Afternoon Inquisition

AI: Spring this, daylight!

Tonight most of us in the US will be springing our clocks ahead for Daylight Saving Time.

This year I plan on being really good. I have my investment strategies in place. I know where and when I’m going to spend my sunlight. I’m going to get my daylight in order and by next year, I’ll have good enough daylight credit to buy a daylight house. In fact, by fall, I should have enough saved up that it will never be dark in my house!

How much daylight do you plan on saving this summer? If you don’t save daylight, why not? Is DST worth the loss of a weekend hour?

The Afternoon Inquisition (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Skepchick community. Look for it to appear Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 3pm ET.

Elyse

Elyse MoFo Anders is the bad ass behind forming the Women Thinking, inc and the superhero who launched the Hug Me! I'm Vaccinated campaign as well as podcaster emeritus, writer, slacktivist extraordinaire, cancer survivor and sometimes runs marathons for charity. You probably think she's awesome so you follow her on twitter.

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32 Comments

  1. Daylight savings time is utterly silly. Any business, school, or individual can start and end their day whenever they feel like it without government-mandated clock fiddling.

  2. Being a daylight time addict for many years, I will squander every minute of saved daylight during every minute. It is a good thing that I cannot borrow daylight time ahead of time, otherwise some guy named Vito or Tiempo would visit and break my legs.

  3. Daylight savings time is bull BUT Maine is in the wrong time zone so it helps here. We should be Atlantic time like New Brunswick, Canada, not Eastern time. In a perfect world we’d drop DST and change time zones.

    Sadly, while people can start and end their day when they want the government sets certain times for their day and businesses go along with it. In the winter when it;s standard time, it doesn’t get light out until after 7am which I think is a serious safety issues for kids waiting for school buses.

  4. Most of Arizona doesn’t observe DST (the exception is on the Navajo reservation, and yes that can get messy). I can’t express how much I enjoy NOT observing it. It really is time to end the practice.

  5. I like the saying : It’s like cutting 2 inches off one side of a blanket and then sewing it on the other side to make it longer.

  6. In Tucson we have a surplus of daylight, so we don’t need to save it. I’d be willing to ship some to anyone who needs it.

    The one thing I don’t like about not observing DST is that I can’t ever remember what time zone is how many hours ahead or behind us, or when it starts (that really messed me up when I went to Oregon for school). For the most part I’m very glad we don’t observe it.

  7. @davew:

    But it does kind of help to have everyone agree that right now is X:00, no?

    Really, though, it’s not government mandated. It’s government highly suggested as to help you not look like as ass. As a private citizen you can run on whatever time you want.

    Officially, right now, it’s 4:34 PM CST. But I can call it 17:93 if I want to.

  8. Elyse, I have tried saving daylight before but for the life of me I can’t figure out how to keep it in the damn jar…keeps leakin out…

  9. I can never get caught up enough for any kind of daylight saving. I’m going to be dependent on the Daylight Security Administration for my daylight retirement, unless the Republicans get their way eventually and I’m forced into some kind of personal daylight account. Maybe if I’m lucky with a job one day, I can get a small daylight 401k by that time. I just write it off as another drawback of living in a right-to-shine state.

  10. @Elyse: But it does kind of help to have everyone agree that right now is X:00, no?

    That’s the theory, but it has never helped me. Of course I’m a guy who never sets an alarm or wears a watch. Most jobs I have had could care less when we arrive just so long as the work gets done.

    People talk about making their own daylight and I thoroughly agree. If I have a lot of outside stuff to do I try to start my day early.

  11. @davew:

    Hey, if it works for you, that’s great. But most people can’t walk into work 4 hours late and say they don’t subscribe to government mandated time constraints. They will be fired. And they won’t get nice references either.

    And the government doesn’t tell you that you have to get up at 7am no matter what. They just say, “Right now, it’s 7am.”

    I don’t understand why we change the clocks, though. I think DST should be plain old standard time and leave it at that. Dark at 4pm in winter is depressing!

  12. I think that people who jam about how daylight saving is useless are usually not very clever people, who thinks that America is the only place on earth.

    I live in Norway and daylight saving is quite important here. Days are VERY short during the mid of winter, so adjusting our days so that the little daylight that we get during a day actually fits our everyday lives is very pleasant.

    But I guess that’s stupid. We should have our kids walk to school while it’s pitch dark. After all, the bright people in the US don’t see any reason as to why they should have to adjust their clocks.

  13. Love the extra hour of sunlight in the evenings. I have an outdoor kitchen and really enjoy cooking and eating outside weather permitting. More golf time isn’t bad either.

  14. What kills me about DST is that some jackass in Congress decided to push it back further in the fall, specifically so that it will be brighter during more of Halloween, so kids will be “safer” during the normal candy begging hours. It royally screws with our yearly “scare the bejeezus out of the trick-or-treaters” extravaganza; things just aren’t as spooky at dusk as they are in the dark of night.

  15. @Ranson: If I remember an episode of Skeptoid correctly, the candy industry was heavily supportive of pushing back DST in North America.

    It seems particularly strange having DST here in the UK, given how far north we are. Even without DST in the summer sunset wouldn’t be until getting on for 9pm.

  16. As someone who loves biking, kayaking, etc after work, in the warm weather I LOVE DST.

  17. I thought they might just skip it this year, what with us having lost 1.26 microseconds already.

    I wish they’d leave the damned clocks alone. It was finally getting almost light by the time I got to work, and now I gotta start all over, again.

  18. Well, I grew up in Arizona (which doesn’t observe DST), so DST always seems unnatural to me. But living at about 42°N now, I do like having the sun up til 8:30 or so.

    But you gotta ask “what would Jebus do?” Well, obviously he would go on DST since he saves, right?

  19. In Norway DST is called “summertime”, which is kind of odd, since for most people it only has an effect here during spring and fall.

    But during that time, when daylight is a precious commodity, it does make sense to me.

  20. I’m with Trotter Jelly. I’m so far behind in my Daylight Savings that I’ll be in the dark for the rest of my life… ;-)

  21. For me, it seems to make more sense since I moved down to Virginia. I didn’t even change time zones, but here, it means being able to let my cat out earlier in the morning (I don’t let her out in the dark).

  22. I work long hours in a dark, light controlled environment so DST has no effect on me.

    It’s usually dark both when I arrive and leave.

    Only when I’m off work (vacations and weekends) or during my self imposed “outside time” (smoke breaks) do I see the sun. And I relish it so even though it hurts my eyes.

  23. I get to work pretty early, so I nearly boycotted daylight savings. Although I would have had that luxury because I get to set my own hours, as long as I’m there for ~8hrs/day.

    Regardless, the longer evening would come even if we didn’t do DST, we just make it happen suddenly with DST . I also don’t see the point in it being light until 10pm in the summer (at least not for Sun-Thurs nights).

    I vote we start DST at 3pm every Friday, and end it every Sunday night around 11pm. That way, we all get extra light in the evenings over the weekend, and extra sleep before starting back at work Monday. Although that is pretty Mon-Fri centered. meh

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