Monday, March 12, 2012

Daylight Savings Time (or as I call it, "Morninglight Robbing Time.")

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I am not a fan of daylight savings time. I like mornings.


Here are some stupid factoids about daylight savings time...

chris

A NUMBER OF UNEXPECTED AREAS IMPACTED BY DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME:
 
Draft Status, Vietnam War: A man, born just after 12 midnight, DST, avoided the Vietnam War draft by arguing that under official standard time he was born the previous daywhich had a much higher draft lottery number.

Halloween Trick-or-Treaters: For many years, the DST in the U.S. ended a few days before Halloween. The extended DST period that took effect in 2007 will always include Halloween. This provides young trick-or-treaters one more hour of light and therefore more safety from traffic accidents during that hour.

Riots: Patrons of bars that stay open past 2 a.m. lose one hour of drinking time on the day when DST springs forward one hour. This indignity has led to riots, such as in Athens, Ohio, site of Ohio University.

Voter Turnout in Elections: DST is the U.S. has almost always ended before U.S. Election Day, but under the recent DST extension some Election Days will have DST. There have been proposals to extend the DST period so that it always includes Election Day, which could encourage greater voter participation, since more people might go to the polls in the evening if there still was daylight when they returned home from work.

Amtrak: To keep to published timetables, trains cannot leave a station before the scheduled time. So when the clocks fall back one hour in the autumn, all Amtrak trains in the United States that are running on time stop at 2 A.M. and wait one hour before resuming. Overnight passengers are often surprised to find their train at a dead stop and their travel time an hour longer than expected. At the spring DST time change, trains instantaneously become an hour behind schedule at 2 A.M., but they just keep going and do their best to make up the time.

Antarctica: In Antarctica, where there is no daylight in the winter and months of twenty-four-hour daylight in the summer, many research stations still observe daylight saving time anyway—to keep the same time as their supply stations in Chile or New Zealand.

Violent Crime: A study by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration found that crime was consistently less during periods of DST than during comparable standard time periods. Data for one city showed violent crime down 10 to 13%.

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