Congress wants to extend daylight savings time
 

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/04/....ap/index.html

"The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use,"

Congress is planning on changing the Earth's rotation so that the sun stays out longer?

the two-month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day.

The country uses about 20 million barrels of oil a day.

So instead I'll just have to turn on all my lights when I'm getting ready in the morning because it's still dark out?

I don't care what Congress does with Daylight Saving time. I just want a law that all clocks, including those in cars and on stoves, VCR's, TV sets, radios, microwaves and everything set the same way.

Think about it.

Yesterday I wore at a watch I had not worn since before we sprung forward. I had forgotten to adjust it and walked around thinking it was 9 when it was 10. I know this has nothing to do with the topic of the thread, but I just wanted to share.

I really do like the longer days with daylight savings. I find the lack of sun in the fall and winter depressing. The sun makes me happy. :)

I agree - I've realized I require large amounts of sunshine in order to grow. ;)

lol! You made me giggle. :)

I'm still confused about all this...like kddani mentioned how does extending day light savings make the sun stay out longer?

It doesn't. It just means that we won't need lights as early in the evening.

Of course, we'll need them for longer in the morning.

WHY DOESN'T CONGRESS JUST SHORTEN THE WORK DAY? If we only had to work 5 or 6 hours a day, four days a week, we'd have more time to enjoy the sunshine.

AMEN!

Either that, or give us siesta time in the afternoon.

We're not France.

The only down side to this is my kids think they get to stay up later because the sun is still up. When it is dark at 6pm, I can cinvince them that it is really really late at 730, therefore they can start getting ready for bed!

:(

I wish we were.

Spain too.

Anybody who extends DST doesn't have kids, as my sis Wendi noted. It's IMPOSSIBLE to get kids to bed at 9 or 9:30 when it's still broad daylight out then. Personally, I prefer having it be light in the mornings when I'm trying to wake up and then dark when it's bed time. Its hard enough to get out of bed in the morning, but at least if the sun is streaming through the window, it's not so bad.

I'm for the shorter workday/siesta solution myself. :)

This has been done before. I believe that at one point in the '70s the country stayed on DST all year long. In the winter, kids were waiting for school buses in the dark.

This is very true. I don't have kids of my own, but... When I was about 3 years old, my parents and I took a vacation in Canada in June. We were far enough north that the sun didn't set until 10:30 or so. My parents were trying to convince me to go to sleep at 8 or so, and I refused because the sun was still high in the sky. They closed the curtains of our hotel room and told me the sun had gone down. I walked right over, yanked the curtains open, and said "No it hasn't!" Hehe, I've always been cheeky and stubborn like that :D

More and more repercussions of this are coming to mind. Microsoft will have to come up with patches for their operating systems because they're coded to change the time automatically based on the April/October thing.

I just bought my kids alarm clocks (I'm trying so hard to get them up in the mornings!) and my son's knows the time automatically (microchipped with the info) and automatically adjusts for DST also. You have to code which time zone you're in initially (Eastern is default) and have to manually mess with it if you live in Indiana or Arizona.

I'm just missing how this would save anything. I'm going to use the lights either first thing in the morning or last thing at night either way.. no difference. I'm up from 5:30 am til 11 pm either way.

Dee

I think their thinking is that OVERALL, more americans are up later in the evening than are up earlier in the morning. (I dont know how they would quantify that though)

I also read one time that in WWII the US (and England) was on War Savings Time, which was TWO hours ahead of Standard Time. That wouldda meant here in San Antonio, in the summer, the sun wouldnt have set until about 10 PM, which is really late here.

The other thing people are forgetting is that the summer days are much longer than the winter days. So even if DST is extended through the end of November, the sun would set at 6:30 instead of 5:30. Still early enough to get the kiddos to bed at a respectable hour.

Yes, but it's the morning -- when we're trying to get kids out of bed and ready/off to school -- that would be the problem. And I would submit that it would not just be inconvenient for parents; it's just plain dangerous for kids to be boarding school buses in the dark.

Oh, I remember how horrible that was because I was student teaching at that time. I think going to school in the pitch dark (almost) made everyone depressed.

Looks like the measure passed out of committee today. They said on CNN that it was expected to pass with ease as part of a larger energy bill. It would extend DST by two months. It would take effect immediately. DST would begin at the start of March and run through the end of November.

Sounds cool to me I guess.

Several Series of Thoughts on DST! Sounds like a Bug Spray!!!

1. Kids would not be standing in the dark when the bus came to take them across town to school. But Dark when they came Home.

2. The Farmers needed to be able to work in the Fields later to grow food for us. Oh, SHIT, someone foregot to tell the Cows!:rolleyes:

3. The Legislatures need more time to go out after a hard day of toiling on how to screw us to hit the links to relax.


I am not sure, But I vote for # 3!:mad:

this figures with the people who are in congress today.

thats all I'm saying

:rolleyes:

They tried to extend DST in the Louisiana Legislature for the whole year. It did not pass. But I guess it would be awkward being the only state to have year-round DST

When I was in high school in MI in the late 90's, we were still waiting for buses in the dark (the bus came at 6:55 AM).

The real problem with school starting when it's too dark out is that SCHOOL STARTS TOO EARLY. Why does anybody think kids learn anything when they have to get up before the ass crack of dawn? School should never, ever, EVER start before 8:00. EVER.

Could we get corporate america to abide by the same rule? 7 am meetings that run for an hr and a half when you already have a 45 minute drive really kill a person...

I rad the article today on cnn.com regarding the chage. There was a comment that reps from farming states saying that "it would effect the livestock" HOW?????
There is still the same about of daylight- no matter what the clock says-- if the farmer works sun up to sundown- how does the effect the livestock?
What am I missing?

Damn Wendi it wasnt the friggen Farmers or the Hens and Cattle, it was the Dim Wits in Congress that wanted to play Golf!!!!!:mad: Oh, said Farmers or Kids Going to School getting Bussed!

Where Ya From Girl!;)

Oh, Never Mind.:cool:

God Damn City Farmers of TV never been Milking Cows and Plucking Eggs!:mad:

To the tune of a different beat...
 

Circadian cycle...

The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the brain, also know as the master regulator biological clock, responds to daylight and nighttime. Since we humans are daylight creatures, our active transcription factors, (BMAL, clock, per, tim, etc.) are either at its height or depth depending on our own genetic makeup... I forget which way these things go.... Anyhoo, these factors are thought to either activate or inactivate various other internal organ clocks that are used to for food consumption and energy--namely those coming from the liver, the stomach and the colon... That is why you unload, then drink, then eat...

So, I guess congress is inadvertantly trying to make themselves "regular"???

In my school district (and I've heard this to be true in others as well), it was an issue of not having enough buses. So they have to stagger the start times for high school, middle school, and elementary so that they have enough buses and drivers to transport all the students.

I have read studies that indicate high school students need to start later, but most districts choose to start early anyway.

They haven't thought about the impact of the millions of computers that are programmed to automatically adjust for DST. They are saying that when this passes, it will go into effect immediately. If that's a week before DST is due to expire, computers all over the country are going to be screwed up. People can't get security patches installed in a timely manner. They aren't going to get this fixed in a short amount of time.

Hawaii has never observed Daylight Savings Time.

I do hope they keep it that way.

You mean seriously we can't turn off DST on our computers? I have a Mac at home and I can check a box for DST or no-DST and adjust the time that way. Same with my Windows computer at work just now. I double clicked the clock, went to the Time Zone screen, then "unchecked" the "Automatically adjust clock for daylight savings time changes". Hit OK, and my clock backed up an hour.


PsychTau

Sure, at home you can. At work, where you have to be an administrator to access that function, you have 19,000 users (in my corporation) who will have screwed up clocks and some of the applications they use require that the time be synchronized with the server that the app is on to work properly. I don't worry much about home users, it's the big corporations that have issues with this kind of thing.

ETA: if you can change your clock, then you have been given access to it by someone. Our desktops are required to be locked down so that nothing can be changed.