Time is a construct. As time has evolved, humans decided to use time to help assist people get to work with consistency and arrive at events in unison. It’s really helpful. Otherwise you would only have three options to tell people when to show up: sunrise, sunset, and neck sunburn. Timepieces allowed the Swiss to have greater purpose other than being politically neutral and wash rich people’s money. But like all helpful things, we’ve gone and fucked it up.
Changing our clocks twice a year needs to stop. As I waste the extra hour I get this fall typing this edict to no one, I suggest we nominate an evangelist to put this nonsense to bed once and for all. Perhaps a Hawaain, or even an Arizonian, as they seem to be the only two states smart enough to mandate an end to this bullshit.
It’s not for the farmers, as many mistakenly believe. The farmers think it’s as dumb as people who think they know what organic means. Ben Franklin didn’t invent it—he joked about the concept for teaching stupid people how to harness the light and heat of the sun.
It was put into law during World War I to try and help conserve energy. Germany was first, with most of Europe and the US following. I highly advise with conviction that we try our best not to follow German processes from this particular period in time. While many countries abandoned it after WWI, the dumbasses stateside must have missed the telegram. And before you ask, no, there are no significant savings in energy consumption.
For the record, I am not alone in my disdain of this useless and borderline detrimental ritual. 33 states have recently come forth to fight the good fight in order to, as they refer to it, “lock the clock.” (If they’re as good at legislature as they are at slogans this may not get very far.)
Health experts hate it too. A recent study from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine called for an end to the madness, showing that, and I quote (if I was a lawyer I could not make this up), “Switching to Daylight Saving Time is associated with cardiovascular morbidity, a higher risk of a heart attack or stroke, and an increase in hospital admissions for irregular heartbeats.” In other words, it wreaks havoc on our circadian rhythm, and who wants that?
Less than 40% of the planet observes DST. I’ve been in Scandinavia in winter and in summer. You know what happens when there is three hours of daylight in winter, or three hours of night in summer? Nothing different whatsoever. We’re visitors on the planet, so we should stop doing stupid things to pretend we’re in control of Earth. It should be DST year round. There is a lot wrong in the world, and this is admittedly low on the priority list—but hopefully we will soon get around to eradicating this idiocy. Meantime, I’ll still be silently protesting once a year, come one Monday Mid-March, by showing up to work an hour late and claiming to having forgotten to set my clock forward.
