Saving what again?

[pphaneuf]

As it turns out, this year's change in the implementation of daylight "savings" ended up not saving anything, and actually just causing extra annoyance. The US Congress seems completely taken by surprise by the fact that changing the time does not magically create more sunlight. That extra hour in the evening, scientists and the Department of Energy reminds them, is actually offset by an hour less in the morning! Imagine that!

Seems like there is not even a measurable energy savings. If anything, the biggest impact of the daylight savings change is that a bunch of computerized gadgets needed to be updated, and people with their Blackberry and Palm not being sure if the time was adjusted (some changed the time manually, only to have it change by another at the old switch-over date, for example).

Down with daylight savings! End the madness!

Comments

Some benefit

[srlamb.livejournal.com]

It was grating to have a "bug" on this opened against my software ("reassign it to Congress!"), but there was some benefit. I still had light when I woke up, and I had an extra hour of light when I got home from work. Not everything has to be about saving energy.

The people who struggled most are the ones using poorly-designed software. In particular, Windows stores file timestamps and keeps the RTC in local time? WTF?

Re: Some benefit

[srlamb.livejournal.com]

Actually, there was one other class of people who struggled: the Bahá'í (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahá'í_Faith). Some friends of mine follow this silly religion. They fast from sunrise to sundown during the additional daylight savings period. Pushing dinner an hour closer to the end of the day makes it harder to sleep, and is a particular problem for Bahá'í with young children with early bedtimes.