Goodbye, Blue Monday

Goodbye, Blue Monday!

Thanks as always to Pirate’s Cove for the Rule Five links!

So, yesterday morning we observed the first half of our annual Daylight Savings Time stupidity, wherein we pushed our clocks an hour ahead because…  reasons, including some hand-waving about extra daylight in the evenings reducing energy expenditures.  Later on this year we’ll roll them back and thus reclaim the hour we lost in March.  Why are we still doing this when there are so many good arguments for abandoning the practice?  Excerpt:

Unfortunately, the evidence indicates that in practice, no energy savings result.

Like many people, getting enough sleep is a serious issue for me, and it is a struggle every day to get to bed and asleep early enough.  The last thing I need is to lose another hour of sleep.

Isn’t there a political constituency for dumping DST?  Two states, Arizona and Hawaii, already do not observe Daylight Savings Time, but where are the brave members of the House and Senate to introduce legislation mandating a national end to this absurd practice?  I’d welcome hearings on the subject.

Of course, it has nothing to do with removing Trump from office, so Democrats in the House probably are not interested.  Still, it is time to end this ridiculous, costly ordeal.

So apparently in the winter months, when energy expenditures are higher, the extra hour of daylight robbed from morning to pay evening doesn’t count?  The whole rigamarole is like taking a six-foot length of rope, cutting a foot off one end, tying it to the other and claiming the rope is a foot longer.

Not that there isn’t a lot to love about summer.

The reason this ridiculous practice remains in place is simple:  It made a certain amount of sense when the United States was primarily an agricultural nation, but now that we are not, it has held on through institutional inertia.  Nothing more, nothing less.  It’s much the same with our traditional school schedules, where kids originally got a long summer break so they were available to help with farm chores, along with a spring break (planting) and a fall break (harvesting.)

The Imperial government, if they are going to be the arbiters of what time it is, should damn well pick a time and stick to it.  Arizona and Hawaii have done so and seem to be getting along just fine.  Let’s follow their example.