Canadian Analysis: Permanent Daylight Saving Harms Sleep and Mental Health (sci.news) 225
"With the push to eliminate the twice yearly clock change, Permanent Daylight Savings Time has emerged as the favorite for most states and provinces," writes longtime Slashdot reader kbahey, sharing the findings from a recent analysis published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Sci.News reports: "Ending the clock change solves one problem, but it creates another decision: which time should we live on year-round?" said University of British Columbia's Professor Raymond Lam, lead author of the study. "The health evidence points to standard time, largely because morning light matters for our body clocks, sleep, and mood." Professor Lam and colleagues examined the health consequences of the two possible permanent systems rather than the broader question of whether seasonal clock changes should be abolished. They concluded that the accumulated evidence favors permanent standard time, which keeps the clock more closely aligned with human circadian biology.
This distinction, according to the team, becomes particularly important during winter. Permanent daylight saving time would push sunrise an hour later. In cities such as Toronto, for example, the latest winter sunrise would occur at 8:51 a.m., compared with 7:51 a.m. under permanent standard time. In Calgary, the corresponding times would be 9:40 a.m. and 8:40 a.m. The extra hour of morning darkness could leave people traveling to work or school before sunrise, while shifting more daylight into the evening. The change could have consequences for sleep, mood, learning and productivity, particularly among people who already have difficulty sleeping or who must follow early schedules. The reason is rooted in the body's internal clock.
"Our biological clocks need morning light to stay synchronized with the 24-hour day," said Simon Fraser University's Professor Ralph Mistlberger, co-author of the study. "Permanent daylight saving time moves that light an hour later just when winter mornings are already darkest." The analysis also highlights concerns about seasonal depression. [...] By delaying natural morning light, permanent daylight saving time would act in the opposite direction, potentially weakening an important circadian signal.
This distinction, according to the team, becomes particularly important during winter. Permanent daylight saving time would push sunrise an hour later. In cities such as Toronto, for example, the latest winter sunrise would occur at 8:51 a.m., compared with 7:51 a.m. under permanent standard time. In Calgary, the corresponding times would be 9:40 a.m. and 8:40 a.m. The extra hour of morning darkness could leave people traveling to work or school before sunrise, while shifting more daylight into the evening. The change could have consequences for sleep, mood, learning and productivity, particularly among people who already have difficulty sleeping or who must follow early schedules. The reason is rooted in the body's internal clock.
"Our biological clocks need morning light to stay synchronized with the 24-hour day," said Simon Fraser University's Professor Ralph Mistlberger, co-author of the study. "Permanent daylight saving time moves that light an hour later just when winter mornings are already darkest." The analysis also highlights concerns about seasonal depression. [...] By delaying natural morning light, permanent daylight saving time would act in the opposite direction, potentially weakening an important circadian signal.
Summary ... (Score:5, Informative)
The following was in my submission on the firehose, but the editors opted to remove it ...
Some of the key points, from the published article's summary:
Unfortunately, it seems that politicians and a good chunk of the public prefer Permanent DST.
Re:Summary ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Permanent ST is more closely aligned with circadian biology, although earlier dusk may limit some evening activities
You know what's aligned even more with circadian biology?
Keep the current system, get up off your ass, and change your clocks twice per year without whinging like a precious snowflake.
That way you you don't have to deal either with the sun beating down on you while you try to sleep at 4am or with your poor children getting run over in the dark on their way to school.
Sure, a couple of codgers might keel over in march, but they were probably gonna die soon anyway. It's much harder to measure the statistics of all the other people who would die steadily throughout the year due to the aforementioned issues, as well as similar problems caused by a static clock that doesn't adjust at all to when the sun actually rises. However, I would bet good money that it would add up to far more casualties overall.
For some reason, I seem to be in a small minority on this issue, though. It's probably because everybody would rather believe in a solution to the problems of living on a tilted axis that's clear, simple, and wrong.
Re:Summary ... (Score:4, Interesting)
I seem to be in a small minority on this issue
Skipping the mod points to specifically agree. The time switch has always been a minor thing to me. It's effectively crossing *one* time zone. In fact the PDT to PST switch coming gives an extra hour. It was never a problem with the kids. The pets required an extra few days to the accustomed feeding schedules.
Also, why is it called "permanent daylight saving (no 's') time"? If we did go the daylight route why not just say California is on Mountain Time, same as Arizona who sticks with standard time. If we did go to a single time zone, standard has already been tested to work in a couple of states and D has failed in this article and in the US decades ago.
As far as the lost evenings, why? What are you doing that insists on having daylight? True for golf. Pickleball, swimming, running? Outdoor lighting works just fine.
Re: (Score:2)
Having more "clocks" in our lives be on computers these days than it was ~20 years ago, makes the change more seamless if time is automatically adjusted.
Also less devices like VCRs (a not-a-computer device where having correct time is important) exist in the modern home.
New Zealand DST kicked in a couple of weeks ago and I had forgotten about it and didn't notice the change when I woke up by phone's alarm.
Having said that, homes heavy into the IoT "smart home" stuff could probably have issues due to the ti
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It's "fewer."
Secondly, the IoT hypothesis is totally reasonable but as someone who runs an IoT-rich environment ... yeah, they all just transparently adjust. It's never been an issue.
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I wish that more parts of the Internet would do spell/grammar check responses.
Re: Summary ... (Score:2)
That way you you don't have to deal either with the sun beating down on you while you try to sleep at 4am
I think the problem is that you are trying to sleep outside? If you were sleeping inside there are common solutions for this.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
It's no surprise that most Slashdotters have lost their sense of wonder, as they've forgotten what it was like to be children.
Despite DST existing, I clearly remember waiting for the bus in the dark for part of the year.
DST doesn't do what it's supposed to do, and it kills people. It's weird to celebrate that.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes I also don't really care about the the time changes and honestly I hardly notice them. Most of my clocks change automatically so unless someone reminded me about the time change I'd never hardly notice.
I think people honestly psych themselves out with the time change and amplify all their feelings of tiredness. It's a bit like family members I know that lived abroad and whenever they'd be here visiting they'd constantly be reminding themselves of what time it was back home and then complaining about j
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You make it sound like not having DST is terrible, but most of the world doesn't bother with it.
It's basically Europe, the US, and a few random others including half of Australia for some reason. Everyone else gets by just fine without DST, and much of the world gave it up when they stopped being colonies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Maybe it's time to think about the hours we do things in general. For example, in Japan most shops don't open until 10 or 11 AM, and stay open until 7-8 PM. That gives peop
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You think changing the clocks twice a year fixes everything? You are wrong, most stores still have winter and summer hours yet somehow the employees and customers manage just fine.
We have modern tech that lets us have flexible scheduling, even schools are now flexible enough that on bad weather days the children take classes from home (yes tha
Re: What is left to change besides oven and microw (Score:2)
my wristwatch (a personal preference), and the dash clock. Those aren't hooked up to Big Brother, although the dash has the OnStar logo, there was no commitment from either party, and it's far from being the last Saab
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Re:Summary ... (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no such thing as permanent DST.
You choose to join another timezone. For instance, Ottowa could be in the CDT timezone while Winnipeg would be in CST.
If this sounds stupid that's because it is.
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Stupid it may be, but there are a lot of places in the world that already do that and are effectively already going permanent DST. In fact, some of these places then also do DST again, making double DST. Don't believe me? Well, let's look at a time zone map:
Time zone map [wikimedia.org]
Places that do DST [wikimedia.org]
Consider the US state of Alaska. It is nominally in time zones -10 and -11 (check the water north and south of the state). But for some reason, the whole state is in -9. And for some reason, despite their high latitud
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On a point of order... Spain was in GMT until an authoritarian dictator decided that being in the same timezone as Nazi Germany would be convenient. France changed when it was occupied by Nazi Germany. Where you arguably get away with the examples is that there is a question as to why they haven't changed back.
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Interesting point! I did not know that was the origin of their zone oddness. Thanks for that information.
Lots of other places drift west. Like lots of islands that are in the wrong zone for no real good reason. Probably silly reasons like past (or current) country ownership.
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Look at Nepal, in the UTC+05:45 timezone. They aren't even the only ones who like to break technology with their non-whole-hour timezone.
The world seems to be moving towards trying to simplify time a bit, e.g. by discontinuing leap seconds. Personally I'd start a project to build a booster large enough to correct the Earth's orbit of the sun to a nice round 256 days, but since there doesn't seem to be much support for that at least we can stop bothering with DST.
Re: Summary ... (Score:2)
I prefer ST. It's dark when I go to work already and it seems like I remember it being dark when I went to school.
Re: Alternatively ... (Score:2)
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Sure, way up north maybe (Score:5, Interesting)
Do what you want way up there. The swing between summer and winter amount of sunlight is drastic. However, down here? The change makes it much worse. It takes months just to get back to baseline after the clocks change. I just donâ(TM)t care, either pick one or just move the clocks 30 minutes one last time and keep it there. why has no one thought of this? Did the Canadiens study that? Move the clocks by 30 minutes and keep them there.
I agree! (Score:2)
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You can avoid most of the paint by just ignoring DST. Don't change you clocks. Helps if your work is flexible about hours, but you can always move some evening stuff to the morning and vise versa.
Try it, you will find that it's no real effort to remember everyone else's clocks are off by an hour.
even worse! (Score:4, Funny)
With permanent DST we won't get the stories twice a year.
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With permanent ST we can all watch our beautiful sunsets while we're having lunch....
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You mean like how it is now? Seems to be fine for most people.
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PLUS that would leave more room for additional TIOBE surveys!
Who cares? (Score:2)
Open your business at 7am or 9am. Close at 7pm or 9pm, again, no one cares. The people who don't matter with jobs that don't depend on sunlight are the ones clammoring for permanent DST. People who's jobs depend on the sunlight won't change their schedules or lives to acommodate permanent DST.
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
Morning vs Evening (Score:2)
Standard time gives you a greater chance of having daylight in the morning before you have to go to work, but more likely dark when you come home in the evening.
Daylight Saving time gives you a greater chance of having daylight in the evening after you get home from work, but more likely dark when you are heading in to work.
For many people, in the dead of winter it is dark when they go to work, and dark when they come home so it makes no difference. Many others have flexible work schedules and can go in la
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"Standard time gives you a greater chance of having daylight in the morning before you have to go to work,"
Yeah? Whatcha gonna do with it? Mow the lawn? Blow leaves? I'm sure everyone that does that will be really popular with their neighbors. I mean, I have an electric rider mower and it's STILL not silent.
Get home, have dinner, go out and rig the 2 yard lights on tripods, illuminate here, mow, illuminate there, mow, all in the effort to have that time during the weekend that you'd otherwise have to
We already tried this (Score:5, Informative)
DST was made permanent in the USA in 1974, and it was so unpopular it got repealed the same year.
It sounds good until you have to live it... there are also morning people among us, and kids trying to walk to school where further darkness presents a safety issue. Not everyone benefits from potential extra sunlight to extend happy hour.
Interestingly few articles speculate on what happens to electronic devices with long-deprecated firmware that will change their clocks anyway. Could be a micro-Y2K, except without all the global budget heaved into remedies.
Re: (Score:2)
This article is advocating Standard Time (eg: EST) be chosen instead of Daylight Time (eg: EDT) that many other articles have pushed for.
I believe that's where it went wrong in 1974 also. They chose permanently forward and hour - Which is kind of stupid if you're going to make it fixed.
Personally, I'm happy with switching twice a year. It's a small adjustment that fits the summer/winter swings of mid latitudes where I live.
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Most hardware that supports DST switching also supports *not* DST switching, because not everywhere does.
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The problem comes with hardware which doesn't have a way (or, at least, a user-friendly way) to update its locale data. I recall having problems a decade or so ago with discrepancies between two computers because one of them hadn't been updated with the then-very-recent changes to Chilean law about summer time and the other one had.
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It sounds good until you have to live it
I *did* live it, and I can't say going to school in the dark bothered me in the least.
But, in any case, I'll be retired soon - so I no longer particularly care which way we go. I think maybe we could even keep doing what we're doing, and I'll bring the popcorn to these ongoing Slashdot discussions.
Re: We already tried this (Score:2)
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DST was made permanent in the USA in 1974, and it was so unpopular it got repealed the same year.
It sounds good until you have to live it... there are also morning people among us, and kids trying to walk to school where further darkness presents a safety issue. Not everyone benefits from potential extra sunlight to extend happy hour.
Before we had mechanical clocks, we used to adjust to the hours of daylight automatically. Daylight Savings came in because we needed to keep doing that as the hours of daylight changed with the seasons, so the solution was to change the clocks.
With most clocks being automatically updated these days, you barely have the excuse of having to change the clocks to oppose DST. You go to sleep on one time and wake up in the new one.
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Depends (Score:3)
>"The health evidence points to standard time, largely because morning light matters for our body clocks, sleep, and mood."
That entirely depends on where you are and when you wake. For many people, being forced to adjust to a time change twice a year can really screw with sleep a lot more. Some people take weeks or longer to adjust.
>""Our biological clocks need morning light to stay synchronized with the 24-hour day," said Simon Fraser"
And in the winter, where I am, it is still dark in the winter when I wake most of the time, so it never really solves that "issue", if it even is one. The difference is that with permanent Daylight Saving Time, it would not be dark when I return home, so I was have at least some daylight I could actual use after work. And if necessary, I could set a timer with bright full-spectrum lights each morning before waking in the winter.
Again, it depends primarily on your location and latitude and when you must awaken. Which is why the best idea is to allow States (or in this case Provinces) choose what they want to do for themselves:
1) Stay on Standard Time permanently
2) Stay on Saving Time permanently
3) Change time twice a year.
What is right for Maine isn't necessarily the same as for Virginia or Florida. They have very different latitudes. They can experiment and see what is best for THEM, rather than forcing the entire country into a single mode.
But if we can only have a single change/standard, I would vote for either permanent time option, rather than the insanity of switching time twice a year.
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Which is why the best idea is to allow States (or in this case Provinces) choose what they want to do for themselves
Yeah, that's the weird thing about this whole topic. I don't know how it is in Canada, but - why do US states have what amounts to partial autonomy in this regard? States are allowed to choose between implementing twice-yearly DST switches or sticking with year-round standard time... but they can't choose permanent DST?
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>"States are allowed to choose between implementing twice-yearly DST switches or sticking with year-round standard time... but they can't choose permanent DST?"
Because Congress made it that way. They can just as easily make it so States can choose all three options instead of just two. We can see how unpopular permanent Standard Time is, since only two States use that option. I suspect more than several would choose permanent Savings Time if given the ability.
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Because Congress made it that way.
Well, yeah, of course; but the question is why did Congress make it that way? It just seems like a rather odd place to draw the line.
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>"Well, yeah, of course; but the question is why did Congress make it that way? It just seems like a rather odd place to draw the line."
Never made any sense to me.
If you think that's bad.... (Score:3, Funny)
...just wait until they hear what overtime, shift work and parenting does to sleep & mental health
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Yeah, I can't believe the level of bellyaching going on over such a small, but very effective, adjustment only twice a year.
Yeah, it's almost as bad as the level of bellyaching from those who insist we just have to do the stupidity.
Re: (Score:2)
wrong
Change business/school/etc. hours (Score:2)
Stop changing the clocks twice per year, but if there are reasons to set opening or closing times earlier or later, I am all for it. Sunlight at whatever-oclock isn't bright enough? Then start school at whatever-thirty or other appropriate time.
The study could have been framed "it would be best to wake up later in the day" rather than "we should make the clocks read different numbers so that waking up at this particular number is better for us".
The problem is not that specific number correspond to particula
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Time zones are needed anyway. There is no one time of day for the whole planet.
Maybe adding more adjustments is order though.
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Exactly. Base the time zones on GMT and adjust your daily schedule accordingly.
All of China does use one time zone, so that kind of thing is certainly possible. GMT has a lot going for it, but it feels kind of inconvenient for the date to change during daylight hours. GMT for Europe and Africa seems like it could work, maybe Alaska time for North America, giving midnight at 11 pm local for Hawaii, with the date changing happening in the wee hours for the rest of the continent.
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Stop changing the clocks twice per year, but if there are reasons to set opening or closing times earlier or later, I am all for it. Sunlight at whatever-oclock isn't bright enough? Then start school at whatever-thirty or other appropriate time.
Sure, you could just change the time that school starts for the few months of winter. And the parents who need to get their kids ready for school and/or drop them off at school can change what time they show up for work. And since the workers are showing up at a different time, businesses can change what hours they're open. And since these changes all have to happen on the same day, you'll need someone to decide what days the time changes should happen.
Congratulations, you've just invented Daylight Savin
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Stop changing the clocks twice per year, but if there are reasons to set opening or closing times earlier or later, I am all for it. Sunlight at whatever-oclock isn't bright enough? Then start school at whatever-thirty or other appropriate time.
Sure, you could just change the time that school starts for the few months of winter. And the parents who need to get their kids ready for school and/or drop them off at school can change what time they show up for work. And since the workers are showing up at a different time, businesses can change what hours they're open. And since these changes all have to happen on the same day, you'll need someone to decide what days the time changes should happen.
Congratulations, you've just invented Daylight Saving Time, just with everyone needing to remember new start times instead of changing the clocks.
But would we make all those changes though? In every town? Twice per year? I doubt it very much - the reasons for making each of those changes is relatively weak, and the reasons for making them twice per year even weaker. If it makes sense in the winter to run school hours from 8:15 to 2:45, then do that ALL YEAR, and if it makes MORE sense to do it from 10:30 to 5:00 then do that, again all year. School start times in one of the local school boards already range from 8:15 to 9:30 in different schools - th
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Yes this is what they do in China. The entire country spans several time zones, but the CCP declared that everyone is on Beijing time. So in some parts of the country a business might be open at 8 am, but in other parts it might be 10 or 11. So in the end having one time zone has all the same problems of time zones (have to track what effective time it is in different regions) and no advantage whatsoever.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:2)
https://www.medscape.com/viewa... [medscape.com]
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Doesn't really matter, permanent standard time would have the same effect.
The States should decide (Score:2)
There should be a vote of the citizens of each state to decide what the offset (to UTC) should be, and then change the time to that and leave it there.
Of course that probably wouldn't work for Canada
Permanently shift the time by 30 minutes (Score:2)
That sounds like a good Canadian compromise.
Latitude matters (Score:5, Interesting)
Second: Most discussions seem to ignore latitude. This article sort of touches on it, as Canada is mostly north of the US lower 48. Further south in US the swings in hours of daylight aren't as big as the north. In the north the days are so much longer in the summer, much shorter in the winter. ( a 7.5 hour difference in Seattle vs a 4.5 hr difference in San Diego). While both in the same time zone; the difference in daylight hours is much greater than the current time change.
You know what's the same in both cities? Solar noon. Set the clock to match solar noon, or PDT, and the localities will sort out what works best for them for operating hours, school start times, etc.
And in the WTF dept: Alaska observes DST. Juneau peaks around 18.5 hrs of daylight at the summer solstice. Do they really need more hours of daylight after work? And the days are so short in December, kids would go to school *and* come home in the dark. I guess you could shift the clock a bit so only one is in the dark?
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You know what's the same in both cities? Solar noon.
False. There's only a small area of any part of either country where solar moon exists. For example, daylight savings time ends in November. At that point the state of Maine will have noon at 11:15am. In the meantime over in Indianapolis solar noon will be pushing 12:28 (OVER AN HOUR LATER).
The idea that solar noon should have any influence on this is just stupid.
and the localities will sort out what works best for them for operating hours, school start times, etc.
Nope, that's a disaster. Standardising working hours across much of any area is where we got to as a society because it was the best way to manage
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It is the norm in lots of places around the world. Even inside a single country like Australia. They have summer time daylight savings in the southern states while the northern states stay at their respective Standard Times all year round.
No one has permanent daylight savings though.
Just use UTC (Score:3)
Then make business and school and sports hours whatever makes sense for the daylight.
Which varies anyway depending on whether you're on the east or west edge of a time zone. And whether you're at low or high latitude.
We might need some sort of portable device everyone could carry to keep track of hours. If only such a thing existed.
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Oh god, that sounds like the worst of all options. It's 11am somewhere in the world, can you guess right now if the schools there are open or not? You get on a plane and visit another country (I know Americans calm down it's not as scary as you think), do you now what general business hours are?
I know this is Slashdot and we all got shoved into lockers at school and want our retribution, but I don't think forcing non-nerds to wear calculator watches is the answer.
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It's 11am somewhere in the world, can you guess right now if the schools there are open or not?
Why would you care?
And how does DST help anyway? My kids schools all started at different times. I'm pretty sure they re-used the same busses. The bus would pick up the first group of kids and take them to high school, then come back and pick up the junior high kids, then come back and pick up the middle school kids, then come back and pick up the elementary school school kids. DST was of no use whatsoever in knowing what time any given bus was going to pick up my kid or what time any given school started o
So many options... (Score:2)
The time change induces stress and literally kills people. Not changing time might make northerners depressed from lack of morning light...
You know what? We have artificial lighting and spend most of our time indoors anyway. Encourage broad spectrum home and office lighting and use UTC with a fixed local longitudinal adjustment.
Countries that do not change clocks use ST (Score:4, Informative)
Even though some regions or countries stay on a shifted time offset year-round (which might look or feel like being "ahead" like daylight saving time), standard time is legally and geographically considered the baseline time zone for those areas. They simply choose not to participate in the biannual clock adjustments.
Countries & Regions That Do Not Change Clocks
Most of Asia: This includes major industrialized nations like China, India, Japan, and South Korea, as well as most of Southeast and Central Asia.
Most of Africa: Almost the entire African continent stays on a single standard time year-round.
Parts of the Middle East: While countries like Iran and formerly parts of the Levant have experimented with it, places like Turkey and several neighbors maintain fixed times.
Parts of Europe: Iceland, Belarus, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan do not practice seasonal time changes. (The European Union has debated abolishing the practice entirely, but member states still currently shift together).
Much of South and Central America: Countries like Argentina, Brazil (which abandoned nationwide DST a few years ago), and most of their neighbors remain on permanent standard time.
Re: (Score:2)
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Your post would be much shorter if you listed the places that still use DST instead. LOL
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Even though some regions or countries stay on a shifted time offset year-round (which might look or feel like being "ahead" like daylight saving time), standard time is legally and geographically considered the baseline time zone for those areas. They simply choose not to participate in the biannual clock adjustments.
Countries & Regions That Do Not Change Clocks Most of Asia: This includes major industrialized nations like China, India, Japan, and South Korea, as well as most of Southeast and Central Asia.
Most of Africa: Almost the entire African continent stays on a single standard time year-round.
Parts of the Middle East: While countries like Iran and formerly parts of the Levant have experimented with it, places like Turkey and several neighbors maintain fixed times.
Parts of Europe: Iceland, Belarus, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan do not practice seasonal time changes. (The European Union has debated abolishing the practice entirely, but member states still currently shift together).
Much of South and Central America: Countries like Argentina, Brazil (which abandoned nationwide DST a few years ago), and most of their neighbors remain on permanent standard time.
Erm... notice a pattern there?
Most of these nations are equatorial or not that far off it. Most of them between the 26th parallels. As you get closer to the equator, there is less difference between the hours of daylight between summer and winter, as you get further you get a greater differential.
In Perth, Western Australia (36 S) there's about a 3 hour difference, in London, UK (51 N) there's an 8 hour difference and this difference does not neatly line up around 12 PM so if you had permanent GMT yo
Personal time (Score:3)
I don't think we've adequately explored the possibilities of individual time zones. Each of us carries a pocket computer, which can be tuned to whatever zone we wish to be ours. Shoulder-mounted high intensity LEDs could allow us to establish a personal zone of daylight around us at a time of our own choosing. Biphasic sleep? No problem! And of course VR goggles with a good light seal could ensure personal night as well, with the added bonus of a great view of the Milky Way even in the most light-polluted of cities.
I suppose the goggles would have to be peril-sensitive as well, given possible objections of any nearby luddites to my light cannons at 03:00.
Re: Personal time (Score:2)
Fine just pick one already (Score:2)
If it's ST then so be it, change the standard workday from 8 to 4 which I know isn't as good of a Dolly Parton song but we'll learn to love it.
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I've never had a 9 to 5 job. I have done 8 to 4. And also 7:30 to 4, And 7 to 3:30.
The local stores related to agriculture already keep different summer hours and winter hours, so just pick a time and stick with it.
I'm up at 47 N by the way.
Not a favorite for Alberta, did it anyway (Score:2)
Alberta had a referendum on whether citizens wanted permanent DST and the result was, "no." But it was always something that the PC government wanted for some reason so in their wisdom decided to do it anyway. I'm fairly confident that a year from now Albertans will overwhelmingly hate it, just as they did in 1974 when it was last tried in the US. Sunrise at close to 10am isn't going to be loved by most people. While most people hate time changes, they will hate permanent DST in the winter even more. Hope
This is mixing two ideas (Score:3)
One is the clock
The other one is the schedule
The clock is arbitrary
So is the schedule
There is absolutely no reason to start work or school at 8:00
If we all used UTC, we could schedule work or school at any time
Why does it matter which way we go? (Score:2)
Here's a whacky idea (Score:2)
Those poor poor Spanish (Score:2)
The the idea that this is some major issue is really undermined by the width of existing timezones. Go drive across the state border and ask the first person you meet if they are less healthy and more mentally harmed than you are.
God knows the happiest and healthiest people in the world are in Scandinavian countries, and they don't see morning light for half the year regardless of what timezone they have. But no doubt someone will jump on this result to push their own personal preference.
Re: Those poor poor Spanish (Score:2)
Mental disorders (Score:2)
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if it was about mental health we would shift time (Score:2)
A morning person wrote this article (Score:2)
Different fields attract people with different circadian rhythms. What percentage of software engineers are morning people? The field is so heavy on night owls, you cannot chalk it up to chance. When I was in college, half the computer science classes would tell you on the first day, "ignore what the course catalog says, this class will be meeting at 9pm" and nobody complained.
Conversely, every sleep researcher I've ever met is a morning person. I know they have a lot to teach society, and I try to believe
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I, an aggressively non-morning person, desperately need that morning light.
And since you mentioned classes, I had math first thing in the morning (between 8 and 9am) from 8th grade all the way through college. My textbooks were all soaked with drool from me sleeping in each class. I
Location location location? (Score:2)
Simple question: If you’re on the eastern or western edges of timezones, then DST / ST can be vastly different in terms of their effect. Curious why that isn’t talked about? I’m actually for just locking in a time but I know it’s influence by what ‘side’ of the timezone I am on. I also know there is no perfect solution.
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100% agree to to disagree (Score:2)
I looked into this earlier this year. 100% of those surveyed want the annual time changes to stop, so the time is the same year-round.
However there is almost an exact 50 / 50 split of which way should be the permanent way. So 50% of folks will be unhappy whichever one is chosen.
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Re:The Ultimate Bike Shed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: The Ultimate Bike Shed (Score:2)
Re: The Ultimate Bike Shed (Score:2)
Bike sheds not bikes.
Re: The Ultimate Bike Shed (Score:2)
the bike shed he was thinking of is underground with no windows. I think it's a fallout shelter, or safehouse, or mom's basement. Snap out of it , you're reading Slashdot
Re: The Ultimate Bike Shed (Score:2)
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I believe that's the point.
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Which is obvious garbage. Small fluctuations are nothing. If you want to talk about stress from bad sleeping times then rotating shift work is the motherload. Those jobs are real killers.
Re: Studies show the total opposite (Score:2)
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So, traditional Japanese time. [japanupmagazine.com]
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Kids walking into school buildings in the dark.
Instead, we could have kids playing outside after school in the dark. At least when they are walking* to school, I know where they'll be.
*People actually make their kids walk these days? If you don't drive them in the Land Rover, Child Protective Services will be called.