Saving Daylight Savings
This Sunday, we all set our clocks ahead an hour. If you didn't, that's the reason why you've been an hour late all week. Unfortunately, my body still seems to be an hour off. I know why we have Daylight Savings, but is there any reason it has to be like it is? Since Bush got to change when we start DST, I figure when I'm President, I'll give it another overhaul.
Instead of losing an entire hour in one night, which no one likes, let's break up the change and spread it out over a number of days. Why can't we move ahead 5 minutes a night for 12 days? Or 1 minute a night for 60 days? I do realize that having to change all your clocks every night for 60 days might be a pain, but I guarantee you wouldn't notice missing a minute out of a day.
And why does the change have happen so suddenly. The sun doesn't just one day rise an hour earlier. Doesn't it make more sense to adjust our time to maximize daylight throughout the year?
My proposal: On the first of every month, from January through June, at midnight (or perhaps 1 am like we do now) we will move our clocks 10 minutes forward. By June, we will be a full hour ahead. The median date, March 1, ends up being ahead of the current date we change our clocks, so theoretically we would actually conserve more energy with the new system. We could do the reverse for the next 6 months, but I actually like getting a whole extra hour all at once in the fall, so I would leave that how it is.
Instead of losing an entire hour in one night, which no one likes, let's break up the change and spread it out over a number of days. Why can't we move ahead 5 minutes a night for 12 days? Or 1 minute a night for 60 days? I do realize that having to change all your clocks every night for 60 days might be a pain, but I guarantee you wouldn't notice missing a minute out of a day.
And why does the change have happen so suddenly. The sun doesn't just one day rise an hour earlier. Doesn't it make more sense to adjust our time to maximize daylight throughout the year?
My proposal: On the first of every month, from January through June, at midnight (or perhaps 1 am like we do now) we will move our clocks 10 minutes forward. By June, we will be a full hour ahead. The median date, March 1, ends up being ahead of the current date we change our clocks, so theoretically we would actually conserve more energy with the new system. We could do the reverse for the next 6 months, but I actually like getting a whole extra hour all at once in the fall, so I would leave that how it is.
posted by Dorshorst at 13:34
1 Comments:
I came up with a different proposal a few years back where we would start with our clocks six hours ahead in the winter, move the clocks back an hour every month, until they were six hours behind, then move the clocks 12 hours back and start over again. We would end up losing a day from the calendar.
I liked the idea of continually getting extra hours, and then getting an extra half day, but I realize that this would really mess everything up.
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