Nov 06
Crazy Daylight Saving time
“Daylight Saving time is like cutting one end off your blanket and sewing it on the other to make the blanket longer.” Anonymous
Anybody beside me think DST is just a crazy inconvenience? Who do we have to thank for this wacky practice?
Benjamin Franklin is credited with conceiving the idea of daylight saving in 1784 to conserve candles, but the idea got legs through support from, you guessed it, special interests.
New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson would spend his spare time after work collecting insects, an activity limited by daylight. Inspired to extend his extracurricular activities, he presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society proposing a two-hour daylight-saving shift.
Retailers, especially those involved with sports and recreation, have historically argued hardest for extending daylight time. Representatives of the golf industry, for instance, told Congress in 1986 that an extra month of daylight saving was worth up to $400 million annually in extra sales and fees.
Some clever marketers use DST to promote. For example, Arm And Hammer reminds you to change the box of baking soda in your fridge.
Others use the event to remind you to change the batteries in your smoke detectors.
But not everyone agrees it is a good idea. After Indiana instituted daylight saving statewide for the first time in 2007, University of California, Santa Barbara economist and his colleagues observed a 1 percent rise in residential electricity use, costing the state an extra $9 million.
If time shifting turns out to be an energy waster, should the sun set on daylight saving? Certainly that would please farmers, who have long opposed it for how it disrupts their schedules.
This is one time I’d like to join the folks in Arizona and Hawaii who do not switch to DST. But since I’m in Colorado, I’ll be turning my clock back Sunday morning and my pets, who are kept in to protect them from predators until daylight, will drive me crazy for an extra hour.
What do you think of Daylight Saving Time?
