TIME TRAVELERS

 

I can’t believe we are doing this again. We got along for nine thousand years without doing it, and now we do it twice a year. It was a dumb idea when we did it the first time and doing a dumb thing twice a year does not make it smart. Why are we changing our clocks again?! 

The persons to blame for this are the obsessive-compulsive bureaucrats who champion the so-called Daylight Saving Time – and there is no “s” at the end of “Saving” because it’s modifying time, not daylight, which turns out to be more than a symbolic difference,  I told you these clock watchers were obsessive compulsive.  But that dropped “s” should also give you a hint that this whole thing is one great fraud being perpetrated on each and every one of us in the name of good grammar and saving daylight. Which, of course, cannot be done.

So on 10 March,  at 2:00 AM, we will "Spring Forward", adjusting our clocks again because we’re all supposed to.  It's a unity thing, I guess. One nation under a one really dumb idea. We are all dumb together because being dumb together is better than being smart individually.  I guess being smart together is not an option. And I have to tell you that I am not going to feel like  "springing" anywhere an hour earlier, no matter how you insist on repeating "Spring Forward".   Just because its the law, or a rule or something. These endless adjustments are an endless treadmill of dumbness.

Experts assure us that during Daylight Saving Time we’re going to save 10,000 barrels of oil a day, reduce crime and spend more time out of doors with our families during summer evenings. If you knew my family, you might not want to spend an extra hour with them, anywhere. 

Of course your iPad and your iPhone might start displaying some rare Lapland dialect if you tried to instruct it to ignore the whole thing.  But why are we doing this again?!  They first tried this half baked scheme back in World War One, and as soon as the war was over they dumped it. Because it didn't actually work. And now, every time some one-world type comes up with another energy saving idea, we are all required to smile and call it "green":  

But I wonder about all that extra fossil fuel we will burn this spring, to generate electricity to light our darkened bedrooms, not to mention run our computers, TVs, hair dryers, electric razors and toothbrushes, water heaters and all those headlights we can't get out of bed without . We used to say that people who rose early got up with the cows. Well, the cows are not getting up any earlier. Nor are the chickens. Why the hell are we?

As everybody keeps pointing out, it was Ben Franklin who first purposed Daylight Saving in his essay “An Economical Project”, (but in French, of course) (above)  in which he suggested that if authorities were to “…Oblige a man to rise at four in the morning, …it is probable he will go willingly to bed at eight in the evening." Well. duh. Unless, of course, he takes a nap. But, yeah, if you make him get up earlier he will probably go to bed earlier. 

And if we set him on fire, it is probable he will not litter. It is an interesting idea from the eighteenth century’s second most famous reprobate, but it strikes me like accepting interior decorating suggestions from the eighteenth century's first most famous reprobate, the Marque de Sade. Besides, how do we know that Ben wasn't just joking? I know the Marque wasn't, but...say... did anyone ever see these two guys in the same room at the same time?

Anyway,  if Ben was kidding, then Congressman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who wrote the amendment to the Energy Policy Act of 2005 requiring Daylight Saving Time, missed the punch line. What a surprise, a Republican with no sense of humor.  So the same Congress that has refused to raise the minimum wage for over a quarter of a century,  found the time to steal an hour of my  sleep every March and screw with my sanity every November.  In the next election I suggest voting for Ben Franklin.

Ben was trying to save about 64 million pounds of candle wax a year. Well, look how much wax we saved by inventing electricity! And, didn't Ben have something to do with that?  Kite, key, electrical storm -  any of this sound familiar?  Listen, didn't Ben see this whole electricity thing coming? 

And speaking of electricity, according to the New Jersey Public Service Enterprise Group, Daylight Saving has “no impact” on energy demands in their service area. And the government of Kazakhstan has already dropped the whole idea of “saving daylight”.  Are Americans dumber than the Kazakhastanies? 

According to the University of California Energy Institute, daylight saving does not actually save energy, it just moves it around. And a recent study of electric bills in Indiana found that the time "shifters" are actually costing each Hoosier almost $3.00 a year MORE -  about $8.6 million each year in total, plus somewhere between $1.6 and $5.3 million in pollution costs for generating all that extra electricity for getting up and going to work in the dark all winter!  

And if that is what it costs Hoosiers (like me), think what it costing people in New Jersey!  Well, actually, it doesn't cost folks on the east coast that much, because they are on the front line of the time zone, and it doesn't cost folks in Chicago that much either. Again they are flying in the front of the time zone plane. But us folks in coach , we are getting screwed twice a year. A little more energy conservation like this and we might as well just start burning coal again. Which we are still doing. Why are we doing that? Why isn't shutting coal powered power plants a good idea for saving energy?  Better than time shifting.

And another problem with this bi-annual adjustment to our sense of reality is that our brains can’t adjust just because we tell them too. Computers solve the problem without a hitch. So while our electronics no longer need a "time patch” for programs, humans require psychiatric assistance to adjust to the depression brought on by lost sleep every spring!  

To quote from Ken Fisher’s article for ARS,  “So while the US government pats itself on the back for at least looking busy, know that the main goal – energy conservation – has not been met….Isn’t arbitrary, mostly meaningless change, great?”  Hell, no, it isn’t.

A January 2020 study by the  University of Boulder reveals that fatal car accidents "spike" 6% upward in the week following the spring forward, meaning an additional 28 deaths each year nationwide. And for citizens living in the western edges of each time zone - flying coach or in steerage -  the increased risk of death rises to 8%. 

That means, say the scientists from Boulder, that over the last 22 years, 627 people have died simply to placate Ben Franklin.  Hey! He's dead. Could we not worry so much about hurting his feelings, anymore?  And it ain't like we have to win World War One all over again.  We done did that.

Still, I’m willing to be cooperative.  If we need more daylight then let’s move the clocks forward and be done with it. Why fall back in the fall? Listen, if the majority of the population decides that at noon tomorrow we should all pretend that it is now 10:45 AM, I’d go along with that. But for heaven’s sake please stop moving the clocks back and forth and back and forth as if we were keeping time with Mexican jumping beans. Why are we doing this to ourselves? Pick a damn time and leave it the hell alone!

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