A Rare Rant

Sploid, my new guilty pleasure, said it best: "Meddling Congress Even Screws Up Time".

I've never understood the logic behind Daylight Savings Time.  We aren't saving anything.  The sun rises and sets on its own schedule.  All we do is shift those times an hour ahead. Democratic Representative Ed Markey from Massachusetts and co-sponsor of a bill to extend DST from the end of March to the end of November said, "The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use."  Hello??? We won't have more daylight, Mother Nature set the limit on that, and while we may not use as much electricity at night, we'll use more in the morning as we flip on the lights to get dressed for work or school.

The tourism lobby is one of the biggest supporters of DST.  If the sun sets an hour later that's an extra hour for tourists to take carriage rides here in Charleston and to play golf.  Of course, it's also an hour less in the morning for them to do the same things.  If DST is good for tourism, why not bump the US East coast up to Greenwich Mean Time?  That way the sun won't set until after midnight during the summer.

Comments

[Jeff]

I hate how early it gets dark by December.

Of course, I went from Missouri to Arizona in the middle of basic training and AIT after DST had already started. Nobody bothered to tell us Arizona didn't follow DST (we got there on Memorial Day weekend so we had nowhere to be until Tuesday.) When it got dark between 630 and 730 that first night it was weird.

[Margaret]

I hate the time changes, period. They mess up my body clock and cost me a lot of time to change all kinds of clocks around here. I ALWAYS forget at least one clock--usually the one in the thermostat, the one in the car or a different important one that will affect my life or comfort.