3272: Time Change

Time Change

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Title text: All discussions of daylight saving time policy are doomed by a mix of contradictory, inconsistent, and impossible preferences, which is why I think the only thing we can really hope to do is to make it worse.

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Explanation

This is one of 42 incomplete explanations: This page was created by a malfunctioning time zone. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

In the United States, there have been multiple proposals to eliminate or change how daylight saving time (DST, or daylight savings time) is observed. The most recent attempt at the time of this comic was passed by the US House of Representatives on July 14, 2026, and would eliminate the use of "Standard Time" and make DST permanent for most states. However, this bill is considered to be unlikely to pass the US Senate, due to lobbying by various groups. Concerns include "dangerous, dark morning commutes" and agriculture concerns.

Much research has been done on whether there are health issues caused by the yearly changing of the clocks, to "spring forward" (advance clock time by an hour) in the springtime and "fall back" (set clock time back by an hour) in the fall. Many people enjoy "falling back" more than "springing forward" because turning the clocks back by an hour extends the time between normal bedtime and waking time, 'gaining' them an 'extra' hour to sleep. On the other hand, shifting the hour forward makes people 'lose' an hour of their day which could have been spent resting.

This comic invents a "new" way to deal with this issue, by not moving the clocks forward in the springtime and instead just moving clocks back in the fall. As others observe, this would be a ludicrous proposal because it would end up with clocks wildly out of sync with the daily solar cycle. Cueball is unbothered by this, and shortsightedly claims that people will be better prepared to deal with the consequences of clock changes because they will be getting an extra hour of rest each year. This rather ignores that one hour a year is likely to provide only short-term benefit, whereas his scheme changes what are relatively short-term temporary issues for much longer-term ones. In practice, people probably would find ways to cope, by shifting their waking and working patterns with respect to the clock, but at the cost of greater potential for confusion and burden on those who have to handle time data, planning, etc..

The title text asserts Randall's opinion that DST discussions are irresolvable, because no option exists that does not run afoul of somebody's firm opposition, whether that opposition is based on logic or emotion, and therefore no option exists that will, or can, improve on the status quo ante. Hence Randall claims that as it is already a mess, Cueball is right to change it further on his shallow ground, which may not be the best of ideas ^{[citation needed]}

Transcript

This is one of 33 incomplete transcripts. Please help by editing it!

[Cueball standing behind a lectern.]

Cueball: We all hate springing forward,

Cueball: but we love falling back.

[Zoomed out view. Cueball is on a raised podium behind a lectern, and Hairy, another Cueball, and Hairbun are standing in front of Cueball (to the panel's left), looking at him.]

Cueball: Therefore, we are abolishing the spring time change only.

Cueball: We'll gain an hour every year, but never lose one.

[Zoomed back in on Cueball behind the lectern, who has his fist raised]

Off-screen voice: Won't that cause the clocks to spiral out of sync with the sun?

Cueball: Then we will meet the chaos clear-eyed and well-rested!

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Discussion

Earlier this week the United States House of Representatives approved a bill that would make Daylight Saving Time permanent. 2603:8081:9700:1224:0:0:0:1 01:52, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Cue Yogi Berra (Deja vu all over again) and CSNY (We have all been here before). Year-round DST was the law of the USA during the second world war, and again in 1974, during the energy crisis set off by the 1973 Arab oil embargo. In the New England states, where I lived in 1974, there was a major consequence of the imposition of year-round DST: in winter, schools opened, and children were bussed, or walked, to those schools, while it was still night, and pitch dark. The resulting incidents, and outcry, led to the cessation of the permanent-DST experiment long before it was set to expire - and should tell us of the futility of all DST proposals and discussions, as expressed in the title text. 2605:59C8:160:DB08:5806:FCD6:584A:5938 03:33, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm in down east (far east) Maine USA. Nova Scotia across the bay. Running on DST, it stays pretty light past 9 on the clock. OTOH, EST in winter, it gets dark well before 5pm. PRR (talk) 06:20, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

I take a weekend away for time change weekend because I find that waking up on Sunday and travelling home is all the disruption I need to overlook the fact that the clocks have changed. Cueball's plan unfairly robs me of a holiday every year therefore I offer the counterproposal that we in fact spring back as well as falling back. Everybody wins. 134.58.253.56 08:05, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

The UK tried British Standard Time from 1968 to 1971 - one hour on from UTC. I was at school in the north of England at the time and it was dark way past nine o'clock in the morning. There reports of farmers complaining about disruptions in milking cows, but others have pointed out that cows don't use alarm clocks. Evening road accidents fell but Wikipedia points out that this corresponded with stricter drink/driving laws.2A00:23CC:D248:8901:C8FF:7450:1E9B:1A6D 09:03, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

I'd propose a more effective method that does away with all of this hassle: Human Time! 1 hour is the same length but there are 25 hours in the "day". That means that midnight and midday rolls around the planet over the course of 25 days so that all the businesses can synchronise. There'd be no more day or night shifts because it would all be rotating. The extra hour could be deem "free time". Drummertv (talk) 09:09, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Or how about we add just 4 minutes to each day. Then midnight and midday would rotate over the course of a whole year. Synchronize it so as to take most advantage of daylight during winter, while summer involves sleeping during the hottest parts of the day (or feel free to disregard and set a different schedule) while enabling more nighttime activity. To account for the discrepancy between 4 minutes * 365 days is just slightly bigger than 24 hours, you would skip doing this on 31sts, while doing extra on the night before March 1 (or just skip it once every 3 months). You would end up losing a day every year. ... or you could do it with 1 minute each day and iterate over the course of 4 years and then you could get rid of the leap day! (possibly with some special handling on the 100th-year-that-isn't-also-a-400th-year) 74.202.210.170 14:55, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Fun fact: The German satire party "Die PARTEI" ("The PARTY") had the same idea already in their political program for the European Election several years ago. :) -> https://www.die-partei.de/programm/eu-2014/ Linuspogo (talk) 09:12, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

I would like to see the implementation of British Somewhere Time. In recognition of the fact* that, in days gone by, the sun never set on the British Empire, this would take GMT (none of this woke modern UTC thank you) and apply a random offset between -12 and +12 every time the clock reached 5 o'clock. [*Not an actual fact.] 194.75.188.171 15:36, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

"[* Not an actual fact.]" ... you're right, in that isn't a fact. But only in the fact that it was 'only' in days gone by... 92.23.5.229 19:27, 16 July 2026 (UTC)
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