Nineteen states have passed legislation to make daylight saving time permanent. But those laws won’t take effect until Congress makes it legal. And the medical community sees one major problem.
Instead of making it so the sun is never overhead at noon again, couldn’t we all just agree to do things an hour earlier? Surely its cheaper and less disruptive to global coordinated time keeping if we just ask Dolly to rerecord the song to be “8 to 4.”
Why is it so important that the sun is directly overhead at noon?
First of all, the sun is rarely directly overhead at noon anymore, even during standard time, because we use the same time for all the time in the time zone, so the sun is only directly overhead at noon if you are in the center of the time zone. (And even then, the sun is not always overhead at noon all the time- see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_of_time )
Have you ever noticed that the sun is never directly overhead at noon, even when you think it should be? I doubt it.
Second of all, Noon is no longer mid-day anyway. The vast majority of people are awake for fewer hours before noon than after noon.
Permanent DST basically means that we are now considering 1PM to be mid-day, which is more compatible with most people’s schedules.
Because that’s what noon means. There should at least be a chance.
Noon hasn’t meant that the sun is directly overhead since November 18, 1883.
https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/november/day-of-two-noons
And technically, Ptolemy knew in the 2nd century that mean solar time and apparent solar time were different, so you could argue we have known it for nearly 1900 years.
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Living in the PNW, I would very much prefer to be on permanent summer ti.e, since that way fall and winter night time does not come obscenely early.
It gets very depressing to go to work when it’s still dark, stay in a windowless room while it’s light, minus a few short breaks, and then go home and it’s already dark again.
I just don’t want the sun to come up at 5am in the summer.
