The Economist has a nice piece (shocker... but I guess by accident their team will write something good eventually...) on daylight savings time:
I've mentioned Nate Silver's long-read on the topic (#917616) at Silver Bulletin: "Save Daylight Savings Time"
It pretty much single-handedly convinced me that it's a good idea to keep DST.It pretty much single-handedly convinced me that it's a good idea to keep DST.
In The Economist piece this week we get some standard observations:
People sleep on average 19 minutes less when they're on a misaligned timezone... More sleep is good; less is bad. (for all manner of physical and psychological processes). And the twice-a-year shift causes spikes in many negative outcomes — depression, car accidents, suicide. (numbers cited were 6-24%). Admittedly, and unmentioned in the Economist piece, this is from a veeery low background daily rate so in the grand scheme of annual things, DST changes aren't killing/harming that many people.
Still, the benefits of more total sunlight are what convinced me that DST might be more helpful than harmful in the complete assessment.
Put differently: the more good you believe sunlight does for health and wellness, the less anti you gotta be DST, since what DST does in practice is give more sunlight to the people.
Also, "Chronobiologist" is a baaaadass title
There are ways to reduce some of these health problems. Eva Winnebeck, a chronobiologist at the University of Surrey, says that sitting outside in the morning (without sunglasses) can reset the biological clock. Avoiding the glare of screens late at night will also help, as will changing your home’s lighting to warmer hues in the evening to lessen the dampening effect of bright light on the production of melatonin.
Yes, madam. I comply!
We should live more in tune with nature, follow the seasons and the times. As a matter of moral imperative and better outcomes for people... but we don't, cuz we like clocking in at the office/factory a certain time, and pick up the kids before daycare close at a certain time, and the grocery stores run on clock time -- not sunlight time.
If so, then we might as well shift the clock around our lives too if the practical outcome is that we get more sunlight and more daylight.
Non-paywall:
https://archive.md/yfBTX
Then switch to DST and leave it, so there's no change twice a year.
Oh ... that's bad because in the winter some kids will die because they are crossing roads in the dark?
Then the schools can change the time that they open, seasonally. Problem solved. You're welcome.
It would be funny if this dumb government program were just accidentally helping people. The original purpose was helping industrialists save on kerosene, iirc.
Still, there are better solutions than having the state dictate what time it is.
does it really give more sunlight? I question. If no DST, where does the sunlight go? Is it not a constant?
it does, but we just sleep it away -- that's the idea
so instead of changing our clocks to match the sunlight, we should just move our schedules around sunlight
that would be way less confusing
no need to always start school at 7am, just make it earlier in the summer and later in the winter, but no, we have to change our clocks
like wtf humanity, it could be so easy lol
maybe this is dumb for some reason that I can't see right now but it looks like a trivial solution that I literally just came up
edit: just saw @cointastical had the same idea in #936317
yes; we should.
(the same time of "should" that's involved in "we shouldn't smoke", "we should exercise more", "we shouldn't eat sugar" etc etc)
I kind of like having more sunlight in the summer when it is beautiful out. So I vote to keep.
I'd be a fan of just a single earth time. I don't care which zone it is but UTC would make sense.
That'd be dope