Some New England lawmakers propose leaving Eastern Time

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Some New England lawmakers propose leaving Eastern Time

Matt O'brien, Associated Press

Updated 10:12 pm, Thursday, March 10, 2016

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — As most Americans brace themselves for losing an hour of sleep this weekend, some corners of the country are considering bold alternatives to daylight saving time.

California has a bill that would ask voters to abolish the practice of changing clocks twice a year. Lawmakers in Alaska and nearly a dozen other states are debating similar measures. Some lawmakers in New England want to go even further, seceding from the populous Eastern Time Zone and throwing their lot in with Nova Scotia and Puerto Rico.

"Once we spring forward, I don't want to fall back," said Rhode Island state Rep. Blake Filippi, who hopes the whole region will shift one hour eastward, into the Atlantic Time Zone. "Pretty much everyone I speak to would rather have it light in the evening than light first thing in the morning," he said.

Opponents of daylight saving time argue that traffic accidents, heart attacks and strokes increase when we change time, and that contrary to popular belief, it does not save electricity.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/New-England-lawmakers-propose-seceding-from-time-6882072.php

[MADem]

1. I agree with this. Schools are starting an hour or more later in many places.

Apparently the time change reduces absences and raises grades. A little extra sleep never hurts.

And I'll take evening light over 'dawn's early' any day of the week.

[muriel_volestrangler]

28. You're trying to take the good parts of both time zones

If you want more "evening light", then what you're advocating is getting up, going to work, and coming home, earlier relative to the sun. But if you think "a little extra sleep never hurts", then you're advocating doing things later, relative to the sun.

Of course, the attempt to have it both ways is precisely what daylight savings time is about. It gives you longer evenings when that's possible; and when it isn't (ie winter), it gives you one more hour in bed, relative to the summer timetable.

[CTyankee]

33. I truly hate not having light when I get up. I feel like I'm getting up in the middle of the night.

I don't mind it getting dark when I'm getting dinner ready cuz I have a glass of wine and relax and it seems normal...

[muriel_volestrangler]

34. I agree - and DST is an attempt to allow people to get up depending on sunrise

It should be timed so that sunrise never becomes later than it is in midwinter.

[oldandhappy]

2. ho ho ho Go New England!

I'm very tired of back and fore. Tho both animals and I are stabilized re meals, 6 pm in the summer and 5 pm in the winter. But why have to think about it? Dumb

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. A lot depends on where you are in a time zone

If you're on the eastern end, you get "early" sunsets and late sunrises. On the western end of a time zone, the opposite is true, early sunrises and late sunsets. I remember reading that the sun sets at 4:15PM at Boston at the winter solstice, which is worse than our 4:29.

I hate the switching back and forth, too. If I were Time Zone Czarina, I'd move the clocks ahead 30 minutes next weekend and keep them there forever. That would give everyone more daylight in the summer and winter and the days of darkness in the morning would not last as long.

[subterranean]

9. You mean early/early, late/late, don't you?

On the eastern end of the time zone, both the sunrises and sunsets are earlier (and vice versa on the western end).

I like your idea of splitting the difference with the 30-minute time change!

[Thor_MN]

10. "early sunsets and late sunrises"?

That's not possible... That would mean the eastern portion of a time zone would have shorter hours of daylight and the western portion longer hours.

The eastern end of a time zone has earlier sunrises and earlier sunsets.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

24. That's what i get for posting at 11:18PM

Yeah, you're right

[-none]

4. We have a 24 hour day.

Every 15 degrees the clock changes one hour. The international agreed upon line, the reference, for the start or zero hours runs through Greenwich England.
We need to go back to this standard and then leave it alone. Stop jacking the clocks back and forth twice a year.
I much prefer getting up when it is light out and going to bed after it gets dark. This so-called daylight savings time saves nothing.
All it does is fool millions of people into thinking the sun comes up later and set later. In other words, t is a fraud perpetuated on people the world over.

[Tab]

18. But, but.... then our iPhones would be out of sync

Jus' saying

[-none]

21. Actually they wouldn't.

Time signals are sent to them to keep them in sync.

[Tab]

27. I know how it works

'jus jokin'

Couldn't come up with a better joke on the fly.

Actually they get their time sychronization from cell towers and/or GPS, and if you're on wi-fi, I assume its the packet time stamp that gets sent over the wifi as supplied by the cable company / ISP

The hidden underbelly of the joke was that I recently lost my iPhone, so it's not in sync with anything, but no one was expected to know that.



- Tab

[LanternWaste]

25. I don't think anyone is unaware that we change clock settings

I don't think anyone is fooled by, or unaware that we change clock settings rather than being victimized by some epic, bi-annual solar event inflicted onto us by the universe.

And, as Daylight Savings Time is neither a deceit nor a breach of confidence, I don't think 'fraud' is appropriate or accurate term.


"is a fraud perpetuated on people the world over..."
We do seem to place great passions on the benign, giving them so much more melodrama than they acutally warrant.

[muriel_volestrangler]

29. What latitude do you live at, for interest?

Being able to get up when it is light out and go to bed after it gets dark, all the year round, mainly depends on your latitude.

[-none]

31. Used to be North Dakota.

Now Kansas City. Same problem both places.

[muriel_volestrangler]

32. The problem in the USA is they use daylight savings for too long for those latitudes

Here's a chart of sunrise and sunset for Kansas City for the year: http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/kansas-city-kansas.html



With the 'standard' time in winter (ie GMT+6, which is the 'correct' zone for longitude 94.6 degrees W - it should cover 82.5 to 97.5 degrees), your latest sunrise is about 7:30. They shouldn't let DST go on so long (or start so early) that it pushes sunrise after that - so it ought to end in mid-October at the latest, for Kansas City. Places further south either need it ending earlier still, or not to switch at all.

But, for you, if you want an 8 hour fixed time in bed that starts after it's properly dark, and ends after it's properly light, you have to get up after 7:30am, even without any switching. Any time after then, with 8 hours sleep, would also have you going to sleep after it's dark.

(If all the continental US used DST, then the furthest south area, around Miami, ought to show that it should last from the end of March to the end of September. The USA ought to move the start of DST to the date Europe uses - last Sunday in March - and both continents ought to use the last Sunday in September to stop.)

[rusty quoin]

5. I lived in many US regions.

I lived in Massachusetts and was notorious for forgetting to change clocks. But when I think about childhood there and playing late into summer nights, there was nothing like it. Even as an adult the time change seemed right.
I also lived in Indiana, the last state before Central Time. EST is wrong there. I was in the military in Illinois...central.

For me it's personal...how you feel. Now states like Indiana want east coast time for business reasons.

[LittleGirl]

15. ugh Indiana

it's the pits with Eastern time zone there. When I was growing up there, we never switched the clocks, just like AZ and never had that b.s. But MI and IL changed time so it was in our best interests to keep track of what time it was in Chicago and by the Lake (Michigan). I visited last summer and the damn sun didn't set until nearly 10pm. That's just wrong.

[rusty quoin]

16. Yeah...it's just wrong.

[SoapBox]

6. California!

Yes! Get rid of that damned change...it's ridiculous.

It's one bloody hour...we will all adapt to the natural cycles of light and dark.

[SheilaT]

7. The main problem with staying on DST year round would be that

in the middle of winter the sun won't rise until at least 8 am, depending on exactly where you are in the time zone.

Apparently, none of the people who propose this recall this country's little experiment with year-round daylight savings, and how really terrific it was for kids to be waiting for school buses or walking to school in full dark.

I never get why people are so exercised over this. In the winter the sun may as well set early, and we get earlier daylight in the morning. In the summer, depending on where you live, it's nice to have longer light in the evenings. Arizona famously opted out of DST after one year. I was living in Tucson then, and when it's 105 degrees, you're not going to be spending much time outside anyway, so why bother.

[Quixote1818]

8. What do they do in Alaska, Canada, N. Europe, Russia?

Many places have darkness most of the day in the winter and the kids get by fine.

[SheilaT]

23. There's a large difference between those places, which have always had

a late winter sunrise, and the majority of this country where winter sunrises simply aren't that late.

After a few years people would adjust, but I do recall that there were several instances of kids waiting for the school bus in the dark being hit and killed by motorists. That's because until that winter of DST, there had never been kids waiting in full dark for the school bus. Where it routinely happens is a different story.

I recently read something where someone thinks we should do away with time zones entirely. The whole planet should be a single time zone.

Apparently I'm the only person in this country that likes having standard and daylight time. I do think the daylight savings part should be a shorter part of the year, maybe from mid-April to the beginning of September. The excuse for extending it to past Halloween is so that the trick-or-treaters aren't out in the dark, except that sunset is still early enough that the kids are out a good two hours, maybe more, in the dark. Plus, trick-or-treating in daylight just isn't as much fun.

[muriel_volestrangler]

30. Northern Europe uses daylight savings and normal, except Russia; most of Canada does too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_by_country



Russia used to switch; in 2010 they switched to permanent daylight savings, then in 2014 to permanent 'normal' time, since they hated being on permanent daylight savings.

[MH1]

35. I don't recall that "little experiment" but I DO recall living in AZ,

which does not use daylight savings time, and I believe I was much healthier for it.

The issue is the disruption of the body's circadian rhythms twice a year. It has shown to have negative health effects.

Personally I hate switching the clocks twice a year. My body gets adjusted to the time and I can roll with it however. Except for the lurch of an hour change twice a year.

[SheilaT]

36. Two days a year.

People act like the switch from one to the other is like crossing eight time zones all at once. It's simply not that big a deal.

What I didn't care for in AZ was how freaking early it got light in the summer.

I know I'm not the only person who has lived in various climates and time zones, or the only person who ever crosses a time zone or several, which is why I'm so bewildered by how much vitriol is expended on this topic.

[zentrum]

11. I'd like to abolish it.

It really messes with our body-time, which has adapted to a certain cycle for six months.

Best for health and well-being would be to follow the sun but that's impossible.

[Yallow]

12. Eliminate Daylight Savings Time

It screws up my, and my wife's sleep big time.

What ever the benefit, the drawbacks is far worse.

Set the time where things are the most efficient, and leave it there FOREVER.

[LarryNM]

19. +1,000 n/t

[C Moon]

13. Yes! Leave it at Spring Foward! nt

I've written my senator a few times about this, and of course got a generic reply.
I don't blame her, because it probably sounded like a nut-case request with all the important matters on hand—but none-the-less, let's get rid of the bs time change.

[camelfan]

14. Here's John Oliver's take on it...

https://goo.gl/tsjrSV

[PoliticAverse]

20. So who is lobbying Congress in favor of keeping daylight savings time? Follow the money... n/t

[FSogol]

22. Reminds me of:

Connecticut Man Visited By Being From Another Time Zone

NORWALK, CT—Past met present Monday when Norwalk resident Tony Shearing was visited by his cousin, Paul Kulwicki, who resides in the state of Missouri in the U.S.'s Central Time Zone--a strange, alternate dimension where events occur one hour earlier than they do in Connecticut. "I suggested that we watch Seinfeld," Shearing told reporters, "and my cousin started going on about how Seinfeld ended a half-hour ago. Then I remembered that 9 p.m. in our world is like 8 p.m. in his science fiction-like realm." Deciding when to eat dinner was similarly bewildering for the cousins, requiring them to reach a compromise time of 6:30, when Kulwicki was not very hungry, yet Shearing was unusually so. "Watching Letterman at 11:35 with my cousin from the future is disorienting," Kulwicki said. "I hope I can acclimate myself to your bizarre shadow world."

http://www.theonion.com/article/connecticut-man-visited-by-being-from-another-time-4262

[underpants]

26. Marking. I love these type threads on DU

I always learn something I didn't know.