25.9.05

Spring Forward, Fall Back.



Being awake this early on a Sunday does have its advantages... I think of things I always wonder about but have never heard anyone give a satisfying response to or things I forget about almost as quickly as I thought of them. For instance, why do we have daylight saving time? It really seems weird to set your clocks back an entire hour (I do like the extra hour of sleep) and then set it forward in the springtime (I hate waking up earlier)-- it's like time indecision. But after doing some nice research on one of my favorite websites, Wikipedia, I have a partial answer (the whole answer is long, convoluted, and involves too many countries and laws to mention here).
Interestingly, Ben Franklin, in a letter to some important literary types wondered why people didn't go to sleep earlier and also wake up earlier. This was a long ass time ago. Afterwards, some freak took it on himself to get a law passed that put this in effect in the UK. The British governement was opposed to the idea. Naturally, the Germans thought it was great and instituted this stupid practice during WWI. The changes and other places this spread to can be read about here, if you care.
Some people think DST is great because we conserve more energy and adjust sleep patterns to maximize the number of hours spent awake with the number of hours of daylight. I guess this increases physical activity and "productivity".
Succinctly, I think it sucks.

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