The Monday morning masochism tango
Supposedly the annual onset of Daylight Saving Time brings about an increase in heart attacks, more traffic accidents, more workplace accidents, yadda yadda yadda. So why the hell do we do this to ourselves every year? And earlier every year, too.
I seem to recall that we didn't use to do this "spring ahead" stuff until the last weekend in April (see Uniform Time Act of 1966). Then it got moved to the first weekend in April, which sometimes messed with Easter. And now the first weekend in March. Oy.
The time switch seems especially craptastic in this obsessed-with-getting-an-early-start metro area, where people complain if their health clubs don't open at 5 a.m., there are traffic jams on the roadways by 6 a.m., and people who work for big defense contractors like my friend R. find themselves asked to attend meetings at 7 a.m.
I mean, if people REALLY want the maximum light at the end of the day, why not just have year-round DST, as we did during the energy crisis of 1973-74, or during World War II? After all, our previous president DID proclaim that we were fighting a never-ending war on terrorism, and we're still generally considered to be "at war" in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and we've got the War on Cancer and the War on Drugs going on too. So, geez, let's go to year-round DST so we can fight all these wars!
Face it folks, we are NOT going to get more total hours of daylight, especially in the winter months, unless we mess with the tilt of the Earth's axis and the rotation speed of the Earth, and I don't even want to THINK about the ramifications of that (or how much energy it would require).
I seem to recall that we didn't use to do this "spring ahead" stuff until the last weekend in April (see Uniform Time Act of 1966). Then it got moved to the first weekend in April, which sometimes messed with Easter. And now the first weekend in March. Oy.
The time switch seems especially craptastic in this obsessed-with-getting-an-early-start metro area, where people complain if their health clubs don't open at 5 a.m., there are traffic jams on the roadways by 6 a.m., and people who work for big defense contractors like my friend R. find themselves asked to attend meetings at 7 a.m.
I mean, if people REALLY want the maximum light at the end of the day, why not just have year-round DST, as we did during the energy crisis of 1973-74, or during World War II? After all, our previous president DID proclaim that we were fighting a never-ending war on terrorism, and we're still generally considered to be "at war" in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and we've got the War on Cancer and the War on Drugs going on too. So, geez, let's go to year-round DST so we can fight all these wars!
Face it folks, we are NOT going to get more total hours of daylight, especially in the winter months, unless we mess with the tilt of the Earth's axis and the rotation speed of the Earth, and I don't even want to THINK about the ramifications of that (or how much energy it would require).