Monday, September 26, 2011

Daylight Savings, Starlight Shavings?

While it's nice to have a scapegoat, I admit that daylight saving time is a TERRIBLE idea. I mean, what the heck were George Vernon Hudson, William Willett, Robert Pearce, and the various governments of the world thinking? It's moronic. I mean, here's a simple solution that has existed since the dawn of sleep itself: Wake up earlier. Is it such an alien concept that they cannot wrap their minds around it?

Well, okay, in all honesty, there are some benefits to the apparently illogical warping of the time-space continuum as we know it. Sure, we might save a little bit of power on lighting. It'll be easier to be outdoors in the evening, given the daylight. But all in all, the effect is rather illusory. We don't actually get anymore daytime out of it than we normally would have. I believe a better compromise would be for those that it benefits to shift their timetables backwards an hour, rather than shifting the clock for the entire country forward an hour.

Given that the benefits do not outweigh the disadvantages, and in fact, the very opposite is ever so slightly true, it makes no sense to force an entire country to have to deal with something that is potential harmful to the economy. Unfortunately, being just a lowly citizen, I do not feel I am in such a position to make a difference in even something as insignificant as DST. The best I can hope for is to put my opinion out there and hope it gets heard (Or read, as the case might be.).

For posterity, I figured I'd list a few pros and cons of DST.
Pros:Cons:
More daylight for retailers and other businesses.Less available worktime for farmers and other sun-dependent jobs.
Better daylight availability reduces traffic collisions and fatalities.Causes disruption of sleep patterns and thus health and safety concerns.
DST is a good time for maintenance of fire alarms, among other things.Maintenance of clocks is troublesome and can cause other issues.


At any rate, I'll let you folks decide for yourselves while I mourn the loss of my precious night hours. Daylight might be saved, but moonlight and starlight become lost! (And no, that's not because I made this post in the middle of the night. I'm just a regular night owl.)

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