Saturday 26 March 2011

Today's Review: Daylight Savings Time

I'm writing this review with an hour before my deadline. OR AM I? For you see, the clocks are going forward. So what once was ten past midnight will soon be ten past one, and then I will not have done a review a day and I will die horribly of shame. Mind = blown. Love it or hate it, we have Daylight Savings Time to thank for this marvellous feat.

Daylight Savings Time in its current form was invented by a guy called George Vernon Hudson. He liked to collect insects in his spare time, and he valued the hours after work in which he could use the daylight to fulfill this pastime. But it got darker earlier in the winter, so less daylight he had. Instead of just grinning and bearing it like anyone else would do, he decided to say "Hey, everyone, just change your watches so I can catch some more bugs, kay?"

Daylight Savings was basically a way for ancient people with no electricity to make the use of the extra sunshine afforded to them in the summer to do things they wouldn't otherwise be able to see because they were all stupid and hadn't invented proper lighting systems. Farmers would be able to use the valuable sunlight to gather crops, men could collect their insects and be able to golf for longer.

The farmer issue is quite valid, I suppose. But still, if farmers need sunlight, why not just wake up an hour earlier? Why make everybody else change their clocks? Farmers were a lot more important and plentiful back in the day, but now there are grumpy businessmen who survive on coffee that eternally curse these farmers when they lose an hour's sleep. Maybe it's time to stop this silliness once and for all. We have lights everywhere now. Hell, my phone can produce a pretty blinding flashlight. You know what the government would say today if you tried to introduce DST? "Fuck off, get up early you lazy little shit", or something more media friendly but with the same basic message. My dad lives in Oman, there's no DST there at all. They've got loads of farmers there, or I assume so, someone has to own all those goats I see in the mountains all the time. But there people get into work at 6am and are finished by 3pm, when the sun starts to go in. They don't need to change their clocks to satisfy people, they just get up at different times. Why is it so hard for Western civilisation to just deal with it?

DST is outdated, it's unnecessary. There are different countries in the same time zones where one observes it and the other doesn't. Time zones are enough to have to work around business wise, you don't need to have to figure out how many more hours someone is ahead or behind. Why can't we all just get along, and do our daylight fuelles work when the sun is out rather than based on what time it is? Then maybe everyone can stop saying "Spring forward, fall back" and "Oooh, don't forget to change the clocks". My clocks change themselves, because I am not a hermit. And I prefer "Spring carries on the consistent flow of time, and so does fall". It might not have a ring to it, but it makes a lot more sense.

My rating: 0/5. Or is it 1/5? No, it's 0/5. Stop playing silly buggers.

1 comment:

  1. Very late to this, but just to say, I very much enjoyed this post (which I found while looking for something else).

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