I live right smack in the middle of the Central time zone at
around 96 degrees West longitude and 36 degrees North latitude
which is about 7 degrees North of New Orleans. In the over all
scheme of things, that is not that far away.

	Our latest Sunrise is around January 4 and is right at
07:40 so it really still works in the Southern planes, also.

	In case some of you wonder why I said January 4 instead
of December 21, there is a reason for that and it applies to
everybody on Earth.

	I will save that for another message in order to stay on
topic.

	The reason for DST has always been to save energy and
the jury is still out as far as that goes. If they find out that
it does not save money, then it is needless complexity. Every
time they change it, a whole generation of gadgets using
embedded clocks that can not be upgraded to the new rules stops
working correctly. This can be expensive in labor when dealing
with time clocks and the adjustment of records needed to be sure
that everybody gets payed for the hours worked, no more, no
less.

	Systems like automated school zone signs must be
manually adjusted by technicians as soon as possible, etc.

	On the good side, people doing outdoor work have light
for almost as long as they need it and more so in the far North
so some form of DST will probably always be with us. I think a
compromise would be to have North America and Europe all agree
on a DST time period that roughly covers the first of April
through late October and then leave it alone.
Howard Kaufman writes:
> Maybe not in the south, where the length of daylight doesn't change as 
> much,
> but up here in the north, we go from 9 hours of potential daylight to 15
> hours plus in the summer.  Sunrise goes from 7-33 at the end of December 
> to
> an uncorrected 4-11 in June.  Daylight saving time definitely puts an hour
> of daylight where more people use it.  Right here at the Eastern edge of 
> the
> Central time zone, we could probably go forward another hour for the 
> summer.