Congress just stole an hour of your life. This post doesn’t exist because it was posted at 2:00AM, except there is no 2:00AM, it magically became 3:00AM.
I don’t guess anyone considered asking people to voluntarily start an hour earlier, instead of messing with the clocks. You could call it summer hours.
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14 comments
According to an article in the Washington Post, President Harding made federal employees come in an hour earlier during one summer. It was met with scorn. (That may be more indicative of the status of Mr. Harding than of the idea.)
Here in South Florida, it hardly seems worth the effort; the difference in daylight between summer and winter is about two hours.
Congress is stealing a whole lot more than an HOUR of me life! (IIRC) hehehehe!
But the *Spring-Ahead* is so much harder to adjust to than the *Fall Behind*!
🙂
Well, Karen, since it’s happened in winter, Will Shortz, the puzzle guy on NPR, suggests we call it “March Ahead.”
Actually it annoys the feral cats who are not know for wearing watches, but do watch the sun and know when I should be feeding them.
The college in New York where I taught had summer hours in addition to the daylight savings time, which actually saved a lot of money, because it allowed a lot of equipment to started before the peak hour rates kicked in, and permitted the air conditioning to be reduced during the late afternoon peak. Going in at 7 or 8 was no fun, but getting done at 3 or 4pm was. It also avoided a major chunk of the rush hours.
Wow — I thought *I* was grumpy here in Massachusetts, finding it dark once again when the alarm went off this morning. 😉
Seriously, though, it isn’t clear to me what was so broken about the old system that required the fix. But, then, I wasn’t asked, either.
It’s simple, Jim, they can stay they are doing something about energy and global warming. All they know how to do is pass laws, so they passed a law.
Bryan, I think you might be a little to narrow in your view of congress-critters.
They know more than how to pass laws. They know how to feather their own beds, they know how to court donors, and they know how to accept “gratuities”.
(Heck, Randall Cunningham knew how to print up a bribe menu. OK, so maybe he didn’t quite know how to do this. But he know which one of his staffers did know how to print!)
On top of all that, many know how to tie their own shoes.
And, occassionally one or two of them try to actually, you know, govern.
On rarer occassions these efforts have been known to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”
One hopes that the latest crew in Congress will do somewhat better at this last stuff than their predecessors — it would be hard to do much worse :-/
It does make a difference, here. Now. I’ll be able to go to the second job and realize how much daylight is out there until I get off… Actually, it might be a good thing. I will think it’s earlier than it really is, until I get used to it. Since we do it every year, I’ve grown fond of Daylight Savings Time. No complaints, except I had to get up for work, this morning, an hour earlier… If I hadn’t had to work, hey, I would have been really happy:)
On rare occasions, Jim, you find someone who wants the job to do something other than help his friends and relatives, but it has been a while. I remember when the Republicans who wanted to run the government like a business had actually been successful in business and knew the value of money, but they are all gone, swept away with the “Reagan Revolution”.
Yeah, OWL, it takes a while to get used to the “lost hour.”
Since I go to work in the dark year-round (I’m at my desk by 6:00 a.m. even though my workday doesn’t officially begin until 7:30 — there’s something to be said for the quiet of an office with free coffee and getting a decent parking space) and I get home by 4:30, I don’t mind the time shift at all. On weekends, the extra darkness in the morning lets me sleep a little longer.
That said, if it was up to me, we’d have DST all the time. This switching back and forth is meshuggeh
The whole 9 to 5 is unnatural, 8 to 4 makes more sense to me, and year round on the same time. We already spend more “time” in DST, than ST, which should make DST the standard.
Bobby – I leave most of my clocks set to DST year ’round. Why should I bother digging up the manual for my microwave, my stove, my electronic thermostat, stereo, etc., when we spend most of the year on DST anyhow? So I didn’t have to do anything yesterday except set the wall clocks forward, and voila! All my clocks show the same time again!
Am I a genius, or what?
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
You are obviously not an obsessive/compulsive personality, ‘Tux.
I did that with the DVD/VCR in the bedroom. I never use it, the clock never keeps the right time, so I guess I’ll keep it on BSPT (Badtux Snarky Penguin Time).