Web analytics, web metrics, and how to use them to track and improve conversions

Daylight Savings Time - who actually remembers when Daylight Savings Time kicks in and we have to set our clocks back one hour? 

I always get confused but I see I'm not the only one based on a quick scan of Google HotTrends where Sunday, October 28th there are several people wondering if today is the day Daylight Savings Time kicks in - it's not, according to Wikipedia's Observance practices and Daylight saving time around the world :

"..Coordination strategies differ when adjacent time zones shift clocks. The European Union shifts all at once, at 01:00 UTC; for example, Eastern European Time is always one hour ahead of Central European Time.^[58] Most of North America shifts at 02:00 local time, so adjacent zones do not shift simultaneously; for example, Mountain Time can be temporarily either zero or two hours ahead of Pacific Time. Australian districts go even further and do not always agree on start and end dates; for example, to start DST in 2006 Tasmania shifted clocks forward on 1 October, Western Australia on 3 December, and the remaining DST-observing areas on 29 October.^[67]

Daylight Savings Time goes into effect next Sunday - but you can see the concern of many people all over the world wondering if today is the day Daylight Savings Time goes into effect with daylight savings time where it's mentioned that "..This year Daylight Saving Time doesn't take effect until 2 am the first Sunday in November, instead of the last Sunday in October by the National Post in Hand off the clock! It's still Daylight Saving Time.

For when does daylight savings time end  it's mentioned by the Providence Journal that "...federal law does not require states to enforce daylight-saving time, so Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and several other US territories don’t switch".  Dah!  So, some states don't have to put the clock back one hour?

Really? Maybe DST is a "health risk" according to the belief of some..."DAYLIGHT saving time may be bad for your health according to scientists from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen in Germany."

"...The human body is ruled by an internal timekeeper that evolved to keep our bodies in tune with the sun, so by fixing the time, all humans are doing is disrupting their natural cycles, say researchers, making people more vulnerable to disease. "

So, maybe our confusion on Daylight Savings Time is our bodies way of rebelling from external authority that says we have to push the clock back (or forward, as the case may be).

"...This means the body’s biological systems can’t adjust to things such as climate changes and parasites, so it's possible that we are more likely to get diseases.”

Prof Roenneberg’s team examined the sleep patterns of 55,000 people and discovered that when people woke on their day off during standard time, the timing of their sleep followed the seasonal progression of dawn. However when daylight saving was introduced this was not the case.

“We found that the body clock does not go back with the one hour time change,” said Prof Roenneberg. "Therefore during daylight saving time people are getting up earlier because of social schedules however they don’t feel like sleeping earlier because their body clock isn’t ready for rest."

Personally, I like long Summer Days so day light savings time, or, when do we set the clocks back, is not a problem to me - it's the price we pay by getting longer days in the Summer months and we have to wait one more week as Day Light Savings Time - Don't Turn Your Clocks Back Yet points out"

"...Daylight Saving Time for most of the U.S. was changed this year to the second Sunday in March instead of the first weekend in April when clocks were moved forward an hour.

It reverts back to standard time on the first Sunday next month, not the last weekend in October as in years past."

But if the time changes in fall 2007 is bad for some (see above) Fall Time Change Could Be Boon for Sleep according to MedicineNet:

"...The extra hour of sleep offered by the time change can help mental and physical rejuvenation, according to Ralph Downey III, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California.

"With the fall time change, we get an extra hour to do with as we please. If we sleep the extra hour, our mind and body will thank us. While we can't save time, we can spend it wisely be spending the extra hour sleeping," Downey said in a prepared statement."

Let's face it, Sleepless Nights Make for Grumpier Brains according to Medicinenet as a "new study finds that a lack of sleep causes the brain's emotional centers to dramatically overreact to negative experiences."

So, the  question of when do we change our clocks is not only for our clocks, but many devices we use have clocks that don't reset according to Steve's Rants  'n' Raves in a post titled Gah! Why do they keep changing the clocks?

"...So, we have this ridiculous situation where people turn up an hour early or an hour late for everything for up to a day, plus we have to change most of the clocks on most of our appliances, risk upsetting computer software and generally endure chaos. In the name of what, exactly? Sheer madness."

Lots of people on Eastern  Standard Time are particularly concerned, according to Google HotTrends, especially in New York City who were confused about when is the time change but now it's settled here that the Time Change will be Next Week"...Daylight Saving Time used to end the last weekend of October, but the time change now takes place the first weekend of November instead."  So we're not setting the clocks back this weekend after all and daylight savings tim, or daylight savings time for the time change fall is settled till November 4th.  The change to Standard Time is also a search that comes up a lot in HotTrends.  And there's even Canadian Daylight Savings Time (and what's the difference between that and US Daylight Savings Time)?

Daylight Savings Time can also be viewed as a comparison of time and temperature according to Does anybody really know what time it is?    Maybe it's Central Time, for all I know?  I'm getting confused the more I write this post.   Maybe it's time to end the post - but I found out a lot more than I bargined for and maybe Daylight Savings Time is really a bad idea - and we should just not move time backwards or forward an hour based on what I've read.