You probably know that this weekend marks the end of Daylight Saving Time (DST) in the US. While I despise the idea of losing an hour in the spring, I do appreciate the concept of sleeping in another hour in the fall.
Actually, I think the whole concept of DST is bogus. In fact, the concept of time zones makes no sense in the 21st century. Modern life is a 24/7 experience without the need to tie it to the “noon is when the sun is overhead” paradigm.
DST is obsolete.
My proposal is to take the best of DST, which is gaining an hour in the fall, and expanding it for maximum benefit. Therefore, we would never do the “spring forward” part of DST but always just slip an hour in the fall. I recognize that this will work great the first year but over time we’ll accumulate quite a bit of clock skew.
To keep this from being a problem, we’ll abandon local time all together and just rely on UTC (Coordinated Universal). Businesses, schools and government agencies would need to translate UTC to the needs of the local situation. Instead of starting work at 8:00 AM local time, enterprises in the US would start work at, say 14:00 UTC. It is a simple matter of doing the math and keeping things straight.
Then every year in the fall, we’d slip UTC by one hour to give us another hour of sleep. How can anyone object to that?
– 73, Bob K0NR
Bob, surely you jest. Changing social norms is difficult business. Ask any “social progressive” about that. Now I’d be fine with it personally, as a technogeek and in spite of my severe conservative bent. Wouldn’t cramp my style at all. But I’m betting most folks of a less technological slant and “set in their ways” would scream like a stuck pig, as we used to say down south. And hey, what about songs and old adages like, “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere?” Could be tricky, is all I’m saying.
But why stop with 24 hour UTC? Will that also not be considered passe’ and inelegant at some point? Why not move to a decade time scale to match our biological digits, much like the other measures of the physical world in the SI system? All we need do is establish 10 “hours” a day at 2.4 x current hour, or 144 current minutes in duration. But of course, we’d want 100 minutes per each of those 10 hours instead of 144, so we’ll make our new minutes 1.44 x the current minute, or about 86.4 current seconds long. And then to ensure 100 seconds per new minute, we’ll adjust the length of the new second to be 1.15740 (last three digits repeating) x the current duration. [Check my math, please. That was HARD.]
So, 100 seconds x 100 minutes x 10 hours = 1 day! All nice and tidy don’t you think?
The standard work day then becomes 3:20 long, unless your salaried and then it’s about 4:30, if you’re lucky. Those “10 minute breaks” in business meetings magically become accurately timed in duration! And when those kids bugger you with, “Daaaaaaaddddd, how much longer?” you can TRUTHFULLY answer, “Just a few more minutes, I promise.”
What do you think? Should we push for it? I’m in!
Stu / W0STU
I agree with Bob. We should do away with DST. It doesn’t make sense. Once accurate time keeping became possible, we should have implemented shifting our timing instead of the trying to the change the sun’s.
Let me explain. If sunrise is at 5:37 and a business would open at 3 hours past sunrise on the rounded hour (opening at 9:00), then we would not need DST. As the amount of daylight changed the businesses opening times would shift by about an hour or two but it would always be at least 3 hours after official sunrise. That would leave plenty of time for business and still allow folks to get home before dark. Granted business hours would change a couple of times a year, but we would be more in sync with the seasons instead of fighting them with DST.
Just my two cents. Clouded by a raging head and chest cold.
Dave / KF5CLZ
Thanks for the comments. I am serious about anything that might give me another hour of sleep in the morning.
Stu, I like the decimal approach to time. I can multiply and divide by 10 a lot easier than 60.
This morning I woke up to find that half of our clocks had automatically changed time and the other half didn’t. So I was very confused.
73, Bob K0NR
Editors note:
This is your basic spam comment…but it was so “nice” I approved it 🙂
I would like to say thanks for the efforts you have made in writing this post. This has been an inspiration for me. I have passed this on to a friend of mine.