Maybe we should leave clocks and time zones alone and just shift work, school,
and service times by 30 minutes?Alexander K.WorldTimeZone.com
-------- Original message --------From: Doug Ewell via tz <[email protected]> Date:
2/20/26 15:59 (GMT-05:00) To: Brooks Harris <[email protected]>, [email protected]
Subject: [tz] Re: Bill for "half-daylight time" proposed in US House Brooks
Harris wrote:> "Permanent Standard Time" would be the least technically
disruptive,> most natural, and consistent with the vast majority of time zones>
which do not observe DST. However this also upsets the current status> quo
practices.Permanent standard time is both your preference and mine, but polls
consistently show it is not even the plurality preference in the US, let alone
the majority preference. Permanent DST invariably leads in polls (but well
under 50% of the total), followed by permanent standard time, then the status
quo.> Most people don't like DST, but they often don't like a change in>
tradition either.Which partly explains the diversity of opinions.> "Permanent
DST" was tried in 1976 [recte: 1974] and reversed in eight> months. I'm
guessing any change would meet a similar fate.I was there, and still remember
(even at 33-some degrees north latitude) the unusually and disruptively late
sunrises. It’s important to note that the main argument that succeeded in
cancelling the year-round DST experiment was the deaths of eight children in
Florida — Florida! — who were struck by cars while walking to school in the
dark. Everyone who argues for permanent DST today either wasn’t there or has
conveniently forgotten history.Americans who argue for permanent DST tend not
to commute to work during the affected morning hours, and tend not to have
young children who walk to school during the affected hours, so the argument
becomes “this would be good for ME; I don’t care what’s good for you.”
Furthermore, they seem to have an unrealistic sense of how much evening
daylight would be recovered. We all love 8:30 pm sunsets in early summer, but
that is simply not going to happen in winter, unless one moves somewhere that
is both near the equator and significantly skewed from sun time (say,
Casablanca).I don’t think the half-hour proposal is ideal. I think it has a
better chance of being adopted than the others, while not being as bad as
permanent DST.--Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org
