Spring forward, fall back

Discussion Open Forum
1

It’s that time of year again.

Britain’s clocks go forward an hour, any minute now. Why do they bother? Why can’t people just get up at a natural time? Oh, it’s because they’re all sleep-deprived and trying to get to the grave earlier. Madness.

I just don’t understand people’s attitudes to time. The clock is supposed to be an instrument that allows you to precisely measure what’s going on in the real word, or rather, as the world turns. Why fuck with it?

I don’t even have an alarm clock, don’t see the need, and it’s a mystery to me how people can deal with their day when it begins with some machine forcing them out of bed. Wake up naturally, and the world is a much easier place to live in.

And what’s with this ‘snooze’ thing? Are you going to get out of bed or not? If you really need the alarm then set the bloody thing for the time you actually want to get up, and then get up when it goes off. Why is that so hard? Something’s definitely wrong there.

And why do some people set their clocks wrong on purpose? 5, 10, 15 minutes fast seems quite common and I hear mumbled excuses about ‘not being late’. What? How can you have a hope of being anywhere on time if you’re not even capable of keeping track of the right time. What sane human being can look at a clock that they know is wrong and treat it as if it means anything?

“Oh, it’s five to ten. I have to be there at ten, but it’s OK, I still have twenty minutes.” And then they bowl up ten minutes late because they weren’t keeping track of time. Madness.

Same goes for summer time, and ‘daylight saving time’. Daylight saving? How does that work? Is there suddenly more daylight if you move the clock? The world turns. It doesn’t slow down or speed up appreciably. Why can’t people just learn to deal with that instead of constructing artificial and confusing ways of doing things?

The whole world should use GMT, and set their working hours etc to reflect local conditions. Instead of asking someone overseas what time it happens to be in their country today, and how accurate their clocks are, and what hours they keep, you can just ask when is a good time to call them back.

Nice to see Ironman posting at 6:30 this morning. Sun shining, human being. That’s the way it should be.

2

Well its kind of nice in Australian summertime to finish work at 5pm and then have another 4 hours of sunlight. That means an outdoor BBQ, backyard cricket and any other kind of outdoor activity.

3

The wiki has lots of information about Daylight saving. I think it’s fine because it saves energy and resources.

[quote] [/quote]Go back to bed, you didn’t sleep enough. Ranting on a Sunday morning while telling people to get up earlier. :noway: Clearly you need more sleep. :stuck_out_tongue:

bobepine

4

Why not just finish work an hour earlier? It will still be four hours after the mid-point of the day, the only difference will be that ‘midday’ actually happens in the middle of the day. I don’t see the need to move the hands on the clock.

It’s like fudging test results so that parents are happy their kids are learning enough. The point of the test is lost. Same with time. It’s supposed to be a measure that we use for convenience.

We set an arbitrary time to start or finish work, for our own convenience. We’re free to change it. Surely we’re smart and flexible enough that we can decide for ourselves what time to get out bed? It has to be smarter than wandering around the house resetting all the clocks. Where’s the logic in redefining the benchmark that you use to organise your life around?

Do you reset your clock every weekend? Or do you just decide to sleep in? Why should things be different just because it’s spring or autumn? If time is constant you can decide how to react to it. If you mess with time all the time then everything gets all messed up.

There were blizzards in the UK several weeks after the official start of spring this year. Heating in public buildings, including schools, used to be turned on and off according to some artificial designation of the time, without regard to the actual weather conditions. I don’t know if things have changed, but I remember shivering in classrooms on wintry ‘spring’ days and sweltering on warm winters days with the heating pumping away full blast.

On this day we turn the heating off. On this day we move the clocks. On this day we will all be happy. Lunacy. It’s cold, turn the heating on. It’s warm, turn it off. The days are getting longer, let’s go to work earlier - or let’s enjoy the early morning and go to work later, or do whatever the hell seems right for us rather than just deciding that now it’s not the time it is.

Instead of being slaves to labels, people should try to actually think and manage their lives in response to what goes on around them. The summer after I finished high school the UK had a heat wave lasting several weeks and many companies did the only thing they could do. Aircon is not widespread, so people started going to work at 6am while it was reasonably cool and pleasant, and taking the afternoons off. It worked out just fine. People are great adaptors, no need to change the clocks.

The next topic will be people and companies that have their aircon set so that you have to wear a sweater in summer.

And bobe, I slept eight hours and woke up all full of energy to go walk my dog with my neighbour - who didn’t show because her alarm didn’t go off. Dependency on artificial stimuli, as opposed to just waking up because it’s time to wake up. But thanks for your concern. I’m going to the pub now.

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Some jurisdictions have gone to daylight savings time permanently. Just imagine how much surplus daylight they’ll have ten years from now!

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Seems mildly clairvoyant given that spring began everywhere less than one week ago (20 March).

What price did News Corp’s stock achieve? :laughing:

7

[quote]And bobe, I slept eight hours and woke up all full of energy to go walk my dog with my neighbour - who didn’t show because her alarm didn’t go off. Dependency on artificial stimuli, as opposed to just waking up because it’s time to wake up. But thanks for your concern. I’m going to the pub now.[/quote]I got up at 11am today and I slept 9 hours. Best part of the day was gone, I slept through it. If you were up at 6 am and got 8 hrs of sleep, that means you were sleeping by 10 pm last night. Your mama would be proud of you. :stuck_out_tongue: Unless you tell her that you hit pubs by noon. :wink:

Seriously, if you’re up every morning without an alarm clock, you’re doing well. I hate the sound of my alarm clock with a passion.

Daylight savings is good for farmers because roosters do not have a snooze button. :wink:

bobepine