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For Once, Canada's Right and We're Wrong
R. Alex Whitlock
The US wants to
extend Daylight Savings:
Currently in Canada and the U.S., daylight time runs from April through October. The exception in Canada is Saskatchewan, which keeps its clocks the same throughout the year.
Congress believes the extension would trim energy costs by cutting the need for artificial light in the evenings.
We've got it all wrong, time of day should be geared towards when the sun comes
up, saving us the dredgery of having to wake up to darkness. From what I understand, studies have shown that we (particularly young people) get up too
early, not too late. I know that for me, getting up to sunlight is one of the few advantages of the 16-hour days of Idaho summers. Eel even has a light that simulates sunlight (coming on gradually).
Observations
Opposite opinion:
I believe that time should be optimized to give us optimal [day]time in the evening.
I can handle getting up in darkness. Having grown up in Milwaukee, I did it for at least 7 months out of the year, and when I was a teenager working as a caddy, I did it 12 months out of the year. It just worked out that way.
What pisses me off is the idea of getting up, dragging myself off to work, and coming home not to get a lick of daylight in because the entire time I spent at work, I was indoors and got no natural light.
Oh, by the by, where'd Eel get her lamp? Me wantee.
You're wrong and I'm right.
Why don't we just turn the sun on and off like a lamp then?
Wait a minute...the latest the sun rises anywhere in this country this time of year is about 6:30am with daylight savings. I don't think many Americans are waking up before sunrise. And if they do, they either work strange hours or commute too far for their own good. *nudge nudge* :-)
And you're telling me you'd rather do without daylight savings and have the sun rise at 5:30am?
Any links to these studies that show we get up to early? If anything, I would think that we don't get *enough* sleep, and would argue that we need to be going to bed earlier rather than sleeping later.
How is moving the sun back going to help people go to sleep earlier? How is the sun coming up later going to help us get up earlier?
I don't really have a problem with Daylight Savings right now, though the sun needs to be doing more than peeking through to get me up. Right now the sun gets me up naturally at 7-7:30 or so, so I guess the sun needs to be up for thirty minutes to an hour.
But on the whole, yes, I would rather the sun start coming up at 5:30. This isn't about July, though, where I'm flexible. It's about March and October, the months that are now going to be on daylight savings. It'll be pitch black for much past 6:30.
I don't have time to do a search of the studies that I've heard, though here's one making that case for teenagers (
http://www.cbsnews.com/stor...).
The difference between waking up to sunlight and waking up to an alarm is night and day. I find it odd that we expect to circumvent nature by denying this for the sake of a little more sunlight in the evening.
I'm really kinda liking Adam's idea. The closest we got now is the Happy Lamp of Camille's.
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