Let's Just Leave the Clock Setting Alone

https://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/usa-canada-start-dst-2021.htm

 Daylight Saving happened on March 14^th this year.  Oh, joy.  After a month and a half of not being able to drive to the church in the morning there finally came a time that I could leave the house at 7:10 and then gradually at 7:00.  For about a month after Christmas I had left the house at the very time that seminary got out before Jenna’s instructor volunteered to bring her home until it was light enough for me to see.

https://dlpng.com/png/6598304

The first week before spring break was too dark for my eyes – but I didn’t have to go to the church until this week as the six youth were in quarantine the week before spring break started.  Thankfully, after the youth returned to their normal routine it has been light enough to leave the house by seven.  That gives me an extra ten minutes to drive around the creek instead of crossing over the bridge that leads to downtown.  I prefer going around the river as I will encounter only one school bus – if that.  I don’t want to leave too early because I then have to stop each time it does. 

As a youth it felt like we set our clocks according to General Conference which gave us six months of daylight and six months of standard.  But now they have it set at the second week in March and the first week of November which gives us roughly eight months of daylight and four months of standard.  So why not just get rid of standard?  What is the point of changing the clock for just four months?  Seems like there are many more inconveniences associated with clock setting than not.  Let’s just keep the clock where it is and not have to reset in November. 

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/wellness/advice/a21905/adjusting-daylight-saving-time/

A Year Ago This Week

One year ago today – Friday the 13^th.  They tried to pass it off as an extension of Spring Break and were confident it wouldn’t last.  How did they think it wouldn’t last? Last day at school for the remainder of the year. Well, maybe not for everybody.  It was for me.  And in person for Jenna – who has friends in quarantine and reminds them about last year at this time.

March 7^th was a Saturday.  Ester was scheduled to be baptized and Gary would be the following week.  But Bill and Kayla changed it so that Gary would be baptized at the same time as Ester’s baptism.  Different wards. 

March 8^th was a Sunday – unbeknownst to us, the last Church meeting’s to be held for over six months in 2020. 

On the 9^th this year I received a memory that was written in 2011.  It said “It sounds like now days that it is going to come down to the fact for parents to take it upon themselves to home school.”  Wow!

We had scheduled an activity for the 14^th.  On the 11^th we were wondering if we should postpone – or cancel as it turned out.  For on the 12^th (the day before our last day of school) the Prophet announced “Church at Home”  What???  Our ward is small enough that surely we would be able to meet.  But the lockdown applied to us as well.

So Spring Break is coming up.  Last year they dismissed the students early.  Told them that they would have an extended spring break - they didn't know it would be for five months!  In addition to spring break is daylight saving.  Why the heck do we still have daylight saving???? When will this nightmare end?

PowerPoint part 4: Death by PowerPoint

          I've been going over some notes, or suggestions rather, on how to make for an interesting PowerPoint: no more than 20 minutes for entire presentation and no more than 10 slides.  Hey, instructors, I guess this doesn't apply to you then, does it?  It should.

          I changed my slide show.  Kept half with clips and the others were boring but included the premises and conclusions . . . blah, blah, blah . . .

"What is Daylight Saving Time and why do we have it?  This country started practicing DST during Ward War I to conserve on energy. This helped to cut down the cost of coal for heating and candlelight (History, 2012).  But what has happened to us over a century later?  Many people have a problem with changing their sleep patterns. 

"Researchers have found several people complaining of headaches.  One study found a 10% increase in heart attacks on the Monday and Tuesday following the Sunday in which people “spring ahead”. There has also been an 8% increase in strokes (Strickland, 2018).  Productivity among employees seems to go down.  This is what many of us look and feel like when we are trying to adjust to the time differences (Top 3, 2018).

should have changed last premises to say: Adjusting the clock every six months

is not good for sleeping patterns

 but  kept for example in the 3rd slide

"We have 24 hours in each day.  Setting the clocks ahead seems like an attempt to cheat us out of an hour.  So that first Sunday feels like only  23 hours.  But when we set our clocks back in the fall, we have a Sunday with 25?  That extra hour does not make up for lack of sleep during daylight.  It doesn't make up for ailing health (Feltman, 2015).   If someone were to invent a way to take that extra hour of sunlight and apply it to the winter, then I would be impressed.  But the hours of daylight that we have in the summer do not carry over to the hours of darkness that we have in the winter.  The amount of daylight is always the same whether the clock reads 6:00 in the morning or if it reads 5:00.  We need to keep the hours of the clock consistent to what our bodies believe (Dunning, 2009).

"Why wouldn’t we want to keep DST?  One reason would be to promote safety. Children on their way to school can see be seen easier which cuts down on the number of pedestrian accidents which take place during darker hours (Holodny, 2015).  There are fewer traffic accidents as drivers are able to better notice one another (Top 3, 2018). And there is less crime. And why would crime rates be down? People driving home during daylight hours may discourage perpetrators as they will be easier to recognize.   More people outside accounts for more witnesses (Holodny, 2015). It is said that extra hour of sunshine promotes positive activity (Feltman, 2015).  Perhaps the criminals enjoy the light also and would rather be out enjoying the sunshine than committing crimes.  Just a thought.

"There are statistics given on each side of the argument.  There are also fallacies which may seem illogical or unsound to one’s reasoning (Bearup, 2015)  Here, I have given two examples, and hopefully, I have attached the correct name to each.  The con premises refers to adjusting the clock.  Of course, the very notion of  “adjusting one’s clock” by itself does not make us unhealthy; rather the constant cycle of interrupting sleeping patterns is what would account for unhealthiness. 

referenced PRO fallacy, but used my own fallacy to explain the CON
I still don't know the accuracy of providing the correct name of fallacies

"For the pro, I chose the phrase about crime:   Since more crime is committed in the darkness, daylight savings will provide more light in which crime will not be committed.  The keywords here are “might” and “ probably”. Statistics have shown that more crime takes place in the summer than in the winter (Dahl, 2012).  I have noticed that both sides give similar reasons for why we should or shouldn’t have DST.  Is it a fallacy to say that each side is correct? Let me post another argument for you.

"From the time I was in elementary school I had always been told that DST was an agriculture thing.  Everybody in the entire world had to adjust their clocks so that farmers could get their work done - or so I believed.  It was not until I started doing research for this project that I learned that farmers were opposed to DST.  Just as with our bodies unable to adjust to the time difference, cows don't adjust their bodies according to the time on the clock. 

note each sentence, crossout, and clip were brought in one at a time

"They will milk when they are ready to produce.  That extra hour of sunlight isn't going to change that.  And because Bessie and friends won't produce at the given time, milk does not leave the farm until an hour later causing a chain reaction of one-hour delays for all other businesses involved (Feltman, 2015).  But not all farmers are dairy farmers.  What about the farmers that rely on crops? Crops can be picked right after the sun has dried the dew.  Moving and operating equipment seems like it would be easier to do in sunlight.  Again, safety reasons (Dunning, 2009)"

            I had noticed that I had given a reference that was not accurate.  I searched through my notes for the correct reference, but could not locate the article and so typed in some keywords and found even more references and statistics to prove why the crime rate was higher during daylight - again, no statistics found to back up the pro side.  In fact, the only statistic I could find attached to the pro was saving 2% - 4% on electric and/or gas, with the con side saying the spending had raised 2% - 4%.  Seriously?  The amount is NOT worth my LOSING sleep and RISKING health.  Come on!

            I did not look up what the ratio of accidents in the summer are compared to the "darkness" but had heard this Memorial Day Weekend that it was one of the deadliest times for traveling on the road.  Wow.  Memorial Day takes place during DST.  Did the "pro" seekers take that into account when they said daylight promotes safety?  I think most of the "pro" arguments are fallacies (but then again it's probably a fallacy on my part to write it that way.)

             One slide that I would have liked to do for fun - which was really not pertinent to the slide presentation, but an interesting fact about DST.  George Vernon Hudson was a scientist from New Zealand who had proposed the idea of DST so that he could study bugs.  His proposal was for a two hour set back.  Can you imagine?  The idea of two-hour change every six months beats William Willett's (a British builder) idea of having to adjust the clocks twenty minutes for each Sunday of a specific month.  That seems like a lot of work!  On the other hand, it might be easier for us to adjust our sleeping hours by twenty minutes as opposed to an hour or two.

            I would have brought in my slides and pictures one at a time concluding that all of our lives may be upset because some guy wanted to look at bugs.

            I incorporated my slide of Utah and Arizona  - though not in it's entirety.  The mapping of the standard/daylight/standard may not be accurate, but it still proved my point. Roland said I shouldn't have that many clips on one slide anyway.  But it was to illustrate the confusion.

"Daylight saving upsets the farmers, Amtrax, the airlines, sleeping patterns.  I mean take a look at this:  don’t forget to set your clocks one hour ahead at 2 a.m.  What???? I have to set my clock to remind me to set the clock and lose more sleep!  Is that confusing?  Is there too much activity going on for just one slide?  Your eyes don’t know where to focus?  Maybe you have a headache?  This is how I feel about daylight saving time.  And it’s not just me.  I know many people who feel the same way."

each of these clips would have been brought in one at a time before the entire screen was cluttered

good sources for daylight policy found here and here along with all my other references from all slides (gosh, aren't you thrilled?)

PowerPoint part 3: DST is so Annoying!

       As I was somewhat stressed by the midterm and final of my history class, I decided to get a jump start on the final for my philosophy class (which ended May 26 this year).  I ended up changing the PowerPoint three times however as I was supposed to work fallacies into the document - which I didn't foresee as a problem until I was told I'd have to provide the name for the fallacy.  Oh, Oh ... I thought that might be a problem. 

       So we were supposed to pick a topic and have premises and conclusions for the Pro as well as the Con . . . my original PowerPoint was very one-sided and so I had to redo to include the opposite.  I brought in a fallacy slide which didn't feel like it belonged.  I didn't think I'd receive full credit as it still felt one-sided.  It was hard!  The more research I did, the more biased I was about having to set clocks every six months.  So this was the very first slide that I created:

 

I brought each of these in one at a time as I would discuss them

            "With online universities, it doesn’t matter if the instructor lives in Florida and her students live in 16 other states, lectures at the university I attend happen to start on Mountain Time as they are based out of Utah. Two weeks ago a student signed on five minutes before the lecture ended. This student lives in Arizona and according to her clock, it was 5:00 Mountain Standard Time.  

           "Utah and Arizona are both on Mountain Time. But not all of Arizona observes daylight saving time.  Utah happens to be on daylight time.  This time confusion made her late for class. Though Utah and Arizona are in the same time zone, their clocks are in sync only six months of the year.  Except for certain parts of Arizona.  This pink area observes daylight except for the reservation in this red section. Except for this purple tribe which observes daylight saving time.  There are some places in Arizona which display two clocks as to display each time.  How confusing is that?"

         I have always found that adjusting our clocks every six months extremetly annoying.  Until I'd been given this assignment, I didn't realize how harmful that is as it disturbs our sleep patterns.  There are statistics and proof of studies in which disturbed sleeping pattern may lead to stroke, heart attack, headaches and so forth.  Forget DST being inconvenient (which it is) maintaining proper sleep patterns and thus better health is a great reason to do away with DST.

         The Pro side will also argue that the extra hour of sunlight is good for one's health as it helps with the adrenaline.  I could not find any statistics.

         My initial  PowerPoint included a slide to point out that DST upsets both farmers and travel industries. As with many others, I had grown up believing that DST was an agricultural thing.  Research shows that it farmers were just as opposed to DST as I am - although the only statics given was specifically for dairy farmers

              Have you ever heard that saying about trains always running late or never on time?  After my research, I think I have figured it out.  It's too much cost to change the schedule every six months. Especially when not all states or countries use DST.  Daylight Saving is harmful to airlines as well as the traveler.

           The pro side argues that daylight is better for business - certain businesses maybe.  Like those involved in retail or selling merchandise.  Malls use to be flooded with consumers.  But guess what?  Some malls are a thing of the past (see here).  Over 25 malls across the nation have shut down.  We have entered a new century where online shopping has become a hot item.  What difference does it make where the sun is in the sky when we're online shopping?

             If, with all the technology that has taken place throughout time, someone were to invent a way to actually take that extra hour of sunlight that is supposedly "saved" during DST and apply it to standard (so that children are standing in "daylight" waiting for bus ALL year round especially in the winter) I'd be impressed.  I remember waiting for the bus in the dark.  And you know, we're always going to have the same amount of hours of darkness in the winter and light in the summer regardless of whether those hours fall between 5:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. or 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. - so why not just go with one or the other and leave our clocks where they are and avoid adjusting them every six months?