Daylight Saving Time ...

The “spring forward, fall back” nonsense always infuriates me. 

I’m a reasonably intelligent guy but I’ve yet to understand why we do this.  There’s absolutely no rational reason I’ve ever seen for setting our clocks back an hour in the fall, and then forward an hour in spring. 

Proponents claim it gives people more daylight hours.  They also claim it saves energy. 

What it really does is to compel folks in the afflicted time zones to run around and reset every clock, watch and device dependent on a clock twice a year. And for what?  So they can screw up their circadian rhythm for a few days? 

Honestly, there’s no point to this.  Some NY politician first brought up this idea for the U.S., which shouldn’t really surprise anyone. It was stupid when it started and remains stupid today. 

Hate to burst everybody’s bubble, but the number of daylight hours has nothing to do with setting your clocks forward or back.  There are always fewer hours of sunlight each day as we head into winter; then the number of hours of sunlight each day increases as we head out of winter.

There’s real science behind why that happens, but one thing’s for certain – changing your watches and clocks has nothing to do with it. 

So it’s always been a dumb idea.  But leave it to Congress to make it even dumber. 

It was bad enough when we all accepted when this futile illusion would begin and end.  Makers of electronic devices used this predictability to preprogram a wide range of devices so they would automatically change their displays for us.

Then, not long ago, actually with the Energy Policy Act of 2005, bureaucrats and politicians decided to change the start and stop dates. Why?  No idea.  I suspect nobody in Congress did either.  The net result was to start DST a little earlier and end it a bit later.  (It now starts the second Sunday of March, and ends the first Sunday of November – just for the record.)

So now DST is about 4-5 weeks longer than it used to be.  Woo-hoo.  Don’t you feel better knowing that your government can control the number of daylight hours there are, and has decided to give you more of them?  Well, where’s your gratitude? 

Of course all those devices preprogrammed with original start/stop dates now have to be manually set.  But that’s a small price to pay for more daylight hours, right? 

Now, if we ended this madness what would happen?  Would schoolchildren have to trick-or-treat in the dark again? Would energy consumption soar?  What about school kids waiting in the dark for their school bus?   

Will all Hell break loose?

Nope.  Just look at Arizona.  They’re not on DST.  And they seem to be doing quite nicely without it.  As we would.