So I decided to look up how we came about this crazy habit of changing time.
Long gone is the day when the farmer woke to the rooster's crow and slept when the sunset, or the days of the sun dial where time was always based upon daylight hours and thus naturally adjusted throughout the year.
Now we live in a calculated time where we live by the clock which is based upon scientific study of how long a second, minute, hour, day and year should be. And so we stopped living by natures clock (the sun) and started living by man's clock (big Ben).
So Big Ben Franklin came up with the notion of Daylight Saving time, though at the time nobody listened to him. In a society that lives by the clock, who lives North of the equator, nature changes daylight for us. So is it wise to live like Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, American Samoa and until 2005, Indiana? Or is it better to send ourselves into self induces jet-lag for the sake of daylight?
The argument for Daylight saving time is twofold.
-We waste daylight if we don't adjust the clock an hour
-We save a whopping 1-2% in energy cost
Indiana used to be divided on the issue. Western Indiana practiced Daylight Saving Time and Eastern Indiana didn't. In 2005 a new law changed that and the whole state no practices the changing of the clocks. A study of the Energy used before and after the time change law show an increase in energy use after the change.
Now the "experts" argue that this finding won't be true of all areas (trying to retain their dignity in proclaiming the energy savings). Now I concede this may be true, but it is also true that the notion of DST being a universal energy saver is a false notion.
And so we are left with the "it is a better use of daylight" argument.
I personally think we would do just as well to spend an extra hour in darkness in the mornings of winter than to juggle our clocks twice a year. Most of us Angelino's are driving to work at that time anyway. This would afford us and our children that extra hour in the evening for outdoor time. And I wouldn't be sitting here at home, researching the beginning of this national if not global phenomenon.
3 comments:
There are some who say that Franklin was actually being very sarcastic when he wrote about changing the time. In other words, the government was stupid enough to believe it to be a serious idea. LOL
"When the Old Indian was told the reason for Daylight Savings time he said 'only the gov't would think you can cut a foot off a blanket, sew it to the other end and have a longer blanket'"
I agree. It makes absolutely no sense to take an hour away from our days each winter, when Mother Nature does it anyway, then, when summer rolls around and Mother Nature gives us an extra hour of sunshine, good ol' "Uncle Sam" adds another hour to it. Consider the source. "Uncle Sam"'s been backwards and otherwise goofed up for decades, for the most part...unfortunately.
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