Dear Blick, X-Air, and WeatherCat social observers,
One of the most ridiculous government-imposed boondoggles of modern life occurred yesterday at my home at 2:00 AM Mountain Daylight Time when our clocks magically went backward for one hour, transforming into 1:00 AM Mountain Standard Time. What a waste of good clock energy. WeatherCat, of course, handled the change much better than I did. The older I get, the more ridiculous this semi-annual madness becomes.
You are preaching to the choir when it comes to me. I haven't gone back to review the literature, but last time I looked it seems absolutely overwhelming that daylight savings only costs - it doesn't save anything. When the concept was first proposed, lighting was difficult and expensive. It might have made sense then. However today, lighting is an extremely small fraction of our energy costs. On the other hand, the key premise of daylight savings really doesn't apply anymore. People cannot rearrange the lives to take advantage of the extra daylight. More than ever we are bound to the clock of a modern society. Whatever we set our clocks to, we need to live out our regimented lives. As a result, in the Winter we use more energy to heat because we are forced to get up earlier when it is colder. In the Summer we use more energy to stay cool because we shift our activity into the hotter part of the day.
Alas, repealing daylight savings looks to be virtually impossible for a reason that -
to me at least - is utterly terrifying. It has become a ingrained tradition with false associations of patriotism and caring for the environment. Whenever I've broached this subject I might as well have been attacking motherhood and apple pie. Stranger still, there are many people who desperately want that extra hour of daylight for psychological and recreational reasons. People in Northern latitudes see the start of daylight savings as a first sign of the end of their winter entombment. Many people want daylight savings for the additional recreational time it provides them with daylight. Even if most people have very little free time at all, so it represents a huge waste of human resources for a very tiny benefit. Moreover this too is probably more illusion than reality, since most people have pigeon-holed their free time as well. For all too many, daylight savings or not, even our free time is regimented like clockwork.
Still, those reasons prevail instead of - a rational attempt to make the best choices for the human race and the planet. It is simply another example of rationality rejected by collective preference. Since as a collective we have also rejected any sort of spiritual salvation, we cannot as whole expect rescue in that manner. if we also intentionally choose to reject rationality - just how long to we expect to endure?
At this point about all I can hope for is
da' second coming!! Oh well, . . . . . Edouard
P.S. Yes, WeatherCat got through the transition just fine for me as well.