Atlantic Standard Time

One potentially small victory versus daylight savings?

Should Massachusetts switch to Atlantic Standard Time?

“I wasn’t prepared for it,” Emswiler said. “I just think it’s miserable when the sun sets at 4 o’clock. . .  On a cloudy day, it starts getting dark at 3:50-something.”
He eventually penned a column for The Boston Globe in 2014, listing some of the potential benefits of extending Atlantic Standard Time, one hour ahead of Eastern Standard Time, through the fall and winter. After all, he argues, we’re already essentially in that time zone for most of the year, through daylight saving time.

Much Of The World Doesn't Do Daylight Saving Time. How Come?

Much Of The World Doesn't Do Daylight Saving Time. How Come?

One More Weird Thing...
Some places play with time for their own reasons. A resort in Madagascar called Anjajavy wanted the sun to rise later and set earlier, so they created their own time zone — an hour ahead of the rest of Madagascar — for a later sunset hour. Visitors have to change their watches to Anjajavy time. Says the hotel's website: "A time peculiar to Anjajavy the lodge was created so that we are better adjusted to the natural cycles of the reserve and the village. Therefore, at 5 pm lemurs naturally join us in the Oasis garden to take advantage the foliage. It is fresh hour, right in time for the "5 O'clock tea."

via NPR 

The Movie

Kindred Spirit

We all know how I feel about Daylight Saving Time.

This guy feels it too:

Often I see folks use an EST or an MST during Daylight Savings Time.  It never feels appropriate to explain this to them at the time.  So, I’m hoping by explaining it to everyone here that no one ends up feeling singled out or criticized.

Difference is I always feel the need to call people out on it for the betterment of society.

Daylight Quiz

I got 80%.

LA Times: Daylight Saving Time Quiz

(And I really hope double daylight never comes to pass.)

Retire Daylight Savings

via The CNN 10: Ideas

This gets my vote!

Yes, we can turn back time. There's a way to end seasonal clock confusion and eliminate jet lag. All it would take is doing away with daylight saving and splitting the continental United States in two time zones: East and West, an hour apart.

Retire Daylight Savings & Create 2 Time Zones -- West & East

The original article CNN references gets even juicier...

The US needs to retire daylight savings and just have two time zones—one hour apart

It would seem to be more efficient to do away with the practice altogether. The actual energy savings are minimal, if they exist at all. Frequent and uncoordinated time changes cause confusion, undermining economic efficiency. There’s evidence that regularly changing sleep cycles, associated with daylight saving, lowers productivity and increases heart attacks. Being out of sync with European time changes was projected to cost the airline industry $147 million a year in travel disruptions.

Daylight Parenthetical

Loved the parenthetical in this LA Times story about the eclipse.  Basically says "Yes, I know we're in Daylight Time now, but we won't be then..."

Those of us on the West Coast will have to get up early if we want to see the total eclipse as it happens. The Slooh broadcast begins at 3:45 a.m. PST Sunday. (We will have just set our clocks back as we moved from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time). 

Semi-related:  I was flying back to LA from the World Series celebration in Boston on Saturday and my plane was delayed multiple times due to the incident.  At one point I was supposed to land at 1am.  Then I got delayed again and was scheduled to land at 1:55am -- which basically meant I was still landing at 1am...

Time travel is awesome...DST is not.

Coachella Standard Time

Coachella, you're killing me!

Update:

Guess they saw this post!  Might be the fastest ever correction in my years of calling people out for misuse of PST.

Semi-Annual and/or Sporadic Thoughts on Daylight Savings

My favorite holiday!

• This is the first daylight savings since I bought a new atomic clock for the kitchen. I wanted to stay up and watch it set itself, but forgot and went to bed 15 minutes before it should have happened :(
• When our office manager sent out a "spring forward" reminder on Friday, I was tempted to hit reply all and give one of my classic "standard time" rants. But I didn't...
• Someecards.com seems to be an appropriate outlet for that sort of thing:

Some Daylight Card

A little belated, but...

DST, XKCD Style

(via xkcd)

DST - 56 Ways

EDIT: Feb 2023. Blogger took down this 14 year old post for violating content guidelines. Best guess was one of the acronyms cited here could make a bot think it was a different kind of blog. I tried redacting part of the word before resubmitting in case that was in fact the technicality that triggered the takedown. (Blogger mods—if it’s something else please comment with the specifics!)

Rather than recount my annual rant, this year I thought I'd present a list of other DSTs.

I suppose this could also be titled "Acronym Overkill"

DST Daylight Saving Time
DST Destination
DST Destination Host
DST Direction De La Surveillance Du Territoire (French MI-5)
DST Department of Science & Technology
DST Dedicated Service Tools
DST Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc
DST Dexamethasone Suppression Test
DST Drill Stem Test (Oil Field)
DST Decision Support Tools
DST Doença Sexualmente Transmissível
DST Digital Signature Trust (Zion Bankcorporation)
DST Discrete Sine Transform
DST Double-Shell Tank
DST Drive Self Test
DST Dynamical Systems Theory
DST Directorate of Science and Technology (US CIA)
DST Data Storage Technology
DST Decision Support Template
DST Deep Space Transponder
DST Dynamic Stress Test
DST Digital Signature Trust Company (Salt Lake City, UT)
DST Dynamic Solvency Testing (actuarial/insurance)
DST Deployment Support Team (US Army)
DST District Support Teams (Army Corps of Engineers)
DST Data Storage and Transfer
DST Doctor of Sacred Theology
DST Deputy Sheriff Trainee
DST Data Support Team
DST Double Set Trigger (target rifle feature)
DST Direct Support Team
DST Defense Suppression Threat
DST Data Systems Test
DST Diode Split Transformer
DST Device Signal Tag
DST Data Systems Technician
DST Dynamic Screen Transparency
DST Daughters of Saint Thomas
DST Dedicated System Time
DST Downsized Tester
DST Disaster Services Technology (American Red Cross)
DST Daily Slot Tournament (seen in casino ads and signs)
DST Digital Serial Transceiver
DST Dependent Student Travel
DST Defense & Space Talks
DST Denford Small Tools
DST Dirty South Thugs
DST Dissemination Services Team
DST Dog*** Style Tattoo (tattoo on the small of the back)
DST Designated Surface Target
DST Digital Switch Terminal (Alcatel)
DST Digital Serving Test Center (AT&T)
DST Discarding Sabot with Trace
DST Division Summary Tool
DST Define Substrate Technology (assessment of the potability of drinking water)
DST Dominion Soil Thunder Bay (Canadian engineering firm)

(via The Free Dictionary)

Daylight Savings Time: Why?

Almost time for my favorite rant again. But this time there's something new to contribute:

Study: Daylight Saving Time actually raises utility bills

...While lighting bills were reduced, air-conditioning units had to run more often, because people were home on hot afternoons when they'd otherwise be still at the office. Heaters had to be run on cool mornings, too, when people got up and it was still dark outside.

You also have to love the bold statement contained in this quote:

Professor Matthew Kotchen, who pioneered the study, noted, "I've never had a paper with such a clear and unambiguous finding as this."

I'm all for killing DST, as it makes for a tidy end to my pet peeve. But that would mean 2 less Towform posts per year...

Daylight!

Things that make me happy:

PDT meets Y2K

You already know about my daylight savings time pet peeve.

This year there are 4 more weeks for the PST idiots to be wrong.

At least this article is hilarious.

Clocks' Early Spring Forward May Bring About a Few Falls

Excerpts:

When few people were paying attention in August 2005, Congress lengthened daylight saving time by four weeks in the name of energy efficiency. The change takes effect this year -- on March 11 -- and it has angered airlines, delighted candy makers and sent thousands of technicians scrambling to make sure countless automated systems switch their clocks at the right moment. Unless changed by one method or another, many systems will remain programmed to read the calendar and start daylight saving time on its old date in April, not its new one in March.

"After building bunkers in the desert for Y2K, we're not even talking about this, and it's happening in less than two months," said Matthew Kozak, an information technology specialist at Rutgers University who monitors numerous sites and discussion groups.

Microsoft cautions that some of its older products -- including Windows XP SP1 and Windows NT4 -- will require manual updates. The company's Web site provides detailed instructions on how to update various products, although it is pushing against the deadline in some cases. Updates and tools "are being developed and tested," the Web site says, and some will "be released through early March 2007."

As a fallback, Microsoft urges customers to double-check meetings scheduled during the four weeks being added to daylight saving time this year.

"Users should view any appointments that fall into these date ranges as suspect until they communicate with all meeting invitees to make sure that the item shows up correctly on everyone's calendar both internally and externally," Microsoft says on its Web site.

If there is a sweet ending to the debate, it will occur Oct. 31. Candy manufacturers lobbied for years to stretch daylight saving time to encompass Halloween. Not only will children have more daylight hours to consume treats, they contend, but they will be safer zipping across streets in their costumes.

Standard Daylight Time

Remember the famous interview question about Daylight Saving Time? It started because this has been a pet peeve of mine for years.

Why do companies feel compelled to list their hours of operation in "Standard Time," ie EST, MST, CST, PST?

Do they realize this technically makes the hours wrong for 6 months out of the year (soon to be over 7 months), including right now?

A short list of offenders:

Alienware
BellSouth
Delta Airlines Group Sales
Kyocera
Phizer
Sony
Harvard University

Would people really get confused without the 'S' in there?

Maybe they really stay open an hour later during the summer months, but hope that the confusion will prevent phone calls since they don't expect the consumer to do the time zone math to figure it out. "Let's see, open until 10pm PST. It's 10:30pm now but we're in daylight time, so it's 9:30pm standard time. They must still be open!"

Is it over concern for friends in Arizona or Hawaii (and formerly Indiana) who may get confused due to non observance?

Less is more. Clarity is better. Just ET/MT/CT/PT will suffice.

This concludes my rant of the day. Back to normal life in Pacific Time.