An Open Letter
Dear America,
Have fun resetting all those clocks this weekend. Sorry about the hour you lose.
Love, Arizona
PS- we have to have something to make up for Sheriff Joe, and not farting with DST eases the pain a bit. See my article here about why DST is an outdated concept that no longer saves energy -- it turns out that the nature of electricity demand has changed over the last 100 years since DST was first tried. Who would have thought? Anyway, this research essentially demonstrates that Arizona is at the forefront of modern, science-based environmentalism.
Dan:
Laugh now, but come November, many of us will have an extra hour in our weekend compared to you in Arizona!
March 9, 2012, 8:49 amAnonymous Mike:
The one great blessing of DST for Arizonans is that the NFL starts at 10:00 AM and college football at 9:00 AM. Nothing like getting home from the early service at church and eating breakfast in front of the game.
When DST ends and the NFL starts at 11:00 AM it just seems so late
March 9, 2012, 9:02 amROBERT RUDZKI:
it is questionable if dst ever saved energy especially during ww1/2, when ammo and war material plants ran 24/7 feeding the insaitiable armies.
at latitudes above 40 degrees, kids walk to school in the dark during spring and fall.
March 9, 2012, 10:32 amAnother Dan:
Those of us on the tail end of timezones -- I'm on the west coast of Michigan, at the tail end of the Eastern Time Zone -- it stays light in July until after 10. I wake up early. I hate DST. I hate it, hate it, hate it. How am supposed to get my twin 3-year-old boys to bed at a decent time when it's still light out at 10 frickin o'clock!
March 9, 2012, 10:35 amOrion:
I love that the clocks change this week. I love the extra hour of daylight on the back end. Down in lower latitudes it may not matter much, but up here it really helps. You have time to play outside after work and/or dinner. Now when I get up at 5:30 it stays dark longer but I can live with that.
March 9, 2012, 10:51 amFrank Waleczak:
12 years in Seattle (native Arizonan) and I still find this time change business crazy. Twice a year, I have to change 3000 clocks. If nothing else, a little industry standardization on how to do it would be nice. It is amazing how many clocks you have. They should all change by themselves, as the Mobile Phones do, which is my main timepiece anyways.
March 9, 2012, 11:01 amMNHawk:
Most of us don't face 110 degrees after supper, so we don't mind the extra hour of daylight from 8-9pm instead of 4-5am.
March 9, 2012, 11:14 amDrTorch:
Once again, I hope you take the opportunity to demonstrate how a gov't mandate can be so silly. It saves no money, yet it incurs significant costs, it offers no clear benefit, although it provides great trouble...and people have even lost the origin of why the whole thing began!
A perfect case for why gov't should remain small and not go foraging into every area a random bureaucrat thinks is important.
March 9, 2012, 11:25 amDan:
I'm in Chicago, Another Dan, and I have the opposite problem, being at the far east of the Central Time Zone. The sun sets at 4:20 throughout Nov. and Dec, meaning it starts to get dark by 3:30. Extremely depressing.
March 9, 2012, 12:01 pmDan:
DrTorch,
Say what you like about DST - I don't know where I stand overall. But don't make it out like a "random government bureaucrat" mandated it. You know that's not the case. And no one has to go by it. Each state can do what it wants.
March 9, 2012, 12:03 pmDan:
Orion,
I'm with you. It's a huge difference for me, coming home after work and it's still light, able to play with the kids outside after dinner once it's warmer. A huge improvement. And by this time in March, the sun is rising around 6 a.m., waking me up early. I'm glad we're dialing sunrise back to 7 a.m. at least for a little while, though by June it will be rising at 5:30.
March 9, 2012, 12:10 pmDrTorch:
Dan,
Then who is responsible for it? And why? And why has the US Executive Branch changed the weekend it has been implemented?
http://www.masterresource.org/2010/12/daylight-saving-time-central-planning/
http://insidethecapitol.blogspot.com/2006/04/4-14-why-daylight-saving-time.html
Not to mention all the rumors that surround why it was implemented.
March 9, 2012, 1:08 pmmarco73:
DST really wouldn't be that much of an issue, if they'd just select the dates and leave them alone. We had the Autumn date move a couple years ago, and they keep tweaking the Spring dates.
March 9, 2012, 1:45 pmTypically, Congress doesn't understand that someone has to develop, test, and implement the patches and updates on computer systems necessary to handle these changes. I'll be expecting my phone to go off several times Sunday morning, while computer systems report unexpected time anomalies.
Jaycee:
I love daylight saving in Australia. It gives me time in the sun outside after work to do stuff.
I've never heard a 'save electricity' justification for it over here.
Sure, there's a minor inconvenience at the start and end of the period, but it's definitely worth it to me.
March 9, 2012, 3:33 pmChris:
I seem to remember that one of the reasons we(in AZ) voted DST out in the 70s was because it made start-times at the drive-in movies so late(not to mention the lack of desire for more hours of H-O-T). Funny how that worked out, huh?
March 9, 2012, 9:30 pmIGotBupkis, Climate Change Denier and Proud Of It.:
LOOK, it slows Global Warming!! Live with it, People!!
:D
March 9, 2012, 9:52 pmNot Sure:
The reason daylight savings time is silly:
"Those of us on the tail end of timezones — I’m on the west coast of Michigan, at the tail end of the Eastern Time Zone — it stays light in July until after 10. I wake up early. I hate DST."
"I’m in Chicago, Another Dan, and I have the opposite problem, being at the far east of the Central Time Zone. The sun sets at 4:20 throughout Nov. and Dec, meaning it starts to get dark by 3:30. Extremely depressing."
No matter what, some people at one edge or the other of any time zone are going to be inconvenienced by a change (or not) of the clock.
March 9, 2012, 10:11 pmpanzersage:
Thank you very much for the reminder you've saved me a good deal of hassle. I am working in Western Australia(where they don't have DST) as an expat and we have a meeting with Houston scheduled for next week. We had completely forgotten about DST and so were going to be an hour late had I not read your blog post.
March 10, 2012, 5:32 amdearieme:
Oi, panzer, remember that the EU doesn't move for a few weeks yet.
March 10, 2012, 9:28 amSlocum:
The reason it doesn't save energy overall is because, with more hours of light after work and school, people get out and do more things with their lives. Daylight savings time better aligns the hours of sunlight with the hours that people are actually awake (most people are awake 5-6 hours before 12:00 noon and 10-11 hours after noon).
March 11, 2012, 5:14 amJoseph Hertzlinger:
There's even a plan to make it twice as annoying.
March 11, 2012, 1:58 pmJerome Jahnke:
For those of us who live in 'da nort' the solution is NOT spend half the year on CST and half on DST it is spend the entire year on DST. If we had the extra hour in the afternoon it would be just as awesome in the winter as it is in the summer. The changing makes no sense to me, in fact last year Russia did NOT come off DST in the Autumn they just decided to spend the entire year on it.
http://rt.com/news/daylight-saving-time-abolished/
March 11, 2012, 8:31 pmMatt:
DrTorch,
As I recall, the recent change in the dates for the switches between ST and DST were acts of Congress, not the executive branch.
March 12, 2012, 9:43 amBDJ:
Giving up the hour overnight in the spring is definitely painful, but gaining the hour back in the fall is great! To heck with this "spring forward, fall back" stuff! Why doesn't the Government mandate a plan where we could "spring back, fall back" and always gain an extra hour of sleep? That would be soooooo awesome!
What? Of course they can do it! If they can give us all free healthcare, there shouldn't be any problem with this plan...
March 12, 2012, 10:14 amSmock Puppet, 10 Dan Snark Master:
Penn Jillette agrees with you
March 12, 2012, 5:58 pmSmock Puppet, 10 Dan Snark Master:
>> at latitudes above 40 degrees, kids walk to school in the dark during spring and fall
Clearly, Man was not meant to live at latitudes above 40 degrees.
Like, DUH!
:D
March 12, 2012, 6:03 pmAgammamon:
I've never understood why, if you need to synch your day with the daylight hours, you can't just get up at the appropriate time. Why do people need a government mandate to do this?
March 14, 2012, 5:51 pmAgammamon:
"Most of us don’t face 110 degrees after supper, so we don’t mind the extra hour of daylight from 8-9pm instead of 4-5am."
Where I'm at (Yuma), in the deep summer sunrise is just after 5 am and doesn't set until after 7:30 pm. Last year I had to stop a unit pt run in the middle because it was over 90 deg by 0530.
March 14, 2012, 5:54 pmGreg:
Sorry, Coyote, your letter needs to be signed Arizona (excluding the Navajo Nation).
I live in Indiana. I had to deal with no daylight savings time for many years, and sunlight at 5 AM. No thanks. Give me daylight savings time any day!
March 14, 2012, 6:26 pm