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The Living Daylights

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The Daylight Savings idea was one of Ben Franklin’s worst. He thought we’d all save candles if, in the summer, we started the day earlier on the clock, leaving more sunshine for the evening.

Politicians made it official: Move the clock one hour forward in the summer, to hoodwink people to get up earlier and leave more daylight hours for after work.

In our lifetimes, most Americans have suffered through Daylight Savings Time each summer. Courtesy of George Bush, the period was extended.

I object to the policy primarily on grounds of, well, honesty. Once you set up a basic system, don’t fiddle with it. If you want to save money, you get up with the sun rather than the clock — and leave me alone.

But technocrats dismiss that kind of thinking. They see human beings as radically imperfect and their laws as extraordinarily clever.

But now it turns out that Daylight Savings Time doesn’t save energy. Matthew J. Kotchen and Laura E. Grant, writing in the New York Times, report on their recent study in Indiana, where implementation of Daylight Savings has been county-by-county, a perfect statistical testing ground.

They found that Daylight Savings cost one percent extra. Franklin didn’t figure on morning heaters and daytime air conditioning.

So they suggest nixing the practice. Add that to the case against cumbersome meddling, and the time to treat time by one standard is now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

13 replies on “The Living Daylights”

I wish people would stop blaming poor Ben Franklin for daylight savings time. His “proposal” was pure satire, and if anyone takes the time to actually read the essay that becomes pretty obvious. Unfortunately for the rest of us, some fool took the idea seriously.

This is akin to haring people to dig holes in the ground and then hiring others to fill them back up.

Apparently, the “extra benefit” of using more energy for early-morning heat and afternoon cooling makes DS (Daylight Saving) even better than make-work.

I think DS is BS.

Don’t knock DST. Here in Thailand we get sporting events from the USA an hour earlier because we don’t have DST, and that is important!!!:)

I’m with you. If the Boss says to be at work at 6:30 – I’ll just do it. 2ndly twice a year I have to get the clock down from over the Fridge and reset it and then replace it before the time changes. 3rdly I wish the politicans I’m supporting would do something important instead of this kind of time waster.

aylight savings time is still a good thing but the benefits of the setback of the clocks varies depending where you live in the time zone. The time zone is an hour wide, 15 degrees longitude and the entry of the eastern side of the zone you are really early but a the west side of the zone you are late. using daylight time just moves you east into the previous time zone. the energy saving benefits depend on where you are in the zone and the Indiana study was at the western edge of the zone and thus distorted because it was at the boundary of the next zone.

Funny, I was always told in my early years that DST was to enable farmers to work later in the fields at harvest time. I could never rationalize this, as farmers seem to keep working until the job is done.

This is, however, an opportunity for our “public servants” to exercise a little more control over our lives, since control and re-election are their main reasons for existance.

Heh – is obvious you’re city kids. DST was established when/because we were an agricultural nation. Its intent was to enable farmers to interact with townfolk at reasonable hours.

BTW – in case a website manager reads this – did you know that Sunbelt Personal Firewall blocks you out?

Rob Davidson is correct about Dr. Franklin’s satire.
Abolish DST! If folks want to establish Summer or Winter hours for their businesses, no problem. Gov’t telling us what time it is, or should be, is cow turds.

Well, I just think we should stay on “God’s time” year round. Go to bed with the cows and wake up with the chickens.
It worked for centuries, and except for WWII, I don’t see that it benefits anyone at all. It takes three days to reset all of the clocks, and then there is always that one that you forget to do!

The only purpose that DST serves is requiring people to change their clocks twice a year!
DST is pointless and annoying!
DST makes as much sense as cutting the ends off the roast.

In the late 60’s while I was in high school, DST was being debated as to whether to adopt it or not in Utah. One of the arguments against involved a story about an old Indian chief who had a blanket that was 12 inches too short so that when he pulled it up to tuck in at his neck, his feet poked out. His solution? cut a foot off at the top and sew on the bottom so his feet would be covered. A day is a day is a day. With temperature regulated heating and air conditioning (not time regulated) where’s the energy savings? But then, here in AZ we don’t do DST. All we have to remember is whether our time is the same as Utah or California. Dump DST!!!

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