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Medicine Government

American Sleep Medicine Professionals Call For an End to Daylight Saving Time (cnet.com) 130

CNET reports: Twice a year most of the U.S. stumbles around in confusion while missing appointments, resetting their clocks and grumbling about daylight saving time. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine thinks we should knock that nonsense off and just stick with standard time year-round. The AASM released a position statement this week as an accepted paper in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine calling for an end to daylight saving time...

The professional organization represents sleep medicine professionals and accredits sleep medicine facilities. "Permanent, year-round standard time is the best choice to most closely match our circadian sleep-wake cycle," said lead author M. Adeel Rishi, a sleep specialist with the Mayo Clinic and vice chair of the AASM Public Safety Committee. "Daylight saving time results in more darkness in the morning and more light in the evening, disrupting the body's natural rhythm."

Studies have pointed to health risks connected to daylight saving time and the sleep disruptions it causes. The AASM called out stroke risks, stress reactions and an increase in motor vehicles crashes, particularly in relation to the springtime clock change. "Because the adoption of permanent standard time would be beneficial for public health and safety, the AASM will be advocating at the federal level for this legislative change," said AASM president Kannan Ramar in a release on Thursday.

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American Sleep Medicine Professionals Call For an End to Daylight Saving Time

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  • by RandomUsername99 ( 574692 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @02:43PM (#60453524)

    Standard time sucks. Permanent DST FTW.

    • by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @02:48PM (#60453540)

      Yes!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      If we're not going to get rid of the abomination of time zones, can we at least stick a definition of time zones based on geography? My location is physically UTC -8. Permanent Daylight Saving Time would just make things more awkward.

      • What are you talking about? Physical definitions of timezones are arbitrary and only loosely tied to solar noon. I'd rather not have shitty hours of light because you are tied to some meaningless shit set up when the British Empire still mattered.

        • Timezones were originally established by American railroad companies, not by the British Empire.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            UTC is based on GMT, which defined 0 as Greenwich, England cause it mattered at the time. Thanks for playing.

            • And the metre was one ten-millionth of a great circle from the North Pole to the equator passing through Paris.

              Arbitrary physical standards tend to have definitions influenced by the biases of their inventor.

            • That doesn't change the fact that your time zone is (loosely) based on when it's solar noon at your longitude, and even if the Prime Meridian ran through Tokyo and the IDL ran through the middle of the Atlantic, you'd still be the same number of hours behind the UK as you are now, regardless. Thanks for playing.

              • I mean, Solar Noon is at 1:30pm in some areas of teh US right now. No one is crying. There's no value to solar noon being at noon anymore.

                Why would I want it to be true?

                • 'Nobody is crying' because most people know pretty much nothing about the body's clock cycles that is accurate. Sleep medicine is one of the places where you will find people who are very much on the ball; neuro and biopsych are also good because the mechanisms are very much their field. Short version is, your body uses the sun as a timeserv, and expects a morning ping barring things like blindness and the genetic equivalent of a broken script. Depending on various factors, not getting that ping close en
                  • I literally don't understand what you're saying. Care to explain what "your body uses the sun as a timeserv, and expects a morning ping" means? How does that relate to solar noon aligning with actual noon?

          • by chr1973 ( 711475 )

            Not according to wikipedia [1], that says standard time was first adopted in Great Britain:

            The first adoption of a standard time was in November 1840, in Great Britain by railway companies using GMT kept by portable chronometers. The first of these companies to adopt standard time was the Great Western Railway (GWR) in November 1840. This quickly became known as Railway Time. About August 23, 1852, time signals were first transmitted by telegraph from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Even though 98% of Great Britain's public clocks were using GMT by 1855, it was not made Britain's legal time until August 2, 1880. Some British clocks from this period have two minute hands—one for the local time, one for GMT.

            Standard time zones for the US was a few decades later, e.g. an inauguration in 1883:

            Charles F. Dowd proposed a system of one-hour standard time zones for American railroads about 1863, although he published nothing on the matter at that time and did not consult railroad officials until 1869. In 1870 he proposed four ideal time zones (having north–south borders), the first centered on Washington, D.C., but by 1872 the first was centered on the meridian 75 W of Greenwich, with geographic borders (for example, sections of the Appalachian Mountains). Dowd's system was never accepted by American railroads. Instead, U.S. and Canadian railroads implemented a version proposed by William F. Allen, the editor of the Traveler's Official Railway Guide. The borders of its time zones ran through railroad stations, often in major cities. For example, the border between its Eastern and Central time zones ran through Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Charleston. It was inaugurated on Sunday, November 18, 1883, also called "The Day of Two Noons", when each railroad station clock was reset as standard-time noon was reached within each time zone.

            before that:

            Timekeeping on the American railroads in the mid-19th century was somewhat confused. Each railroad used its own standard time, usually based on the local time of its headquarters or most important terminus, and the railroad's train schedules were published using its own time. Some junctions served by several railroads had a clock for each railroad, each showing a different time.

            [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        • > I'd rather not have shitty hours of light because you are tied to some meaningless shit set up when the British Empire still mattered.

          Do you mean you have a shitty job? Change your life circumstances until it meets your needs.

          • Well, I mostly can work whatever hours I want as long as I get shit done. But coordination with other people (including at my job) is based on them being available typical first-shift style hours (e.g. 9-5). Things being open is based around the idea that most people who work in offices work 9-5. Etc.

            Like, I cannot go see a movie at 8am in a theater because they don't show them. Nor will a nice restaurant serve me dinner at midnight just cause that's what I want.

            See, no man is an island.

            • by Rockoon ( 1252108 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @08:11PM (#60454224)

              Like, I cannot go see a movie at 8am in a theater because they don't show them. Nor will a nice restaurant serve me dinner at midnight just cause that's what I want.

              Because you dont live in the right place. Have you considered Las Vegas? Not only can you do that stuff 24/7, even during this pandemic, its also cheap.

              • Except that even in Vegas that's not true. While I can get some food whenever, there are plenty of restaurants that close by 2am. And the movie theaters I saw only had 6-8 shows a day, so no 8am shows. Try going to a Vegas strip show with a celebrity when you want to see outside the 6pm-12am block during the week.

    • It would just be reassigning the time zone, not "permanent daylight savings time".
    • If you want "permanent DST" then how about you just adjust your timezone? It still doesn't solve the DST problem of the time no longer having much to do with the Sun. But it's a lot simpler than keeping track of who arbitrarily is changing their clocks because they can't be bothered to just change their business hours.
      • The whole point of timezones is that business hours are consistent, I'd rather live in a world where my cellphone gets a new time from a tower and that informs what's going on than where I have to ping Google with every real world request for a store hours so they can build a better profile on me.

    • by Flentil ( 765056 )

      Standard or DST, doesn't matter at all, they just need to pick one and stop making us change the clocks twice per year.

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      Ditto, but northern people hate it. Do we need a civil war? ;)

    • Standard time sucks. Permanent DST FTW.

      Nonsense! Just park the time at the halfway point between Standard and DST. It will make adherents to both approaches equally happy and equally miserable. Sounds like the perfect compromise to me.

    • "Let's take a bad idea and double down on it!" You can get up an hour earlier without involving everyone else.
    • by Wolfrider ( 856 )

      --I second the motion, RandomUsername99

      / move to approve and adjourn

  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @02:53PM (#60453550)

    As if we don't have enough to argue about already this year.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29, 2020 @03:15PM (#60453618)

    Look, I know it may sound hyperbolic, I know it may come off as alarmist, but the pragmatic view of this time change is that it's physically abusive behavior we're all inflicting on ourselves each year.

    The implications for a surprisingly negative impact on heart health impact *alone* should be enough for us to reconsider this bizarre ritual.

    Let's stop this thing, it doesn't make sense anymore, if it ever did.

  • Most folks say they would kill Hitler if they could go back in time. I would rather go back to 1867 and take out George Hudson. His bug hunting days would be over before they even started.
  • by ebonum ( 830686 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @03:18PM (#60453628)

    Standard time places the sun at its max closest to noon. Noon should be between 11am and 1pm.

    Daylight saving time results in noon occurring as late as 2pm in places. For example:
    https://www.timeanddate.com/as... [timeanddate.com]
    Noon is at 1:50PM today. That is really late.

    Keep the clock and the sun in sync. Adjust your schedule as needed.

    • The problem with Odessa TX isn't Daylight Saving Time, it's that if you want to center solar noon it belongs in the Mountain Time Zone. Even if you go standard time year round you will still have solar noon occurring at 1pm or later.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      Why would I care about the clock and the sun staying in sync? We used to do that before time zones let us standardize.

      Why do you think most people can adjust their schedule to whatever they want. Most people work 9-5 cause that's what's always been done. Seems easier to change clocks to that than to insist that everyone else renegotiate work hours.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @05:47PM (#60453942) Homepage Journal

      Better yet make it so that sunrise is always at the same time. Then you wake up gently with the sun every day, instead of hours too early or in the dark.

      Japan actually used to have a system like that. The clocks were quite elaborate.

    • "Noon" is wrong pretty much everywhere. Learn when noon actually is in your town and celebrate that moment.

      (This adjustment could make noon more special!)

    • Standard time places the sun at its max closest to noon. Noon should be between 11am and 1pm.

      Daylight saving time results in noon occurring as late as 2pm in places. For example: https://www.timeanddate.com/as... [timeanddate.com] Noon is at 1:50PM today. That is really late.

      Keep the clock and the sun in sync. Adjust your schedule as needed.

      If we're celebrating "noon" as late as 2PM in areas, then clearly that term has become as pointless as your argument. Noon is nothing more than a reference to 12PM now. And pretty much always has been, especially for humans who live on the part of the planet where it is even more extreme. Try on 24-hour daylight for a few months....what value is the term "noon" again?

      Adjust your thinking. Clocks are irrelevant in relation to the sun. The military proved this with Zulu time decades ago. Perhaps it's ti

  • Time Has a Meaning (Score:4, Informative)

    by SlashbotAgent ( 6477336 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @03:18PM (#60453630)

    Noon , specifically solar noon, is when the sun is at its highest point for the day.

    In the U.S. and much of the world, the closest approximation to solar noon is Standard time in your time zone.

    Standard time is the only one that matters and the only one that should be observed.

    • Back when I had a job, I was on call call around the clock.

      Noon? I have finally seen it after 20 years that I am unemployed. Same for Dawn and Sunset.

      The clocks are not the problem but our shitty working conditions. I wish I could get a reasonable job but every employer is an asshole.

      • I wish I could get a reasonable job but every employer is an asshole.

        This belief is self-fulfilling. You can't be wrong, if you don't want to be.

    • by g01d4 ( 888748 )
      Sunrise and sunset are more important than noon as rapidly changing illumination from sunlight signals the body to make adjustments. From a human clock standpoint you want to keep these times fairly constant over the course of a year. Look at this [timeanddate.com] graph for your latitude to see how well ST\DST does this compared to maintaining just one.
      • The length of the day, and thus sunrise and sunset times, is a function of the time of year and your latitude. The only way to keep all of those constant over the course of the year is to live within 10-15 degrees of the Equator and to set your clock time such that noon approximates solar noon and leave it that way year around.

        That being said, it's not sunrise and sunset times gradually changing over the course of the year that causes problems--it's the twice-a-year discontinuity caused by switching our clo

    • Noon , specifically solar noon, is when the sun is at its highest point for the day.

      In the U.S. and much of the world, the closest approximation to solar noon is Standard time in your time zone.

      Standard time is the only one that matters and the only one that should be observed.

      I propose unlinking the two. Celebrate noon for what it is - a special moment in each day. If we stop fiddling with the clocks then people could learn when their own noon really is.

    • Standard time is the only one that matters and the only one that should be observed.

      Why? Do you have to do some sort of special dance at noon to get rewards in your afterlife?

      Or is it an even more pointless assertion with even less substance than that?

  • This was actually tried back in the 1970s as an energy saving tactic.

    It didn't save energy and everybody hated it. Newspapers were full of stories about kids waiting in the dark for their school buses seeing their puppies run over before their very eyes.

    Seriously.

    • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

      by QuietLagoon ( 813062 )
      }}} -- Newspapers were full of stories about kids waiting in the dark for their school buses seeing their puppies run over -- {{ ==== Why were the puppies allowed to be running around in front of the cars?
    • by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @03:45PM (#60453698)

      Liar. I was there.

      DST was *instituted* in 1970, and it is what caused a lot of confusion. Energy studies by California and Indiana have shown DST doesn't save energy.

      It's pointless circle jerk

      • I'm a bit confused, I think you might be calling me a liar but we seem to agree on almost all the main points.

        It was 1973, not 1970 - but that isn't wrong just less precise.

        You were there, and so was I (but I didn't say so, I perversely liked waiting for the bus in the dark).

        We agree that it didn't save energy.

        I said it was widely unpopular, you were silent on popularity. Perhaps we differ here. Congress got enough heat that they called off the experiment early.

        You called it a circle jerk, I didn't but I do

        • it didn't happen the way the emergency measure stated, was repealed by October 1974.... and now we even extend DST beyond that to November. So we never gave it a full year shot.

    • by lenski ( 96498 )

      ...And repeating a phrase from upthread...

      Every kid out in the country spends the months around the solstice waiting in the dark even with DST.

    • Around here, there would be no essentially no difference. Everyone except highschool is always waiting on the bus in the dark. So that they can run the same buses twice, high school here starts at 8:30am and elementary and middle start at 7:30am, so the buses have to drop the kids at school by no later than 7:15am, with 7am being more typical. As most bus routes are generally about 30-45 minutes by the time they make all their stops, this means that most kids need to be at their bus stop somewhere around
  • by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @03:35PM (#60453662)
    ... in a seemingly endless debate of whether or not daylight saving time should be eliminated. How much time is wasted on this debate?
  • by hackingbear ( 988354 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @03:50PM (#60453710)

    I have heard of this loud complains against day light saving time since who remembers when, yet nothing has been done to fix it. On the other hand, China tried DST starting in 1986 and then abandoned it in 1992 [wikipedia.org]. What this wikipedia article doesn't mention is why. It was because nobody in China liked DST and every school, business and lower government evaded it by altering the schedule by half hour, so eventually the central government decided to listen to the people and discontinue DST(*). Here in the States where we claim to have a democratic political system, nothing has been done for all these years.

    Food for thought.

    (*) and no need to argue the issue of China having one time zone because it actually have two. Xinjiang is on two parallel time zones [wikipedia.org], especially designed for the Uyghurs.

  • Aside from the drawbacks already known by all, it is annoying to those of us with lots of mechanical clocks. I wonder though whether, aside from the current time zones, based on longitude, it might make sense to have pseudo time zones based on latitude? Standard time (or DST) might work fine at 30 degrees North, but not so well at 50.
    • Aside from the drawbacks already known by all, it is annoying to those of us with lots of mechanical clocks.

      Meh. Mechanical clocks need adjustment every couple of weeks anyway.

  • ...are pretty much the same people as those insisting the millennium didn't change as of year 2000.

    You may be technically right, but everyone else is able to cope without the whinging, thanks.

  • I call Bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "Twice a year most of the U.S. stumbles around in confusion while missing appointments, resetting their clocks and grumbling about daylight saving time. "

    In the age of cell phones and IoT-Everything that automatically adjusts the time, this is simply bullshit. Literally nobody has an excuse for "stumbling around in confusion." It's horse shit, and people just looking for something else to bitch about.

    If anything, make DST permanent. There's no earthly reason our Standard time system needs to result in darkn

  • Twice a year most of the U.S. stumbles around in confusion while missing appointments,

    Most? A handful at best. I have yet to meet anyone in my decades of existence who "stumbles around in confusion while missing appointments" after the time change.

    This is what hysteria looks like.

  • Greenwich Mean Time for everyone.
    What difference does the number make when you perform an activity?

  • by debrisslider ( 442639 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @05:24PM (#60453902)

    Think DST is tough? There's a rare condition out there called Non-24 sleep/wake disorder. It's where a body's circadian rhythm is not, in fact, 24 hours like the rest of the human race, generally closer to 25 hours or similar. That's essentially DST every single day. I actually use DST to explain it to people - you'd hate it if every day your body was one hour off. In two weeks, your natural "wake up time" would be 6 pm instead of 6 am, then a week later it would be 1 am. And it's not just a sleep-related issue - the circadian rhythm affects EVERYTHING, like your immune system, your cardiovascular system, your digestion, everything. You can't fight your circadian rhythm forever; there is no way to stay on the same daytime/nighttime schedule as everyone else - and unlike graveyard shift workers, you never get to acclimate, and there's not enough caffeine in the world. I know someone who has it - the only thing that really helped was either one-time doses of Ritalin for a few hours of mental boost, or a drug developed by the military to keep soldiers awake called Provigil, which is also not a everyday solution.

    Most of the people that have it are blind, with damaged eyes - the theory is it is caused when melanopsin receptors in your eyes. Just like rods and cones, you have special cells in your eyes that are sensitive to daylight and send signals to your brain to regulate your melatonin (sleep hormone). There's a drug, Hetlioz, that is like an antidepressant for melatonin that is used to treat it in blind people. But there are some truly unfortunate people out there with sight who have it too, for unknown reasons, and it doesn't work for them.

    Circadian rhythms are not something to fuck around with.

    • And then there are those of us who have very little in the way of a circadian rhythm at all. I work in IT, my current home office has no windows (which is how I prefer), and I rarely have any idea whether it's light or dark outside. I usually work til anywhere from 1am tor 5am most days and then go to bed and sleep for 8 or 9 hours, typically without waking up more than once and it is rare that it takes me more than a couple of minutes to get to sleep regardless of when I go to bed (honestly, I rarely rem
  • Non-24 is mostly people that are blind, as they no concept of time based on the sun.
    My cat still think breakfast is 5:30a lunch 10:30a dinner 6:30p, she lives in CST not DST.
    And I walked to the school bus in the dark, and we would got out to eat in the dark in winter.
    DST did not exist.
    So teach your snowflakes to grow a spine and walk in the dark, there are no buggie-men, and stay on CST.
  • by ThurstonMoore ( 605470 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @07:32PM (#60454170)

    It's like the people in charge are keeping DST just to be dicks, no one I've ever talked to supports it.

  • Hence, who will pay for lobbyists to lobby for it?

  • Once a year, managers could get over their tendency to have a panic attack if someone is a few minutes late for work.

    That would relieve much of the stress that causes the harm.

  • ...for years, nobody has brought forward any good argument in defense of DST - and yet, nothing changes and all initiatives to change something get bogged down in this parliament or committee or whatever.

    Yes, it's an example of a disfunctional political system where nothing gets done if there isn't a lobby behind it to... support it or buy a relevant number of politicians, pick whichever fits your view of how clean or corrupt our democracy is.

  • So the reality is the governors of the three west coast states, as well as Premiers of British Columbia and the Yukon have all pretty much agreed that the preferred solution is to go to year around DST. This is what I'd prefer, pretty much because it means that in the dead of winter, I at least have some daylight as I drive home from work in the evening.

    • by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      This is what I'd prefer, pretty much because it means that in the dead of winter, I at least have some daylight as I drive home from work in the evening.

      As someone who works 2pm-11pm and commutes, I have to ask why is this so important?

  • It's funny, Congress has such low approval numbers, and with one simple law they could make a lot of people happy, but they don't do it.

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. - Oscar Wilde

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