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[SirPeebles]

As for DST, the main benefit is more sunshine, which has a non-negligible effect on certain parts of the economy. No idea whether it's a net help or loss.

Except that people can actually just shift the time they do things in the day....

End Daylight Savings. But even beyond this, just get rid of time zones altogether.

I'd never really considered abolishing time zones, but that makes a lot of sense.

[Ozle]

Abolishing time zones causes all sorts of problems.

I remembering reading something once about the problems in china that stem from its one time zone policy

[DStu]

time zones causes all sorts of problems.

ftfy

[WalrusMcFishSr]

Finally figured out 2048...I wasn't working boustrophedonically enough...also, I love the word "boustrophedonically" haha

[GeoLib]

Abolishing time zones is akin to abolishing relative directions in favor of cardinal directions. Both are useful. If I say that it's noon, that immediately gives you a picture of the time of day although it doesn't tell you what time it is in another part of the world. OTOH, using exclusively local times for flight information always drives me nuts because I always have to do all kinds of timezone conversions. People should use UTC more frequently, but abolishing local time entirely seems extreme.

[blueblimp]

Abolishing time zones would be great except for one big problem, which is having the date switch in the middle of the day. It'd make it really awkward to say, for example, "Friday" and have the listener know what you mean. It's already confusing enough when you're awake at midnight and the date rolls over, and it'd be much much worse if it flipped during standard work hours.

[Kirian]

Can we stop changing our clocks? Is this still a thing that has any value?

Given the increase in medical and traffic issues occurring twice a year, I'm pretty certain it has negative value.

Increase in medical and traffic issues?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/03/08/when_is_daylight_saving_time_it_starts_march_9_and_it_s_bad_for_your_health.html

Increased rate of heart attacks the week after DST starts (though a decreased risk at the fall switch).  Decreased productivity after both DST switches.  Major sleep issues for a large percentage of the population.

Large spike in traffic fatalities the Monday after both DST changes (though fewer accidents during DST).

Most research says we should actually be going to year-round DST, at least in the US.

[jonts26]

Abolishing time zones would be great except for one big problem, which is having the date switch in the middle of the day. It'd make it really awkward to say, for example, "Friday" and have the listener know what you mean. It's already confusing enough when you're awake at midnight and the date rolls over, and it'd be much much worse if it flipped during standard work hours.

Clearly we should be abolishing dates too. My love life already has a significant head start there.

[eHalcyon]

Abolishing time zones would be great except for one big problem, which is having the date switch in the middle of the day. It'd make it really awkward to say, for example, "Friday" and have the listener know what you mean. It's already confusing enough when you're awake at midnight and the date rolls over, and it'd be much much worse if it flipped during standard work hours.

Clearly we should be abolishing dates too. My love life already has a significant head start there.

What do you use instead?  Figs?  Apricots?  Kiwis?

[Kirian]

Abolishing time zones would be great except for one big problem, which is having the date switch in the middle of the day. It'd make it really awkward to say, for example, "Friday" and have the listener know what you mean. It's already confusing enough when you're awake at midnight and the date rolls over, and it'd be much much worse if it flipped during standard work hours.

Eh, no big deal, get rid of dates and just use utime()

[SirPeebles]

Abolishing time zones is akin to abolishing relative directions in favor of cardinal directions. Both are useful. If I say that it's noon, that immediately gives you a picture of the time of day although it doesn't tell you what time it is in another part of the world. OTOH, using exclusively local times for flight information always drives me nuts because I always have to do all kinds of timezone conversions. People should use UTC more frequently, but abolishing local time entirely seems extreme.

We could continue using noon to mean "the time when the sun is highest".  It just wouldn't by synonymous with "12pm".

[Awaclus]

Abolishing time zones would be great except for one big problem, which is having the date switch in the middle of the day. It'd make it really awkward to say, for example, "Friday" and have the listener know what you mean. It's already confusing enough when you're awake at midnight and the date rolls over, and it'd be much much worse if it flipped during standard work hours.

I sometimes do the 28 h/6 days week, I don't think that's confusing at all.

[SirPeebles]

Abolishing time zones would be great except for one big problem, which is having the date switch in the middle of the day. It'd make it really awkward to say, for example, "Friday" and have the listener know what you mean. It's already confusing enough when you're awake at midnight and the date rolls over, and it'd be much much worse if it flipped during standard work hours.

Clearly we should be abolishing dates too. My love life already has a significant head start there.

What do you use instead?  Figs?  Apricots?  Kiwis?

We only have a few significant figs.

[Kirian]

Abolishing time zones would be great except for one big problem, which is having the date switch in the middle of the day. It'd make it really awkward to say, for example, "Friday" and have the listener know what you mean. It's already confusing enough when you're awake at midnight and the date rolls over, and it'd be much much worse if it flipped during standard work hours.

I sometimes do the 28 h/6 days week, I don't think that's confusing at all.

Yes, but is it confusing to your mom?

http://xkcd.com/320/

[Witherweaver]

Can we stop changing our clocks? Is this still a thing that has any value?

Given the increase in medical and traffic issues occurring twice a year, I'm pretty certain it has negative value.

Increase in medical and traffic issues?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/03/08/when_is_daylight_saving_time_it_starts_march_9_and_it_s_bad_for_your_health.html

Increased rate of heart attacks the week after DST starts (though a decreased risk at the fall switch).  Decreased productivity after both DST switches.  Major sleep issues for a large percentage of the population.

Large spike in traffic fatalities the Monday after both DST changes (though fewer accidents during DST).

Most research says we should actually be going to year-round DST, at least in the US.

How do you know which one is DST and which one is not DST?

[WanderingWinder]

Most research says we should actually be going to year-round DST, at least in the US.

This is illogical to me. Shouldn't it just be that people should get up an hour sooner? I mean, seriously, the whole thing is just a psychological trick (though I don't mean 'trick' to have any devious connotations here).

Can we stop changing our clocks? Is this still a thing that has any value?

Given the increase in medical and traffic issues occurring twice a year, I'm pretty certain it has negative value.

Increase in medical and traffic issues?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/03/08/when_is_daylight_saving_time_it_starts_march_9_and_it_s_bad_for_your_health.html

Increased rate of heart attacks the week after DST starts (though a decreased risk at the fall switch).  Decreased productivity after both DST switches.  Major sleep issues for a large percentage of the population.

Large spike in traffic fatalities the Monday after both DST changes (though fewer accidents during DST).

Most research says we should actually be going to year-round DST, at least in the US.

How do you know which one is DST and which one is not DST?

Most people don't and just say "Standard time" or "EST/CST/MST/PST" (per applicable) regardless of which it is, leading to great personal frustration for me.


________________________________________________________________________________



As it is now, with timezones, you could have some major event happen in, say China, early morning of March 31, and then people here in the US are responding to that afterwards, in the evening of March 30.

[sudgy]

Most research says we should actually be going to year-round DST, at least in the US.

This is illogical to me. Shouldn't it just be that people should get up an hour sooner? I mean, seriously, the whole thing is just a psychological trick (though I don't mean 'trick' to have any devious connotations here).

My mom has said she would like to always be on daylight savings time.  It stays light later.  It would be more like getting rid of it and making all clocks one hour ahead.

[SirPeebles]

Most research says we should actually be going to year-round DST, at least in the US.

This is illogical to me. Shouldn't it just be that people should get up an hour sooner? I mean, seriously, the whole thing is just a psychological trick (though I don't mean 'trick' to have any devious connotations here).

Can we stop changing our clocks? Is this still a thing that has any value?

Given the increase in medical and traffic issues occurring twice a year, I'm pretty certain it has negative value.

Increase in medical and traffic issues?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/03/08/when_is_daylight_saving_time_it_starts_march_9_and_it_s_bad_for_your_health.html

Increased rate of heart attacks the week after DST starts (though a decreased risk at the fall switch).  Decreased productivity after both DST switches.  Major sleep issues for a large percentage of the population.

Large spike in traffic fatalities the Monday after both DST changes (though fewer accidents during DST).

Most research says we should actually be going to year-round DST, at least in the US.

How do you know which one is DST and which one is not DST?

Most people don't and just say "Standard time" or "EST/CST/MST/PST" (per applicable) regardless of which it is, leading to great personal frustration for me.


________________________________________________________________________________



As it is now, with timezones, you could have some major event happen in, say China, early morning of March 31, and then people here in the US are responding to that afterwards, in the evening of March 30.

I remember being quite confused one summer when I was told that an appointment was at such and such a time, EST.  I got in touch with the person and asked if they had meant EDT, and sure enough they did.

edit:  Personally, if I'm in the US speaking to someone else in the US, I will usually just say Eastern Time or Pacific Time rather than specifying Standard or Daylight.  I mean, it is extremely rare in ordinary day-to-day life that one purposefully sets times in EDT during the winter.

[Tables]

Wow, what did I start? (random stuff is the answer I guess).

Yeah I realised after leaving for church that, whoops, the US celebrates mothers day at another time of year. And the US clocks do change, but do it at a slightly different time. But I draw everyone's attention back to this statement:

I feel like a zombie. Urghh....

So yeah I don't feel too dumb about it.

[blueblimp]

As it is now, with timezones, you could have some major event happen in, say China, early morning of March 31, and then people here in the US are responding to that afterwards, in the evening of March 30.

But without timezones, imagine some unfortunate part of the world where the date flips at what's currently (with time zones) 6am, so "early morning of March 31" could refer to two different mornings. Not much better.

[SirPeebles]

Wow, what did I start? (random stuff is the answer I guess).

Yeah I realised after leaving for church that, whoops, the US celebrates mothers day at another time of year. And the US clocks do change, but do it at a slightly different time. But I draw everyone's attention back to this statement:

I feel like a zombie. Urghh....

So yeah I don't feel too dumb about it.

No worries.  I saw plenty of American friends on facebook freak out when they saw their British friends posting about Mothers Day, worried that they'd forgotten.  Same thing happens every year.  It would be easier if we just abbreviated them to Mum's Day and Mom's Day.

[Kirian]

Most research says we should actually be going to year-round DST, at least in the US.

This is illogical to me. Shouldn't it just be that people should get up an hour sooner? I mean, seriously, the whole thing is just a psychological trick (though I don't mean 'trick' to have any devious connotations here).

Daylight and darkness affect traffic fatalities.  The evening commute starts after sunset here (Toledo, OH) for most of November and January; moving to year-round DST would mean sunset is never earlier than 1800 here.  And on the Eastern seaboard where the sun starts setting as early as 1600 in winter, the effect would be even more dramatic.

[SirPeebles]

Most research says we should actually be going to year-round DST, at least in the US.

This is illogical to me. Shouldn't it just be that people should get up an hour sooner? I mean, seriously, the whole thing is just a psychological trick (though I don't mean 'trick' to have any devious connotations here).

Daylight and darkness affect traffic fatalities.  The evening commute starts after sunset here (Toledo, OH) for most of November and January; moving to year-round DST would mean sunset is never earlier than 1800 here.  And on the Eastern seaboard where the sun starts setting as early as 1600 in winter, the effect would be even more dramatic.

I think the point is that evening commutes aren't triggered by hands on a clock, but rather by the collective social convention of when the work day ends.  One could argue that it makes more sense for the work day to begin an hour earlier in the day, perhaps in order to optimize the synchronization of clocks with the motion of the sun.

In practice, I think it would be easier to a national government to declare permanent DST than it is for each business to individually decided to shift business by an hour.

[Awaclus]

Abolishing time zones would be great except for one big problem, which is having the date switch in the middle of the day. It'd make it really awkward to say, for example, "Friday" and have the listener know what you mean. It's already confusing enough when you're awake at midnight and the date rolls over, and it'd be much much worse if it flipped during standard work hours.

I sometimes do the 28 h/6 days week, I don't think that's confusing at all.

Yes, but is it confusing to your mom?

http://xkcd.com/320/

No.

[sudgy]

So, I was playing derivative clicker that someone posted.  I realized you can sell things by saying you want to buy -1 of them at once.  I was wondering what would happen if you sold something that you had none of...  You can sell it, get -1 of it, and get money for selling it.  I decided to sell a nonexistant Georg Riemann and got a lot of money for it.  I started buying other stuff, then realized that because I had -1 Georg Riemann, I started getting negative Kurt Godels (I don't feel like getting the special o...), which ended with negative mathematicians, which ended with my tick length being NaN.  The game interpreted that as 0 or something, and was constantly updating, giving me a lot of money and proofs.  But I couldn't buy anything...  I had to restart...