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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2022-11-04 5:38 PM, John Hawkinson
via tz wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:CALwqobkeQsNfBRuKHyqo=K4mryD6xvm+=FKqjAp6Ef2T7kpVsA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
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<div>Today's Washington Post carries a story, various
headlined "As the end of daylight saving time nears, a House
bill to make it permanent has collapsed" and also "<span>Clock
runs out on efforts to make daylight saving time
permanent," by Dan Diamond.</span></div>
<div><span>I am surprised it merited a push notification, but
it did.</span></div>
<div><span>Anyhow, it looks like the prospects for this bill
to change daylight savings in the US are quite bleak.<br>
</span></div>
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</span></div>
<div><span>Here is an allegedly paywalled-free link <a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="https://wapo.st/3TajkJo">https://wapo.st/3TajkJo</a>
(via WaPo's "gift article" mechanism)</span></div>
<div><span><br>
</span></div>
<div><span>Of course technically the bill could still pass
during the lame-duck period after mid-term elections, but
story handicaps that as extremely unlikely.<br>
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<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature">--<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:jhawk@alum.mit.edu" target="_blank">jhawk@alum.mit.edu</a><br>
John Hawkinson<br>
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Another article in the New York Times:<br>
<br>
Why Do We Change the Clocks, Anyway?<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/daylight-saving-time-questions.html">https://www.nytimes.com/article/daylight-saving-time-questions.html</a><br>
<br>
Why Do We Change the Clocks, Anyway?<br>
The twice-yearly ritual has roots in cost-cutting strategies of the
late 19th century. A bill to make daylight saving time permanent has
stalled in Congress.<br>
By Alan Yuhas<br>
Oct. 31, 2022<br>
<br>
Hello. You may be here to learn when is daylight saving time, or
what is the time that we’re saving, or why does daylight saving time
even exist.<br>
<br>
Hopefully, this will answer those questions, and maybe a few more
that hadn’t crossed your mind, like what do the railroad companies
of the 19th century have to do with it and whether golf course
owners have an interest in your sleep habits.<br>
<br>
Here goes.<br>
<br>
When is it?<br>
Unlike other, easier-to-remember federal events, like the Fourth of
July, in the United States the clock change is tied to a roving day:
Since 2007, it has taken place on the second Sunday of March, when
clocks spring forward an hour, and the first Sunday of November,
when they go back. (In 2022, those dates are March 13 and Nov. 6.
The clocks spring forward again on March 12, 2023.)<br>
<br>
In Britain, France and Germany, the clocks change on the last Sunday
in March, and the last Sunday in October. (In 2022, those dates are
March 27 and Oct. 30. The clocks spring forward again in these
countries on March 26, 2023.)<br>
<br>
American lawmakers in 1966, writing in the Uniform Time Act, decided
that the right time of day for this shift was “2 o’clock
antemeridian,” better known as 2 a.m.<br>
<br>
What is it?<br>
To farmers, daylight saving time is a disruptive schedule foisted on
them by the federal government; a popular myth even blamed them for
its existence. To some parents, it’s a nuisance that can throw
bedtime into chaos. To the people who run golf courses, gas stations
and many retail businesses, it’s great.<br>
<br>
“When it’s dark or there are limited hours after work, people tend
to go straight home and stay there,” said Jeff Lenard, a spokesman
for the National Association of Convenience Stores, an industry
group. “When it’s lighter, they are more likely to go out and do
something, whether it’s in the neighborhood, a local park or some
other experience. And that behavior shift also drives sales, whether
at a favorite restaurant or the local convenience store.”<br>
<br>
OK, if it wasn’t farmers, whose idea was this?<br>
The idea is to move an hour of sunlight from the early morning to
the evening, so that people can make more use of daylight. Benjamin
Franklin is often credited as the first to suggest it in the 18th
century, after he realized he was wasting his Parisian mornings by
staying in bed. He proposed that the French fire cannons at sunrise
to wake people up and reduce candle consumption at night.<br>
<br>
Over the next 100 years, the Industrial Revolution laid the
groundwork for his idea to enter government policy. For much of the
1800s, time was set according to the sun and the people running the
clocks in every town and city, creating scores of conflicting,
locally established “sun times.” It could be noon in New York, 12:05
in Philadelphia and 12:15 in Boston.<br>
<br>
This caused problems for railway companies trying to deliver
passengers and freight on time, as nobody agreed whose time it was.
In the 1840s, British railroads adopted standard times to reduce
confusion. American counterparts soon followed.<br>
<br>
“There was the threat of federal intervention in all of this, so the
railroads decided they were going to police themselves,” said
Carlene Stephens, a curator at the National Museum of American
History. Scientists were also urging a standardized system for
marking time, she said.<br>
<br>
In North America, a coalition of businessmen and scientists decided
on time zones, and in 1883, U.S. and Canadian railroads adopted four
(Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific) to streamline service. The
shift was not universally well received. Evangelical Christians were
among the strongest opponents, arguing “time came from God and
railroads were not to mess with it,” Ms. Stephens said.<br>
<br>
The introduction of time zones prompted fears of a kind of
19th-century Y2K. “Jewelers were busy yesterday answering questions
from the curious, many of whom seemed to think that the change in
time would generally create a sensation, a stoppage of business, and
some sort of a disaster, the nature of which could not be exactly
ascertained,” The New York Times reported in November 1883.<br>
<br>
Once the time zone business was settled, it wasn’t long until
Franklin’s idea for daylight saving was refashioned for the
industrial world. In the 1900s, an English builder, William Willet,
urged British lawmakers to shift the clocks to reap economic
benefits. Parliament rejected the proposal in 1909, only to embrace
it a few years later under the pressures of World War I. In 1916,
Germany was the first European nation to enact the policy in an
effort to cut energy costs, and over the next few years several
Western nations followed suit. In the United States, the federal
government took oversight of time zones in 1918. And in March of
that year, the country lost its first hour of sleep.<br>
<br>
But why?<br>
One of the oldest arguments for daylight saving time is that it can
save energy costs. There have been many conflicting studies about
whether actually it does.<br>
<br>
A Department of Energy report from 2008 found that the extended
daylight saving time signed by George W. Bush in 2005 saved about
0.5 percent in total electricity use per day. Also that year, a
study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the
shift in daylight saving time, “contrary to the policy’s intent,”
increased residential electricity demand by about 1 percent, raising
electricity bills in Indiana by $9 million per year and increasing
pollution emissions.<br>
<br>
Energy savings was precisely the argument President Richard M. Nixon
used in 1974 when he signed into law the Emergency Daylight Saving
Time Energy Conservation Act amid a fuel crisis. But what started as
a two-year experiment didn’t even make it the year. On Sept. 30,
1974, eight months after the experiment began, the Senate put the
country back on standard time after widespread discontent.<br>
<br>
Daylight saving time still has fervent supporters, especially among
business advocates who argue it helps drive the economy.<br>
<br>
Who wants to end it?<br>
The European Union and several U.S. states, including California,
Florida and Ohio, are either considering dropping the shift or
taking steps to do so.<br>
<br>
In March, the Senate suddenly and unanimously passed legislation to
do away with the twice-yearly time changes, making Daylight Saving
Time permanent. But the House has yet to find consensus,
Representative Frank Pallone Jr., chairman of the House Energy and
Commerce Committee, said in a statement.<br>
<br>
“There are a broad variety of opinions about whether to keep the
status quo, to move to a permanent time, and if so, what time that
should be,” he said. “These opinions don’t break down by party, but
instead by region. We don’t want to make a hasty change and then
have it reversed several years later after public opinion turns
against it — which is exactly what happened in the early 1970s.”<br>
<br>
If the current iteration of the bill passes in the House and
President Biden signs it, the change would take effect in November
2023.<br>
<br>
This fall, Mexico’s Senate followed suit, sending its president a
bill to end daylight saving time for most of the country, but carved
out an exception for the area along the United States border.<br>
<br>
China, India and Russia do not use daylight saving time. Nor does
Hawaii or most of Arizona. (The Navajo Nation, in northeastern
Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, does observe.) Several U.S.
territories, including Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam and the
United States Virgin Islands also do not apply daylight saving
time. <br>
In 2020, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine called for the
abolition of daylight saving time. In a statement, the academy said
the shift, by disrupting the body’s natural clock, could cause an
increased risk of stroke and cardiovascular events, and could lead
to more traffic accidents.<br>
<br>
“Not only are we sleep deprived but we’re trying to force our brain
into a little bit more of an unnatural sleep schedule,” said Dr.
Rachel Ziegler, a physician in the sleep medicine department at Mayo
Clinic Health System. “If you ask any sleep specialist, I think most
of us would be in favor of a permanent schedule.”<br>
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