Standard Time Vs Daylight Savings Time

[Boasun]

Early this morning the USA shifted to Standard time. That means that many people got woke up an hour early this morning because they didn't shift their clocks back and hour last night at bedtime.
To Me this daylight savings time is a political lie. But us ordinary people have to live with it because it isn't cool to slap the politicians silly. Wait!? Maybe it is?? Who knows?

Now how are the people in other countries dealing with this man made phenomena?

Hey!? You did shift your clocks back an hour right??

[Valiente]

Yes. I can't say I have a huge problem with the concept of standard time (conceived by a Scottish Canadian, by the way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandford_Fleming), nor with the logic of shifting to and from Daylight Savings Time, which has demonstrable benefits in safety and energy savings.

I can't say they haven't been bleating about it on the news for the better part of a week, either. My computers thought it was supposed to happen last week, but apparently we followed the American lead and deferred it a week.

Time itself is a man-made phenomena in the sense that it is only our perceptions, and is therefore largely arbitrary.

[Idiens]

I experienced both the European and Canadian clock shifts in aircraft over the Atlantic this year. I think it is an outmoded habit that survived from the pre-industrialisation of farming. But it gives our politicians a sense of power and keeps consultants in work - calculating the energy that would be saved or the accidents that might not occur, were "daylight saving" used or not.

[Freesail99]

I don't like it myself. As I've been up since 4 am no wait make that 3 am. I hope I stay awake long enough to watch the games, or should I say the game. Go Colts. But I understand the reason for the time change has to do with school kids at bus stops. If you noticed last week at 7 am it was still dark.

[CapnHand]

As alluded to by Val, daylight savings time gives significant savings in electrical power and highway safety as it shifts our activities into the period when natural light provides illumination.

Just as a btw, Sir Sandford Fleming was the inventor of Universal Standard Time which proposed 24 standard time zones at 15 degrees of longitude. William Willett is credited for inventing Daylight Savings Time.

[Idiens]

One set of consultants recently calculated that, as most traffic accidents occur during the evening rush hours, and not the morning ones, even during the periods when the mornings are dark, it might be safer to put the daylight at the end of the school day. The same guys calculated that as more energy is used in the evenings than in the mornings, there may be more savings by having lighter evenings.

[sailingdog]

Don't forget that the USA essentially unilaterally shifted when DST changes...supposedly to save some energy...which studies proved was really a crock of BS.

[Giulietta]

I personally don't give a damn....it does not bother me at all.

We were doing it when I was born, and will die doing it..

Now if It gave me one more hour of life / take one hour of life..I would make noise

[wind_magic]

I don't know. If it were my choice I wouldn't have daylight savings time. I do like one benefit of it and that is that children don't stand outside waiting for the bus in the dark, but that's the only worthwhile benefit. The downside of it is that it takes people out of the normal rhythm of things and is artificial. I don't think folks need more things to take them away from nature - in the city the only star you can usually see is Sol, few trees, etc, at least everyone should have the chance to actually experience the change of seasons in an authentic way. But I guess daylight savings time is easier than companies having policies to tell everyone to come to work at a different time during the summer.

Edit ... this just solved a mystery for me! Because of this thread I glanced at all of my clocks and my primary "wake me up" digital clock is wrong. And I thought, hey, that is weird, it was wrong last week and I fixed it and now it's wrong again. Duh! It must have done the time switch last week and I changed it back! And now I get to change it again! lol.

[Freesail99]

Wind magic, while I may not be a doctor and I don't play one on TV, you may want to back off the caffeine, lol