

Daylight Savings is for the golfers, says Tuffs U - Duckpaddle2
http://enews.tufts.edu/stories/414/2005/08/31/AnHourHereAnHourThere

======
ricardobeat
No data provided. Here in Brazil DST actually reduces peak energy consumption
by 4% to 5%, reducing strain on energy plants. I'd guess it has a similar
effect on the US.

<http://www.aneel.gov.br/65.htm> (if you can read portuguese)

------
sp332
Tufts, not Tuffs.

~~~
jdludlow
And "Daylight Saving" not "Daylight Savings".

------
thret
I don't see why it is expected to "put our clocks seriously out of sync with
Europe’s, costing airlines $150 million a year". Changing DST shouldn't cause
sync problems. More puzzling, why would such a problem only affect Europe?

~~~
throw_away
this link: [http://crankyflier.com/2007/11/05/how-daylight-saving-
time-i...](http://crankyflier.com/2007/11/05/how-daylight-saving-time-impacts-
the-airlines/) says that it's a combination of how airport slots are
allocated, the interaction between international and domestic connections and
the fact that EU and the US used to be more synchronized in their clock
fiddling.

I wonder how much productivity is lost in IT due to spending time dinking with
TZ configs, which sometimes involve complex interactions between OS and
language platform and are not the easiest thing to test 100% before the switch
happens.

Interesting too is the list of lobbyists for and against the energy policy act
of 2005:

"Lobbyists for this provision included the Sporting Goods Manufacturers
Association, the National Association of Convenience Stores, and the National
Retinitis Pigmentosa Foundation Fighting Blindness.

"Lobbyists against this provision included the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the National Parent-
Teacher Association, the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium, the Edison
Electric Institute, and the Air Transport Association"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005#Chang...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005#Change_to_daylight_saving_time)

------
michaelochurch
It's not about golfers _per se_ , but it never was about the energy savings.
At least, that's not why people want it. It's purely cultural.

Why do I say that it's cultural? It should be obvious. It starts in mid-March
and ends in November. This doesn't make sense in the context of day length
(February has more daylight than November). The standard time period (which is
less than half the year) corresponds with the coldest months.

DST could be year round, but in the winter, it's more of a downer to have
darkness at 8 am than at 5 pm, and outdoor activities tend to be limited to
3-4 contiguous hours because of the cold, so short afternoons aren't an issue.
But in the October-November leaf season, people still want light at 6:00 in
the afternoon, which they wouldn't get without DST. That makes a lot of sense
in the context of, e.g., fall hiking trips.

DST isn't a bad thing. It's bizarre, but most people hate the idea of getting
up an hour earlier. DST tricks everyone into doing this at the same time: to
get up at 6 and just call it 7. It's brilliant how well it works.

For the record, before DST, businesses had summer and winter hours because it
just didn't make sense to expect people to conform to the same clock-time
schedule year-round. DST just regularizes that process.

~~~
anonymous
Back when business had Summer and Winter hours, i.e. before DST was
implemented, we didn't have cheap everywhere-available electricity or
inexpensive lightbulbs, so it kind of made sense. Nowadays it's just stupid -
I'm a programmer with a flexible schedule and I've implemented my own Summer &
Winter hours precisely to avoid the trouble of having to deal with readjusting
my sleeping schedule when DST kicks in. If you can convince management to come
one hour early in the winter (and leave one hour early, too) I'd suggest you
go for it - it's awesome.

As for hiking trips, I don't know what planet you hike on, but my hiking trips
take 10h minimum and 3days usually, and for them I'm more interested in light
availability than some numbers on a zifferblat, so DST makes precisely no
difference.

------
1010011010
No, no. DST is for _idiots_

