The switch from Daylight Savings Time literally kills people in accidents every year because people are drowsy. I would advocate for a permanent adoption of Daylight Savings Time. No more hour-switching. https://t.co/p8LmzPu1s0
— Andrew Yang (@AndrewYangVFA) March 9, 2019
(Featured image is handsome presidential hopeful Andrew Yang.)
Jaybird
Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com
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I’m not going to lie to you. I think this guy has what it takes to be a great president.Report
It’s a little ironic to me that they used a photo of a trucker for the article. I’m not like you normies going to work in your offices or wherever; I don’t have anything close to a fixed schedule in the first place. So the time is really just a number to me.
That being said I also have held for some time now that it seems ironic (again; Oh, the irony!) that we’re on “Standard” Time for all of four months and then Super Special Daylight Savings Time for twice that long. I mean, if we’re going to do this do-se-do shouldn’t the longer period be the Standard Time and the shorter period be the “Special” Time, idk, call it Daylight Losing Time or something.
But yeah, it’s stupid. And really, the worst parts of it for me is that while most states do it some don’t. Example: Arizona doesn’t do it so in the summer they’re the same time as New Mexico but during DST they’re the same as California. Took me a while to get that straight in my head. And then combined with the fact that quite a few states are split between different time zones it can be an intellectual exercise figgerin out what the hell the time is wherever I’m going.
I would like to make a proposal: North American Commercial Time. A single time zone for all of North America for the coordination of things like… oh, idk, shipping schedules and the like. Same deal for the other continents, although you would probably need to split Asia up into two or three chunks, Africa too.Report
If you wanted to run on that platform, I’d vote for you.
In the absence of that, we’ve got this guy.
I’m going to talk to editorial and see if we can make Andrew Yang the Official Ordinary Times candidate.Report
Wait till you see the rest of my platform. You may change your mind. Or not…Report
Works for China!Report
I don’t have anything close to a fixed schedule in the first place.
My father, the former railroad brakeman and Navy senior petty officer, raised me to not organize my life around something as unreliable as the sun. This was valuable training when my wife and I had babies…Report
Oy, vey! The Navy. Yeah, on the one hand they were pretty strict (as one would expect) about being where you’re supposed to be, doing what you’re supposed to be doing, at a time certain. On the other hand, the concept of a circadian rhythm was completely foreign to them. On both of the ships I served on we ran a three-section watch rotation. So there were five watch periods: 0700 – 1200, 1200 – 1700, 1700 -2200, 2200 – 0200, 0200 – 0700. So if you had the morning watch (0700) then you would have midwatch (2200), then the afternoon (1200), then early (0200), then evening (1700), then wrap back around to the morning in a three-day cycle. That early watch sucked hard for me, much worse than the midwatch.Report
The Navy’s unwillingness to respect anything close to a circadian rhythm is (IIRC) one of the points brought up in the various ship collision investigations.Report
I’m not at all surprised. I’m just not sure what they can realistically do about it. I know I’m not telling you anything new but military operationss are an inherently 24/7/365 thing. Somebody’s gotta stand those ugly night watches.
I suppose they could put half the crew on long-term (3 or 4 weeks) night shift with a staggered rotation schedule. Your body and brain can adjust to a night shift but it takes a few days so no matter what you do you’re bound to have some sleep deprived sailors.Report
It was less about the night watches and more about the weird watch lengths and not giving sailors sufficient down time for sleep. Like s 4-6 hour watch, followed by 4-6 hours off watch, etc. No chance for a full 8 hours of sleep, not enough time to get all the training and admin crap done, not enough down time that is not sleep, etc. It’s one of those things you can get away with if the ship is fully crewed and only deployed for a limited time. But when you are running on a short crew and have an aggressive operational tempo…Report
Why do they do it that way?
(Genuinely asking – I schedule people as part of my job and I’ve never ever understood why even far less punitive shake ’em up schedules happen… I try to give people as much consistency and downtime as possible whenever possible, and that’s been known to be useful from a management perspective, not just a humane one, since like the turn of the last century — so I figure there must always be SOME reason why they would fly in the face of that other than “b/c we’re evil and want our people to suffer” — and from what I remember even the historical British Navy of ye old empire wasn’t *that* evil… so that rules out tradition…. )Report
Good question. It’s not meant to be mean or punitive; they’re not screwing with you just because they can.
A Navy ship (or “boat” for the submariners) is a war machine, quite literally a big complicated machine. There are a given number of stations that MUST be manned at all times. Divide the crew compliment by the number of those stations and you get… three, or something close to it. That’s pretty much the way it’s designed.
So you might think three shifts of eight hours, right? Two problems with that: eight hours is entirely too long for a duty shift, and it would consign a third of the crew to a perpetual vampiric existence. When you’re on a duty watch you’re busy. It’s not like a normal day at work like you think of it. It’s more akin to working as an air traffic controller* or something. And then your watch duty is literally about half of your workday; the other half is maintenance, repairs, training, and whatever else your normal job entails. So, for instance, folks whose main job is clerical will stand duty watches on the bridge and such. Lots of cross-training for jobs like lookout where you’re scanning the sea with binoculars. So while the operational duty is a 24/7 affair your normal job, like supply clerk, is pretty much a normal daytime job so being on a perpetual night shift wouldn’t work.
Then there’s the reality that you have to prepared for literally anything at anytime. Middle of the night is a great time to attack and consequently be attacked. And when the shit goes down so does any concept of a normal workday. I suspect that a good part of the reason for that rotation I described is simply to prepare you to be able to do whatever needs doing, no matter when it needs doing.
* And, no, I have no idea what their shift schedules look like.Report
The problem the Navy currently has is (TTBOMK) that its operational tempo is such that the ships aren’t getting enough time back home. Back when I was in, a ship was generally home for about 18 months for every 6 that is was out. It didn’t just take up dock space for that whole 18 months, but the crew could count on long stretches at the base.
Those 18 months were spent taking care of maintenance, upgrades, and repairs that are difficult or impossible to do at sea. They were also spent training up new crew members, and giving older crew a chance to get additional training, or prepare for advancement exams. Many times, that involved serving temporarily aboard another ship so you could brush up on things you are supposed to know, but that aren’t relevant to your current ship, or being detached to attend a school.
If the operational tempo is too high, maintenance and repairs are deferred, and upgrades are rushed, often without fully training the crew on the upgrades, and giving them time to get used to new ways of doing things. New crew are not trained in the relaxed tempo of dockside, and the required training becomes OJT during deployment, except as @road-scholar notes, being on-duty while underway is a very busy time for everyone, so squeezing in OJT is difficult.
So you get a ship where some things are probably not working right (thanks to deferred dockside work), where upgrades are not fully integrated into the crew routine, and where some portion of the crew is not actually qualified to be standing watch on the ship, which stresses everyone out.Report
Speaking of collisions I’ve experienced one of those. My second ship (USS Monongahela) was an oiler, basically a floating gas station, so unreps were our bread and butter. We were doing a night unrep with a carrier and had a collision. The elevator platform gouged a hole in our side. It was above the waterline and no injuries but still, made a god-awful sound and scary as hell until it was sorted out. Bear in mind we’re sitting on millions of gallons of diesel and JP-5. And it was at night FWIW.Report
Yikes! The Anchorage never hit anything. She blew her boilers with an alarming frequency (nothing devastating, but some disturbing noises, usually followed by a dramatic release of steam up the stacks and lots of time drifting while the engineering crew fixed what needed fixing)Report
That sounds freaking terrifying.Report
The military, policing, even truck driving, is characterized by long periods of stultifying routine punctuated by moments of stark terror. It keeps you on your toes.Report
I was in the Air Force, and my last two active duty assignments involved heavily-rotating shift work. The first was 4 12-hour days, 4 days off, 4 12-hour mids, 4 days off. The second was 8-hour shifts, 2 days, 2 swings, 2 mids, 4 days off. They each had their good points and their bad points, but in either case the entire crew was pretty punchy by the time that last mid shift rolled around.Report
As much as the mornings are going to suck until I get used to it, it was nice not seeing the sun go down over the hills until 7:00 tonight.Report
A challenger appears:
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So if we make Daylight Savings Time permanent shouldn’t we just call it something else? IDK, like maybe just Standard Time? Like the Daylight part of it wouldn’t have anything to do with it and all we would have done is shift all our time zones 15° to the east.Report
Permanent DST would enrage me, as it would mean that about 9 months out of the year I am driving to work in the dead dark, which seems more of an insult than driving home in the dark is.
The one time in my life I nearly hit a pedestrian? It was early in DST when some IDIOT in jeans and a dark hoodie ran out across the street in a residential area. Fortunately I saw them just in time, but….yeah. And sometimes kids waiting for the bus are not exactly smart (or supervised) and are running out in the street and stuff. At least in standard time I have a better hope of seeing them in time.
And don’t talk to me about “more light for recreation in the evening,” most evenings I either have meetings or grading or am too tired to go out and take recreation.Report
I want to make Standard Time year-round.
My preferences go like this:
1. Standard Time year-round and never having to switch again
2. Daylight Saving Time year-round and never having to switch again.
3. Daylight Saving Time half of the year, like, every six months, and we have some formula like “the second last Saturday night in April and the second last Saturday night in October” or something like that.
4. The dumb-assed four months of standard time system we have now.
If 1 were on the table, I’d vote for that. In a heartbeat.
We’re stuck on 4.
And I’d prefer 3 to 4, but I prefer 2 to 3. I’d prefer 1 to 2 but 1 is, apparently, never ever going to happen. WOULD THAT IT WOULD.
So, in its absence, I’m stuck with choosing between 2 and 4 and while the distance between 1 and 2 exists, it is dwarfed by the distance between 2 and 3. It’s not even *CLOSE*.Report
I think 1.5 – pick a time halfway between the two and never have to switch again – would be the fairest, but of course that’s likely to just result in everyone being pissed off…. not that I’d care if it happened by fiat, because i wouldn’t have to change times unless I changed time zones.Report
A half hour between everything would be a fine compromise and we could join India in being one of the countries offset a half hour from Britain.
Sadly, I don’t think that that is on the table.Report
Honey, I think you finally found a presidential candidate we can both support.
(Though I’m not yet and will probably never be ready to stump for an official endorsement of anyone from Ordinary Times. So off-brand!)Report
I’m against Daylight Savings Time because the extra hour of sunlight fades drapes and outdoor fabrics.Report
“My friends we all know that there is a time to save, and that there is a time to spend. (crowd nods very-knowingly) My opponent, though, well, he wants shift our country to a state of permanent daylight spending. (crowd boos) He seems to think daylight just, I dunno, just GROWS ON TREES. (crowd laughs) Well, I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t. I’m here to tell you that HE’S WRONG. (crowd calls opponent stupid) And I ask you, how can we support this type of misguided policy as a society? How can we afford it as a nation? (crowd gets visibly worried) Think of our children. (crowd gets choked up) That’s why I believe the time for daylight savings has arrived and that it’s time to END daylight spending! Thank you. Thank you.”Report