It’s That Time of Year again. It’s a Conspiracy. But we have Little Choice, because it’s Good For Us;
“I don’t really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.”
Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks
So, don’t forget that you’ll wake up still drunk Sunday morning because you will have had an hour’s less sleep. And don’t forget to thank Benjamin Franklin for joking about the idea with people who thought he was serious…
Here’s some proof that DST is a bad idea.
The result of the study showed that electricity use went up in the counties adopting daylight saving time in 2006, costing $8.6 million more in household electricity bills. The conclusion reached by Kotchen and Grant was that while the lighting costs were reduced in the afternoons by daylight saving, the greater heating costs in the mornings, and more use of air-conditioners on hot afternoons more than offset these savings. Kotchen said the results were more “clear and unambiguous” than results in any other paper he had presented.
Kotchen and Grant’s work reinforces the findings of an Australian study in 2007 by economists Ryan Kellogg and Hendrik Wolff, who studied the extension of daylight saving time for two months in New South Wales and Victoria for the 2000 Summer Olympics. They also found an increase in energy use.
Study: Daylight saving time a waste of energy
Since it doesn’t save any energy, the only reason left for DST is the conclusion I came to before.
What glorious power is given to congress. They can dictate what time the sun comes up, and the sun will listen. Maybe they should tackle that Pi thing, try dictating that it will be 3.2 or something.
