( E’s yearly re-blog driven by a discomfited mind)
Well, we have gone through the motions once again. We have chased the elusive one hour of time, the daylight hour, the spring forward – fall back, the should be time . Does anyone really feel like we’ve gained or lost anything? Has it saved us anything? Do you think the people living on the eastern edge of your time zone benefited as much as the people living on the western edge? Or do we just automatically join the common think and mindlessly move the clocks ahead for a few months and then move the damn things back for a few months each year not wondering if it makes any sense or not. Does anyone but me wonder about the futility of this exercise?
I really did sit down here to write about something more interesting but after a weekend like this I just can’t help myself. I have to rant for just a few minutes about daylight saving time.
I know it’s easy not to think about DST. Most clocks in this digital age move forward and back automatically on their own from their burnt in firmware. I’m guessing all modern computer clocks, coffee pots, car radios, bed stand alarm clocks just change time without human intervention, mindlessly. Easy to do in the digital world, being mindless. But the last I heard and observed, the earth is still running pretty damn analog. I haven’t noticed it jerking and stopping each second going around its axis like the second hand on a digital Seiko. Or am I not drinking enough coffee?
Some say it saves energy, I guess we have used it as the hinge pin of our national energy policy. I have been acquainted with and worked with many engineers in the energy business and some that really are scientists and most agree that proving that DST saves energy is the most complicated algorithm to compute and solve. Some say it isn’t that complicated and it was proven years ago that it saves nothing.
Me, I don’t care how many parenthesis are in the frickin’ energy formula, all that I know is that twice a year millions of people, including myself have to drag our sorry working class asses into and out of bed one hour sooner or later each day totally screwing up our sleep cycle for a few weeks until we are acclimated to it. And there are quite a few thinking people like myself that continue to wonder why.
India, Japan and China I can estimate – billions of people – stopped the lunacy many years ago. It never made any sense to the thinking people of Arizona, Hawaii and the Virgin Islands. Many nations that once were on DST have now quit it.
Sorry Ben Franklin, I admire you very much but we aren’t just using candles anymore. We have air conditioning and central heat. We don’t necessarily sleep past dawn anymore. And we are spread across a lot bigger area than we were when we had 13 colonies basically along the east coast. You had 1 Time Zone, Eastern which wasn’t even thought of yet. I’m sure if you were still alive, you would be finding humor in this ritual also. Please come back and knock some sense back into us. They seem to respect your opinion.
I’m not going to list all of the pro and con claims for and against daylight saving time, there are unproven arguments on each side and frankly I hate arguing. But I knew it was a lost cause to speak against it when two things happened. The first was when they extended DST to November so candy manufactures would have more trick or treaters for Halloween, it seems more kids can participate if it stays daylight longer. The second event was when some of the countries of the world that are located on or near the equator started participating in the lunacy.
In the world of daylight saving time both of these reasons make perfect sense.
E.
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