Florida Lawmakers Approve Year-Round Daylight Saving Time (tampabay.com) 393
JustAnotherOldGuy writes: It seems like we're seeing a sudden outbreak of common sense from one of the most unlikely places. Florida might become the third state -- after Hawaii and Arizona -- to be done with the hassle of changing their clocks twice a year. Yesterday, the Senate overwhelmingly passed the Sunshine Protection Act in under one minute, with only two dissenters. The House had already passed it 103-11 last month. Now it has to be signed by Gov. Rick Scott. If Scott passes it, however, it still has to go through Congress before Florida has Daylight Savings Time all year long.
Permanent daylight saving time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't they mean "Atlantic Standard Time" ?
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Just move to UTC. No more DST, no more changing time zones as you cross state or county borders, and you always know what time it is in Nome, Alaska.
Re:Permanent daylight saving time... (Score:4, Insightful)
This would be the pure 'sensible' solution, yes. You change from needing to know what the offset is in order to cite the correct time to instead needing to know what the offset is in business hours instead, so no absolute difference in necessary mental gymnastics there. You gain being able to say "at 15:30" and everyone knowing what you mean.
Now try to get 7 billion (and counting) human beings to agree on doing that, and do so consistently. In the UK we've been officially decimal and metric for decades, yet even people younger than me (coming up on 46) will still cite weights in "stones and pounds" and small lengths in inches.
PLEASE (Score:5, Insightful)
PLEASE bring this to my State (and all States). I am so over changing time twice a year for absolutely no real reason my whole life. And picking to stay on Daylight Saving Time year-round ("permanent daylight saving time" is the best possible choice. I am very jealous. And yet, this could be the start of something great...
-Changing time-
Saves energy: FALSE
Helps farmers: FALSE
Gives extra sleep: FALSE
Reduces accidents: FALSE
Causes lots of lost productivity: TRUE
Causes a nightmare for people with sleep disorders: TRUE
Causes minor health problems even for normal people: TRUE
Generates a lot of hassle and confusion: TRUE
Hurts the economy: TRUE
Re:PLEASE (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm for staying with Standard Time year round. The sun should be at its highest at noon, not 1:00. 12:00 noon should be sun on the meridian, more or less - it depends on how far east or west you are from the center of your timezone.
Re:PLEASE (Score:4, Insightful)
>"I'm for staying with Standard Time year round. The sun should be at its highest at noon, not 1:00. 12:00 noon should be sun on the meridian, more or less - it depends on how far east or west you are from the center of your timezone."
Like you said, if you are on the edge of a timezone, it wouldn't be noon at high sun, anyway. We already engage in DST for most of the year anyway, and nothing falls apart that noon isn't at the highest point in the sky for the sun. I would go for anything that doesn't change time, ever. But I still would prefer "summer time" year-round.
Re:PLEASE (Score:4, Funny)
The sun should be at its highest at noon, not 1:00.
I wholeheartedly agree. The sun needs to be directly above me as I eat my lunch, otherwise the strong gravitational forces from the sun will suck my sandwich back up my throat and make me vomit all over my keyboard.
Someone once suggested that I eat lunch at 1pm instead of noon, but the asymmetrical offset would interfere with my polyphasic sleep schedule.
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I'm for staying with Standard Time year round. The sun should be at its highest at noon, not 1:00. 12:00 noon should be sun on the meridian, more or less - it depends on how far east or west you are from the center of your timezone.
So, better to have it astronomically correct than to be more convenient for most people? That's dumb. Especially since as you move across the time zone, noon isn't going to be when the sun is directly overhead anyway. (Half an hour either side of center in theory. Not exactly in practice.)
Spring ahead, then stay there permanently.
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Sticking to one time all year is great, but is this noon = peak sun comment a joke? You do realize this view is at least a century out of date. This is not how time zones work, this is how the (antiquated, broken) system we had before time zones worked.
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afaik Saudi Arabia still uses that "antiquated, broken" system.
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Last country to use solar observations to set their time was Nepal in 1986.
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Re:PLEASE (Score:4, Insightful)
The sun should be at its highest at noon
Why? Time is nothing more than a system used to synchronise activities between groups of people. There's no reason why noon needs to be set to the highest point of the sun.
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Me, too. It is absolutely ridiculous that solar noon in my area is after 1:30 P.M.
That said, staying on Daylight time would still be an improvement over what we have today.
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Trouble is, I have exactly the opposite opinion to you. I expect it to get dark in the evenings but waking up in the dark I find really depressing.
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Gives whiny people something more to whine about: TRUE
Honestly, I find the whining about Daylight Savings Time much worse than Daylight Savings Time itself.
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Here you go https://www.safework.sa.gov.au... [sa.gov.au]. Just keep in mind other people are not as selfish as you and families spending more daylight hours together is a good thing and if you want more https://www.safework.sa.gov.au... [sa.gov.au]. By your logic, I want the entire worlds clock adjust to when it is noon over my house, screw everyone else. As you go from west to east, so noon differs by the metre.
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If there is one U.S. State in the "Contiguous 48" which really does not need Summer/Winter time changes it is Florida, at that distance from the Equator there is not a lot of fluctuation anyway.
Have a look at Spain though, Franco was an admirer of Hitler and "moved" Spain to the same timezone as the Nazi Reich - it has remained there ever since. In winter they are one hour away from where they should be, in summer it is two hours. Spaniards have compensated by doing everything an hour or so later than any
This one goes to 11 (Score:2)
n/t
Isn't year round DST (Score:2)
wait a minute (Score:2)
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>"Did they just pass a law saying agreeing to send the entire state of Florida into the future by one hour? But seriously, how about make the time be what time it actually is?"
And what exactly would that be? MOST of the year, we are in DST, and that *is* the time, if everyone agrees it is. So just do DST the rest of the year too and be done with it!
Congress has to pass this (Score:5, Funny)
Florida will probably get shot down.
Too soon?
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Nah. A Scwewwy Wabbit will just take a hand saw and cut the state loose from the rest of the continent. :D
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But... but... it's America's wang!
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What if all the FLA residents and FLA governments(state and local) agreed to use DST or AST year round. Seems like a 1st amendment issue.
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The closer you are to the equator (Score:5, Interesting)
The less your opinion about Daylight Savings matters.
Re:The closer you are to the equator (Score:5, Insightful)
The less your opinion about Daylight Savings matters.
That's true, and also the closer you are to the "land of the midnight sun" the less you care about DST.
Furthermore, people on the eastern side of a time zone have a different feeling about DST than those on the western side, because on the western side the sun rises and sets an hour later than for those on the eastern side so they have a built-in DST advantage, or punishment, depending on how long before sunrise you have to get up to get the kids to school.
the equator (Score:2)
Your opinion matters less if you are closer to equator? Now that's just mean to the equators. I demand equal opportunity for equators!
/joke
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Domino Theory (Score:2)
Hopefully the Domino Theory will come into effect and neighboring states will follow suit and force congress to allow states to choose to stay on DST forever. It probably would have been easier to just stay on Standard Time... maybe that was their plan. Make it look like they're changing things while doing it the hard way so that it just stays the same. Not that I'm jaded or anything.
Staying on Standard? (Score:2)
Time zones suck (Score:3)
They should just do away with time zones and make everyplace the same time. I don't like the fact that where I live Monday Night Football comes on at 5pm and Saturday Night Live starts at like 8:30. When I go online a 10pm to fuck around with my friends back in the Midwest or East Coast, they're all like, "Oh, we're sleeping because it's one in the morning." Fuck that.
Starting Sunday at 2am, the entire world has to go on Pacific Standard Time. No, make that, Pacific Daylight Time.
And put Saturday morning cartoons back on the networks. I mean, what the fuck is wrong with whoever decided to take cartoons off Saturday morning? Motherfucker, do I come over there and mess with your life?
Now excuse me, I gotta go get a refill and go pee. Save my spot.
I like to get up early (Score:2)
1520582230 (Score:2)
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Logistical nightmare (Score:2)
I live in FL and normally love DST. I've been told I'm an OG programmer, and I'm up late and sleep in. I don't care about the morning, and like it when it stays light later.
However, I don't see how FL being on AST all year will work? TV networks aren't going to devote a satellite/fiber feed just for Florida, and although it seems like stations *should* be able to timeshift easily, there's not often a process for this ("we now join our regularly scheduled programming, already in progress").
So, primetime
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Sigh... (Score:2)
Another reason never to go to Florida now. Living on the east coast and heading south, we shouldn't have to change our timezone half of the year. I'm all for states rights in many cases, but this isn't one of them. Do it as a nation, or don't do it, but don't do it piecemeal, state by state.
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Actually, no. It's officially Daylight Saving Time. Yes, the /. editors got it right!
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Or then again, it could be Daylight's Savings Thyme. Or Daylites Sayvings Times. Whatever you call it, I'd like to be rid of it.
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He meant to say Auld Lang Syne.
https://youtu.be/Hm1hwxc92Mo?t... [youtu.be]
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Re:This is stupid... (Score:5, Insightful)
Other than sunrise, sunset, and high noon, all of our measured time is "fake". Since the clocks don't care, might as well set them conveniently.
Re:This is stupid... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is stupid... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
Re:This is stupid... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This is stupid... (Score:4, Insightful)
It remains a measure of the day's progress even if the sun reaches it's height at 1. Even with the current timezones, there are very few places where solar noon coincides with exactly 12:00:00 anyway.
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I'd be fine with the whole country staying sprung ahead.
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Never claimed anything revolutionary. I suspect most people would rather stay with timezones. It's one thing to have high noon at 1:00 P.M. and work starts at 9:00 A.M., wuite another to have high noon at 3:00 A.M.
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Isn't that exactly what ships at sea do ?
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Before they had time zones, it was pretty much established in most of the western world that 12:00am was when the sun was the highest. That's how they set the clocks. When it took several hours to ride a horse to the next town then the time difference wasn't much of a bother. But with railroads it became more annoying, and the railroads set up the timezones in order to have better consistency with each town and provide better schedules.
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Not significantly more weird than having 11:59 am immediately followed by 12:00 pm. That would be daft, surely no one would come up with a time keeping system that stupid.
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Am I missing something? 12:00 am is midnight.
It would be pretty weird to have 12:00 am immediately followed by 12:01 pm.
Now that you mention it, it's no less weird than having 11:59am followed by 12:00 pm. But if 12:00 is noon, it is technically neither ante or post noon (meridian)
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Because time is the measure of a day's progress
It is nothing of the sort. Time is just a system used to synchronise activities between people.
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That hasn't been true for a very long time due to artificial lighting. If work actually started based on natural waking time, few would need alarm clocks and practically nobody over the age of 20 would hit the snooze button.
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Well, by that logic, why even have time zones in the first place? Put everyone in the world on the same time and eliminate confusion. The sun would be at its peak at 7am instead in parts of the US.
Why ask why? (Score:2)
http://www.google.com/search?q... [google.com]"why+ask+why%3F"+bud :P
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Why?
Convention. Symmetry makes some easier calculations Not more, not less. But the whole concept of measurable time is human made, so probably any convention would work somehow.
I like DST in the summer, but it's a convention. And as with all conventions: Feel free to ignore it and do your own stuff. They are not mandatory, but it just makes life much easier when interacting people use the same ones. Go ahead and split your day between sunset and sunrise into 42 flumps! If you schedule your breakfast at 2 flump
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They did it this way because it has no effect. It's making a statement while doing nothing.
If they had gone to permanent standard time, it could have taken effect without the approval of the US Congress. But actually changing time zones requires the approval of Congress.
It would be hilarious if Congress approved it and everybody else just switched to standard so they could be the oddballs with primetime showing from 9 to 12 instead of 8 to 11. Kind of appropriate in Floriduh.
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>"If you want to stay on the same time all year around, stay on Standard Time. Being in a fake time zone an hour ahead of solar time is almost as stupid as changing time artificially 2x a year."
No it isn't. All time is "fake". MOST of the year, we are in DST, and that *is* the time during those months. Being on DST is much more convenient for the vast majority of people- regardless of the month. If time is a construct and we can make it so we don't keep changing it AND we can make it more convenient
Re:Idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree - time of sunrise and sunset should be symmetrical around noon.
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Sounds good on paper, but it sucks up north. Getting dark at 4:30 PM is just shit.
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Why, exactly? Do you think DST somehow provides more daylight? Get off your lazy ass and get up earlier (in wall clock time) to enjoy the full day.
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No.
Nobody gets up an extra hour before work and does a little bit of personal stuff with the whole workday looming in front of them.
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It has nothing to do with whether you like your job, nor with how smug you are about your own occupation.
It's the combination of trying to do something useful an/or enjoyable while you're still bleary from sleep along with knowing that it will be interrupted in less than an hour.
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>"Why does it matter what time it gets dark? Get up and go to work earlier so you can leave sooner if it's that much of a concern."
You act as if most of us CAN set what time we go to work. And that is not reality.
Re:Idiots. (Score:4, Insightful)
Get up and go to work earlier so you can leave sooner
Oh look, a person of privilege. Guess what, the vast majority of people's lives don't work like that.
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It's going to get dark early in the winter no matter what. Half the state is pissed that it is dark early, but you turn on DST and then the other half of the state is pissed that it's still dark in the morning. If you don't like it being dark at 4:30 then just wake up one hour early, go to work one hour early, and go home one hour early. It's just like DST except that you don't have to do unnatural acts with the clock.
If you think that you get more daylight just by moving the clock ahead, then try telling
Re:Idiots. (Score:5, Funny)
You know, I think the flat earthers are on to something here. Equal daylight for everyone!
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I agree - time of sunrise and sunset should be symmetrical around noon.
Why?
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If you have perfect 1 hour timezones then noon with be with the sun overhead +/- 30 minutes. In practice timezones are not perfect by any stretch, they tend to follow political boundaries.
A few countries have fractional timezones, like +8 hours 15 minutes or something, but I imagine they also have a lot of problems with broken software.
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Noon is when the sun is at its peak
Yes, at one single given longitude in any timezone. Otherwise the sun isn't at its peak at noon. Also who really cares where the sun is at noon? It could be the middle of the night at noon and all the office workers stuck indoors unable to flex away from their regulated 9-5s wouldn't give a crap. But give people an extra hour of sunlight in the afternoon is a major change in lifestyle in a positive way too.
Now Florida already has enough sun, but there are many parts of the world that could benefit from this
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Noon is when the sun is at its peak, and changing that is foolish. If people want more daylight after work is done, then they should push for working hours to change to 8-4.
Here in Finland, traditional office hours are 8am to 4pm (or as we call them, 8 to 16), and many people still want their idiotic DST.
DST is really a "solution" to a particularly stubborn set of requirements: (a) I want to go work earlier, and (b) I still want the clock to show the same time as I start work. Even if that means changing the entire system of measurements for everyone.
While (b) is downright stupid, I'm not even sure if (a) is a good thing for most people. The argument is about getting more
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You live on a planet whose axis of rotation is tilted with respect to its orbital plane - get over it. Maybe you should consider a move to the tropics ;-)
Re:Down with Winter Darkness time! (Score:4, Insightful)
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I suppose you could use standard time for everything north of about 45 and then offset everything by an hour for everything closer to the equator, but I suspect that would have a lot of logistical problems.
Of course, one could also offset the problems of a later sunrise by starting work later in the winter, but that would entirely offset the benefits of a later sunset, so in the end, the simplest s
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Well Arizona is already in their own timezone. It's confusing for sure, but the world won't end. True, the extra time savings in clock management will be initially overshadowed by the training and recuperation costs... too bad we don't have some sort of complex machinery to take care of this for us.
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Back in the day (don't know if it's true anymore), the Navajo Reservation went on and off DST while AZ didn't. I was traveling there in the 70's and got mightily confused until I figured out what was going on...
Re:Cluster fuck coming (Score:5, Funny)
It's true. Right now in Arizona, it's 9:12pm, March 8, 1952.
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It's true. Right now in Arizona, it's 9:12pm, March 8, 1952.
Hey kids! Did you know that on that date, we had a party whose voters believed that dental fluoride was poisonous to our vital body fluids and that the Russians were conspiring against us everywhere?
And in those days, it was the Republicans.
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Well Arizona is already in their own timezone.
No, we just stay in Mountain Standard all year.
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This needs to be done at the national level or you get a patchwork of states on or off DST .
We already have a patchwork. Arizona, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico do not have DST. Some Indian reservations have different practices from the states they are in.
DST makes little sense for southern states, where the difference in daylight doesn't change much with the seasons. DST also makes little sense in Alaska, where daylight changes so much that just a single hour makes little difference and changing the clocks is just a pointless annoyance.
Re:Cluster fuck coming (Score:5, Interesting)
Puerto Rico is in Atlantic time, which matches Eastern Daylight time. So with this change, Florida and Puerto Rico would always be in the same time zone.
MA also wants to join Atlantic time. NYers when asked also want to stay in EDT permanently (aka join Atlantic time).
Let's make this real easy. Move all states that touch the Atlantic ocean to year-round Atlantic time. Sorted.
Re:Cluster fuck coming (Score:5, Funny)
https://xkcd.com/1883/ [xkcd.com]
Re: Cluster fuck coming (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, given that the state does not even want something closest to natural time, where the sun is at the highest point closest to noon, but instead wants the artificial DST in effect permanently, is weird. The alternative of getting rid of DST permanently does make a sort of sense at least.
It's Florida! People on the beach don't care what time it is, the retirees don't care what time it is, so why insist on DST? Business won't make more money, you won't save more energy, and you've got a surplus of sunlight already. If DST is a pain, why not get rid of it?
Why not make it UTC time then they can have daylight in the middle of the night, that would be good for business too!
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There is no thing as "natural time" (except maybe the steady rise of entropy in the universe)
There is sunrise and sunset, everything else is convention, even calling the time when the sun is highest "noon". If you want to split the day into more handle-able slices AND being closer to the natural rhythm, you would need to take the time between sunrise and sunset and split that up in any arbitrary number of units. Yes, a working day in summer will be longer than in winter, but days will naturally be longer in
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where the sun is at the highest point closest to noon
Who cares about that arbitrary point? People are at work at noon. It's about a bit of extra sunlight after hours. Despite what you think of the population of Flordia it has the 4th highest GDP in America. You don't get that with a population made up entirely of retirees and jobless beach hobos.
Re: Cluster fuck coming (Score:2)
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Right, because bouncing the clocks around twice a year is not confusing at all.
Re:Gonna suck. (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, because bouncing the clocks around twice a year is not confusing at all.
Changing the clocks is confusing twice a year. Having different time than neighboring states is confusing for at least five months per year.
Re:Gonna suck. (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
In the modern Western world, we work on a 9-5 schedule (or thereabouts). DST was invented to shift more daylight hours in the summer to the afternoon and evening, so that people could enjoy this daylight after work. Otherwise, a lot of the daylight hours would be very early in the morning, when most people are asleep or getting ready for/going to work.
So going to DST year-round actually makes sense, because it permanently shifts daylight into the afternoon, i.e. into after-work hours. I don't care how far that puts nominal noon away from real/solar noon, because time-keeping is anyway just a convention made up to make people's lives easier. So we can bend this convention a bit to suit our present purposes. Moving to DST permanently is easier than getting everyone to switch to working 7-3 or whatever.
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The right way to do this is to eliminate DST, not make it permanent.
That is the worst of all the possible options that have been presented, and is really the only reason why those who fight for the preservation of DST do so.
Re: Gonna suck. (Score:4, Informative)
Rural people and the poor benefit from daylight savings, because it saves money on utility bills.
The poor aren't likely to be affected one way or another, and rural people DON'T CARE, because they never paid attention to the hour of the day in the morning. They got up at dawn, whenever it is, as the exact time changes a small amount every day.
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Given how most of the complaints about daylight savings are about the clock switching and that they are adopting it, what makes this decision flawed? Your arbitrary idea that noon should be the time when the sun is highest? Guess what, no one cares about that. Hell in my country the closest the sun at its highest point is to noon is winter solstice, and then it's just shy of 1pm. In summer it's 2pm, and no one gives a crap.
People however do give a crap that they can walk in the park and enjoy sunlight at 6p