I thought that the members of the European Parliament don't have the right to propose any laws but this rule must be inaccurate because today, the European Parliament will discuss the proposal by Mr Petr Šilar (Christian Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People's Party) and his brothers (these are not comrades) to abolish the constant switching from the winter time to summer time and back.
On Saturday-Sunday night, on March 29th, Europe is scheduled to switch to the summer time again: the period between 2 am and 3 am won't ever take place. Similarly, sometime in the Fall, for its big success, the 2 am through 3 am hour is repeated twice.
In the Czech lands, the summer time was first introduced in 1916. To increase the protectorate's efficiency, our German overlords established it between 1940 and 1942 as well – and during the summers 1943-1949, a shorter version of it has covered just the summer. Since 1979, it's been introduced every year for 6 months and starting from 1996, for seven months.
These historical patterns themselves are rather complicated but we must ask: isn't this chaos stupid? Doesn't it bring more harm than good?
I tend to agree that it is a silly anachronism. In the past, people were expected to work primarily in the morning, and it's better to run factories during the day – to kickstart them with the sunrise. So you change the time so that the sunrise takes place at "somewhat more uniform" time every day although it's very far from a "totally uniform time", anyway.
The price that you pay is that in the evening, the non-uniformity of the sunset gets even worse, an observation that has always made me say "WTF". ;-) The idea is this increased mismatch in the evening doesn't matter because people don't work in the evening, and they probably don't need any light etc., anyway. But are the evening really so much less important than the mornings?
Feel free to provide us with a better justification of this ritual. What I wrote sounds extremely awkward to me, especially because 1) only a small part of the hypothetical "problem" is solved, 2) symmetrical problems arise, 3) the omitted or doubled hours cause problems to train schedules and tons of other things related to traffic, agriculture, and human psychology. Lots of events may take place between 2 am and 3 am and they can't be properly parameterized by the alternative winter-time/summer-time time coordinate.
Just like we have the experience with the summer time itself, there has been some tradition in the Czech lands when it comes to the fight against this ritual. The most prominent warrior against the ritual was the baker called Stanislav Pecka from Eastern Bohemia who sent a letter to the communist prime minister Štrougal in 1981 – and he was fighting against the summer time until his death in 2009.
The Czech deputies who became Pecka's followers are pragmatic in a characteristic Czech way. They don't really care whether it will be the summer time or the winter time that will be preserved; it's the alternation that is the problem. It actually seems more likely that the summer time would be kept forever. If they succeed, the alternating ritual should stop sometime in 2019.
There are lots of opening hours and similar data around us that are adjusted according to the season, anyway. So I find it obvious that if a factory would really be saving lots of money thanks to the summer time, it could change its schedules as a function of the season in a way that would have exactly the same – or even better – effect. The workers may be working from 7 am in the summer but 8 am in the winter, and so on.
See a Wikipedia page and map showing which places in the world use the summer time and which don't.
What do you think about the summer time ritual?
I mentioned a ritual promoted by the Nazis that most of us consider to be an anachronism. But truth to be told, they did many of these things correctly. The Nazis were planning to build the Breslau-Wien superhighway through Moravia. Poland seems to be concluding that the path of this road was really optimal and the Czech folks seem to agree so it seems pretty likely that Hitler's superhighway will be completed with this 70 years delay, after all. You may be surprised by "Hitler's superhighway" actually seems to be the primary name of the project. Some Slavic nations aren't afraid to give the credit to some (currently) unpopular people. ;-)
Thirty years ago, I saw a very nice bridge in the middle of fields near Jevíčko that leads "nowhere". We were told that it was a part of the highway that was never completed.
On Saturday-Sunday night, on March 29th, Europe is scheduled to switch to the summer time again: the period between 2 am and 3 am won't ever take place. Similarly, sometime in the Fall, for its big success, the 2 am through 3 am hour is repeated twice.
In the Czech lands, the summer time was first introduced in 1916. To increase the protectorate's efficiency, our German overlords established it between 1940 and 1942 as well – and during the summers 1943-1949, a shorter version of it has covered just the summer. Since 1979, it's been introduced every year for 6 months and starting from 1996, for seven months.
These historical patterns themselves are rather complicated but we must ask: isn't this chaos stupid? Doesn't it bring more harm than good?
I tend to agree that it is a silly anachronism. In the past, people were expected to work primarily in the morning, and it's better to run factories during the day – to kickstart them with the sunrise. So you change the time so that the sunrise takes place at "somewhat more uniform" time every day although it's very far from a "totally uniform time", anyway.
The price that you pay is that in the evening, the non-uniformity of the sunset gets even worse, an observation that has always made me say "WTF". ;-) The idea is this increased mismatch in the evening doesn't matter because people don't work in the evening, and they probably don't need any light etc., anyway. But are the evening really so much less important than the mornings?
Feel free to provide us with a better justification of this ritual. What I wrote sounds extremely awkward to me, especially because 1) only a small part of the hypothetical "problem" is solved, 2) symmetrical problems arise, 3) the omitted or doubled hours cause problems to train schedules and tons of other things related to traffic, agriculture, and human psychology. Lots of events may take place between 2 am and 3 am and they can't be properly parameterized by the alternative winter-time/summer-time time coordinate.
Just like we have the experience with the summer time itself, there has been some tradition in the Czech lands when it comes to the fight against this ritual. The most prominent warrior against the ritual was the baker called Stanislav Pecka from Eastern Bohemia who sent a letter to the communist prime minister Štrougal in 1981 – and he was fighting against the summer time until his death in 2009.
The Czech deputies who became Pecka's followers are pragmatic in a characteristic Czech way. They don't really care whether it will be the summer time or the winter time that will be preserved; it's the alternation that is the problem. It actually seems more likely that the summer time would be kept forever. If they succeed, the alternating ritual should stop sometime in 2019.
There are lots of opening hours and similar data around us that are adjusted according to the season, anyway. So I find it obvious that if a factory would really be saving lots of money thanks to the summer time, it could change its schedules as a function of the season in a way that would have exactly the same – or even better – effect. The workers may be working from 7 am in the summer but 8 am in the winter, and so on.
See a Wikipedia page and map showing which places in the world use the summer time and which don't.
What do you think about the summer time ritual?
I mentioned a ritual promoted by the Nazis that most of us consider to be an anachronism. But truth to be told, they did many of these things correctly. The Nazis were planning to build the Breslau-Wien superhighway through Moravia. Poland seems to be concluding that the path of this road was really optimal and the Czech folks seem to agree so it seems pretty likely that Hitler's superhighway will be completed with this 70 years delay, after all. You may be surprised by "Hitler's superhighway" actually seems to be the primary name of the project. Some Slavic nations aren't afraid to give the credit to some (currently) unpopular people. ;-)
Thirty years ago, I saw a very nice bridge in the middle of fields near Jevíčko that leads "nowhere". We were told that it was a part of the highway that was never completed.
Czech plan to abolish daylight saving time in EU
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March 23, 2015
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