Lebanon's IT folks face double trouble as leaders delayed Daylight Savings Time On Thursday, March 23rd, 2023, the government of Lebanon postponed the start of Daylight Savings Time (DST) just two days before the time change was scheduled to occur. Instead of setting clocks forward an hour at the end of March 25th, DST was delayed until midnight April 20th. According to Timour Azhari, Reuters' person on …
Absolutely, it's more of a social construct. Since (at least mostly in the western world), most people work in the morning and socialise in the evening, they rather prefer to be out socialising in daylight at 8pm rather than be woken up by sunlight at 5am or earlier.
Maybe if more people would prefer to wake up at 5 and go for a run/swim/walk/cycle before work rather than go out for a pint after work, we could ditch DST. Don't hold your breath...
Hint: Farmers *DO* give a crap, and they hate DST more than anyone else, because it throws off schedules such as when to milk the cows (u**ers full based on sunrise/sunset) versus when the tanker truck comes to haul it away (based on a shifting clock). It makes the farmers rush the cows, who passionately care not to be bothered.
I've also heard that before crops can be delivered to market, the sun has to come up to burn away the frost (think hay/straw bales, stored outside). Again, shifting market schedule hurts, not helps.
If farmers need extra afternoon daylight for harvesting, it wouldn't be until late summer anyway. Messing around in spring doesn't help one bit.
"...was enacted by Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to keep days short for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
And fair enough given that during Ramadan Muslims are required to fast until sunset."
Missing a key bit of context there... Muslims are required to fast *from sunrise* until sunset. If sunset is artificially made an hour later, so is sunrise, it will not "keep days short". I fail to see what difference it would make to fasting since presumably anyone fasting would anyway wake up half an hour or so before sunrise to have a snack and drink, whatever time sunrise happens to be.
In other words, it's not only "sectarian nonesense", it's absolute and unfettered nonsense of the highest degree
I'm *guessing* a lot of people fast by not eating at all until sunset. Thus having an hour less daylight at the end of the day would make a difference.
Still a stupid idea to change it in a hurry for a one-off. I'm not well versed at all in Islamic calendar calculations but I'm pretty sure the date Ramadan starts is known at least six months in advance.
PS I've heard that in some places it doesn't officially end until the new moon is visible in the sky, so a long cloudy stretch can mean a extra month of fasting...put that in your tzdata!
"I'm *guessing* a lot of people fast by not eating at all until sunset. Thus having an hour less daylight at the end of the day would make a difference."
No, that only works if someone is fasting from an arbitrary human-fixed time (eg midnight or 6am) until sunset. But it's actually sunrise to sunset, so no, having an hour less daylight at the end of the day would not make a difference because if you have an hour less daylight at the end of the day you have an hour more daylight at the beginning of the day. Or to put it more accurately, there isn't any more or less daylight, the daylight hours sunrise-to-sunset are always the same, whatever humans do to mess around with their clocks.
The number of hours doesn't change (obvs), but what you're doing when does. If you're sleeping through sunrise, starting work when the clock says (with the sun higher in the sky), and fasting by skipping breakfast and lunch, it feels like getting to eat dinner an hour earlier.
I assumed the change was from someone who sleeps later such that when they wake up, the sun has already risen. If they move the clocks back, that's one hour more of the sun being up where they would be awake to meet a work schedule aligned with the clock. For anyone who wakes up before sunrise, this isn't important. In fact, for anyone who doesn't, it's still pathetic to play around with clocks instead of just doing whatever religious rituals you decided you want to.
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