“Only a paleface would think he could make a blanket longer by cutting a foot off the bottom and sewing it on the top.” This quote appears every year at the start of Daylight Saving Time. It’s attributed to an “old Indian chief”. It should really be attributed to an annoyed white man, who dislikes having to go around the house setting all the clocks ahead an hour.
Everyone dislikes losing an hour of sleep. There is less complaining about returning to Standard Time when we get our lost hour back. Farmers are blamed for DST but farmers say it wasn’t us. We don’t care what time the sun comes up.
It was just getting to be light around six a.m. before DST went into effect. We lost that early light and I started setting my alarm to seven. Over the past two weeks I’ve worked my way back to my usual six a.m. The extra hour of daylight in the evening is fine, but I’ve been mildly disoriented by this one hour jet lag.
The logic of DST is- let’s take those extra minutes in the morning and tack them on the evening when most people are awake and can use them. The Romans made winter hours shorter and summer hours longer. That wasn't really DST. Ben Franklin talked about this idea in the 1700s. Even though he didn't think we could or should do it, he often gets credit for the idea. The British almost did it in the late 1800s, but inertia won out and the idea died.
It took war to make it happen. Germany and Austria switched to DST in 1916 in the middle of WWI to use energy more efficiently. Britain soon followed. President Woodrow Wilson, an avid golfer, had been lobbying for DST so he could play longer on summer evenings. The war allowed him to push it through in the US in 1918. After the war DST was scrapped until WWII. After the war, states were allowed to use DST or not, until the energy crisis. In 1974, DST was made the law year round, again to save energy. People complained that it was unsafe for kids going to school in the dark. The law was repealed a year later.
DST during spring and summer is still the law but states can opt out. Most of the country uses DST. The exceptions are Hawaii and Arizona. The further south a place is on the globe the less are the effects of daylight changes between summer and winter. The outside workers in Arizona go to work at the crack of dawn when it's still cool and they quit for the day at noon when temperatures are soaring. It's interesting that the "old Indian chief" laughed at the palefaces, yet the Navaho Nation in northeast Arizona uses DST.
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| It's the law, more or less. |
Just another obvious issue the DFL should add to their campaign platform ...
ReplyDeleteI vote for shorter hours in winter. Shorter months too.
DeleteTime's arrow is an illusion concocted by humans with not enough to do.
ReplyDeleteFamous physicist, Stephen Hawking has much to say about time that is worth considering. Here is a primer that should put to rest changing our clocks. Don't do it; it doesn't matter in the big picture.
See "On the Origin of Time" by Hawking and coauthor. Here's a more detailed breakdown of the key ideas:
Emergent Time and Causality:
The theory suggests that time and causality, as we understand them, are not fundamental but rather emerge from the interactions of countless quantum particles, similar to how temperature emerges from the collective motion of atoms.
Evolution of Physics:
The theory posits that the laws of physics themselves evolve, particularly during the very early stages of the universe, rather than being eternally fixed.
Universe as a Hologram:
The earliest stages of the universe are envisioned as a holographic projection, and the past that emerges from this hologram does not extend infinitely back.
Darwinian Evolution:
The theory draws parallels between biological and cosmological evolution, suggesting that both are part of a larger evolutionary process.
No Prior Existence:
The theory suggests that there was no "before" the Big Bang, and that time and the laws of physics did not exist prior to the universe's emergence