Time Inflation

August 10th, 2012
ideas, time
On average the sun is up 6am to 6pm, but people's schedules are later. [1] We try to fix this with Daylight Savings Time, moving solar noon to ~1pm. Britain has considered a Single-Double system where solar noon would be ~1pm in the winter (like DST) and ~2pm in the summer (double DST). We can take this further, and match our society better to the daylight hours: every year survey people to find out the middle time point of the average day. If that's more than an hour away from solar noon, add or remove an hour to move us closer to matching the sun.

(Why do people stay up later than the sun? What happens when you try to fight that? Do people just stay up later? Do we like it to be dark out? Do we have trouble getting ourselves to go to bed?)


[1] If you surveyed Americans my guess is you'd get something like 7am to midnight.

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Elixir's Last Dance

On May 18th, the contra dance band Elixir had their last gig ever. The dance was packed: there were three hundred people. It was the only dance BIDA has ever done where they sold tickets. People flew from across the country just to hear Elixir play one la…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts June 5, 2025

Body Language For Trans People

When I first came out as trans, resources for trans people were full of advice about body language.

via Thing of Things June 2, 2025

Workshop House case study

Lauren Hoffman interviewed me about Workshop House and wrote this post about a community I’m working on building in DC.

via Home April 30, 2025

more     (via openring)