News You Can't Use: Madness of Daylight Saving Time Endures

It sure is exciting to control time. This Saturday I'll press a button on my 1979 clock radio and an entire hour will simply vanish, sixty minutes of "live life to its fullest by running through fields and hang-gliding" eradicated in a single act of human will gone insane. Hard as it is to believe, there are some dissenters to the world's lamest version of time travel and in the interest of being fair and balanced we must give the other side equal time. At least until a New York businessman hits the scene and that whole idea gets thrown out the window.

One hundred years after Congress passed the first daylight saving legislation, lawmakers in Florida this week passed the “Sunshine Protection Act,” which will make daylight saving a year-round reality in the Sunshine State.

We will protect our precious vanishing sunlight. We stopped those Plan Nine aliens by punching them in the face and we'll stop any naysayers to this latest ill-conceived solar strategy, too.

If approved by the federal government, this will effectively move Florida’s residents one time zone to the east, aligning cities from Jacksonville to Miami with Nova Scotia rather than New York and Washington, D.C.

It took me forever to fully parse this bizarre information and when I finally did I wept for the future.

The cost of rescheduling international and interstate business and commerce hasn’t been calculated. 

The client is losing a billion dollars a second! Etc.

Instead, relying on the same overly optimistic math that led the original proponents of daylight saving to predict vast energy savings, crisper farm products harvested before the morning dew dried and lessened eye strain for industrial workers, Florida legislators are lauding the benefits of putting “more sunshine in our lives.”

In optimistic math 0.5 is halfway to one and not halfway to zero.

It’s absurd – and fitting – that a century later, opponents and supporters of daylight saving are still not sure exactly what it does.

Fudging clocks, how do they work?

Despite its name, daylight saving has never saved anyone anything.

It's all a lie! A lie! *is restrained by government thugs*

For centuries people set their clocks and watches by looking up at the sun and estimating, which yielded wildly dissimilar results between (and often within) cities and towns.

Well, sure looks like noon. Consider it official.

In 1883, the economic clout of the railroads allowed them to replace sun time with standard time with no legislative assistance and little public opposition.

It's because of "interesting" stories like these that the History Channel has switched to an "all aliens, all the time" format.

All my distant acquaintances on social media are gonna love this, haw, haw, haw.

While proponents argued that shoving clocks ahead during summer months would reduce energy consumption and encourage outdoor recreation, the opposition won out. 

I'm shoving clocks. You better stay out of my way unless you want some too, punk.

Then, in 1916, Germany suddenly adopted the British idea in hopes of conserving energy for its war effort.

You convinced me it was a good idea by appealing to the wartime policies of the Central Powers.

Full Article.

Komment Korner  

Daylight savings time? Yeah, it provides more sunlight at the end of the day but so what?

Circadian clocks are not something you want to mess around with.  

Oh no! Scary dark! Sounds like you've experienced lots of hardships in your life what with your "work" and all. 

Anything that Massachusetts supports should be defeated soundly.

You do realize that no matter what time you set your clock to that there are only so many daylight hours each day, don't you? Of course you dont because you are an idiot

These stupid humans. 

Daylight savings is a product of the devil and must be stabbed through it's black heart until dead and stacked to the ground to never again rise.
 

Arizona is the only sane state in the union. 

When the change occurred in 1966, I didn't get my homework done and blamed it on Congress.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.