Religion, SF, and Other Speculative Fictions.


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on Daylight Savings Time

Posted by xJane on October 29th, 2007 at 7:32 pm · 1 Comment

I’ve heard arguments for and against DST and the reasons generally center around “we’re used to it” or “we’re not farmers”. Recently I heard that the Candy Lobby (there’s a lobby for everything, it seems, and all of them have more votes than me) wants DST to occur before Hallowe’en so that kids can go eat candy while it’s still light out. Which defeats the purpose of going out, in my mind (part of the fun of Hallowe’en is that it’s dark out—it’s scary, it’s not something you’re normally allowed to do, &c.), but ignores a major point: standardization isn’t.

What I mean is that, from coast to coast we have, what, four “time zones” that range from part of a state to more than 5 states wide, are subject to the whim of local governments (sometimes down to townships), and have no basis in reality beyond the fact that someone “really” took a pen and drew a line. From edge to edge of one time zone the sun could rise & set up to an hour earlier or later. That is not standardization, in my book. Even more dramatic, however, is the north-to-south change. I live in LA and can discern longer and shorter days by maybe about an hour over the whole year. When I lived in Seattle, we lost a good four hours of daylight every winter. That’s not something that will be fixed by DST.

I think we should just admit that our time zones have no basis in the amount of time it takes the sun to rise & set, or how long it takes the earth to orbit, and move on with our lives. Our current lives are so far removed from any relationship to natural rhythms anyway and whether or not I agree with that, I think it’s time to admit it and sever any nods to “saving daylight”.

I like having some night in my life in the winter: coming home to a darkened courtyard has some romance under an October moon (more on that later) and it reminds me that there have been changes, time has moved on, even if I’ve no crops to help drive home that point.

Tags: Politics

1 response so far ↓

  • 1 Elaine // Oct 29, 2007 at 8:48 pm

    …because, you know, as far as I’m concerned, Daylight Savings Time just isn’t real.

    You especially have a point, xJane, about the width of time zones. One time, my parents and I drove across country from California to visit friends in Florida. On the second or third night on the road we spent the night in Fort Stockton, Texas. Apparently Fort Stockton is right on the western border of the Central time zone.

    My father was an early riser, and he was up early that morning as usual, and by the time my mother and I were awake, he was really beginning to freak out…because the sun wasn’t coming up. It was August, and while the sun was past its earliest risings of the year, it still should have been getting light. He finally walked next door to the coffee shop next door to the motel and asked what the heck (not likely the word he used) was going on, where they explained to him the situation with the time zones. Now, my dad was pretty cognizant of things like that, but the whole late-rising sun thing had him upset in a way I rarely saw him.

    Standardization isn’t, as you say, in another way as well, as I discovered to my frustration this morning when I got up to begin my work day. I’m always up by 6 or 6:30 am because the equities markets in Asia are already long-since closed for the day and I can find all the information I need to write summaries of the day’s news from those markets (which is what I do for a living these days). And that went fine because those markets close several hours before I get up in the morning. But then, when it was the usual time to begin writing about the European markets…no closing statistics. It took me about fifteen minutes of frantic searching from source to source before it dawned on me…Europe went back to real time this past weekend, while we don’t “fall back” until this coming weekend. So, while they were updating at just the right time, it seemed to me as if everything was running an hour late. Well, at least I got to sit and eat breakfast without having to work this morning, instead of writing and working at the same time. And, for the rest of the week I can set my alarm for 7 am instead of 6 am. Why, that’s almost like a vacation. :)

    As for Daylight Savings Time generally, I have this theory that when it gets to be evening, it is supposed to get dark. When it doesn’t, I get out of sorts. When I visited England, many years ago, it was at that time of year…late June/early July…when the sun comes up early and goes down late. In England, at that time of year, this happens at what I consider to be ungodly times. The sun was up by 4 or 4:30 am and it didn’t set until 10 or 10:30 pm. To this California-born, California-bred girl, that just isn’t right.

    Aargh. I didn’t mean to write a book.

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