[haberman]

> The idea was that in the winter there would be fewer hours with the sun up, and it made sense to put those hours in a more useful part of the day.

Daylight Savings time happens during the summer, not the winter. Winter time is unadjusted and tracks a true solar day. Summer time is adjusted, and indeed it's adjusted in the direction you favor (to provide more daylight hours at night).

[seanmcdirmid]

I live in China and we don't have daylight savings time. The sun rises at around 4AM in the summer, which really messes up my sleep habits if I forget to close the blinds before bed. Winters are about right.

[wr1472]

Your problem is much more easily solved: remember to close the blinds.

[mistercow]

>Winter time is unadjusted and tracks a true solar day.

That really depends on where you are in the time zone. If you're right at the edge, you may be closer to tracking a true solar day in the summer.

[Firehed]

Tracks a true solar day? Is there actually a scientific definition of when a day starts and ends? As far as I can tell skimming Wikipedia, it's simply 86400 seconds.

Certainly by my body clock, a "true solar day" is when I'm on DST.

[mooism2]

Midday GMT is defined to be when the mean sun is directly over the prime meridian.

("Mean sun" as opposed to "apparent sun" because of the Earth being a naturally occurring celestial object, rather than an idealised mathematical model. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_of_time .)