress to repeal the measure. “It’s time to recognize that we may well have made a mistake,” US Senator Dick Clark of Iowa said during a speech in Congress on January 28, 1974. In the Washington area, some schools delayed their start times until the sun caught up with the clock.

The factual picture was a bit more complicated. The National Safety Council reported in February that pre-sunrise fatalities had risen to 20 from 18 the year before. In July, Roger Sant, then an assistant administrator-designate for the Federal Energy Administration, wrote a letter to the Post that noted a 1 percent energy saving achieved by going to DST equated to 20,000-30,000 tons of coal not being burned each day. Further, he wrote, accidents had fallen in the afternoons.

By August, though, as the Watergate scandal caused the Nixon administration to crumble, the country was ready to move on from its clock experiments. While 79 percent of Americans approved of the change in December 1973, approval had dropped to 42 percent three months later, the New York Times reported. Seven days after President Nixon resigned, US Senator Bob Dole of Kansas introduced an amendment in August that would end the DST experiment. It passed. A similar bill passed the House. In late September, the full Congress passed a bill that would restore standard time on October 27. President Ford signed it on October 5. Energy savings, a House panel noted, “must be balanced against a majority of the public’s distaste for the observance of Daylight Saving Time.”

[W. Kevin Vicklund]

No wonder everyone hated the change. They did it at the worst possible time.

[AndyinPA]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/ ... se-sunset/

On Tuesday, the Senate unanimously passed a bill that would keep daylight saving time year-round — giving the nation later sunrises but more evening sunlight during the darkest months of the year. But despite growing support for abolishing semiannual clock changes and making our winter evenings brighter, permanent daylight saving time probably would benefit some parts of the country more than others.

All states except for Arizona and Hawaii observe daylight saving time, with the clocks “springing forward” in early March and “falling back” in early November. If the Senate bill is approved by the House and signed by President Biden, we would set the clocks ahead in March 2023 and then keep them there permanently.

While millions of Americans would no longer complain about switching the clocks — and no doubt many would enjoy more evening daylight in the winter — permanent daylight saving time might end up being a dark wake-up call during the winter months, especially in some parts of the country where the sun already tends to rise late.

No matter where you live in the United States, year-round daylight saving time means the sun would rise and set an hour later than we’re used to from November to March. With daylight shifted toward the evening, most of the nation would see sunset after 5 p.m. around the winter solstice in December. D.C., for example, would see its earliest sunset at 5:45 p.m. (instead of 4:45 p.m.), and the latest sunrise would shift to 8:27 a.m. (from 7:27 a.m.) in early January, according to timeanddate.com.

I remember when the period of DST was shorter. I think it went from late April to sometime in September. I never minded that as much as this March-to-November change.

[Reality Check]

Could someone show me exactly how many minutes of daylight that daylight saving time saves?

The passage of the year round DST is an admission that it does not work and ignores the history of how we came to have standard time in the first place.

[W. Kevin Vicklund]

I remember when the period of DST was shorter. I think it went from late April to sometime in September. I never minded that as much as this March-to-November change.

Yes, Bush the Lesser made the change. It was announced a few months after I installed a data acquisition device. I had to go back and manually reprogram every start and end date for DST for the next 15 years.

[raison de arizona]

I remember when the period of DST was shorter. I think it went from late April to sometime in September. I never minded that as much as this March-to-November change.

Yes, Bush the Lesser made the change. It was announced a few months after I installed a data acquisition device. I had to go back and manually reprogram every start and end date for DST for the next 15 years.

Messed up my car forever. Well, at least until I sold it. The dealer could reprogram it, but they wanted hundreds so I just did it manually, cursing Bush every time.

[sad-cafe]

A couple of years ago our state passed a bill saying middle schools can’t start earlier than 8 and high schools no earlier than 8:30. Zero periods are excluded. The deadline to implement is July 2022.

The MS I teach starts at 6:50

but we get out at 2:10

[AndyinPA]

I think my granddaughter starts school at 7:15 AM, which is ridiculously early. She gets up at 5:30. She was originally getting up at 5 AM so that she could wash her hair in the morning and have time for her thick hair to dry, but gave that up after a few months in favor of washing it the night before. My granddaughter is in middle school. My grandson, who has been waking up at 4:30-5 AM because his other grandma does, doesn't start school until 9 AM. They are living in the same household, and are affected by the time change differently. And, at 8 and 12, they both hate it when the time changes.

[MN-Skeptic]

What a great map!

[raison de arizona]

I'd prefer AZ to be shaded with MST as we want no part of this Daylight Saving nefarious plot.

[RTH10260]

Europe is now also on Summer Time

[tek]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness ... h-effects/

Sleep experts widely agree with the Senate that the country should abandon its twice-yearly seasonal time changes. But they disagree on one key point: which time system should be permanent. Unlike the Senate, many sleep experts believe the country should adopt year-round standard time.

[Foggy]

Why don't we just fix the axial tilt of the planet?

I mean, if Q could change the coefficient of gravity for the whole Universe ...

Didja see that one?