Daylight Saving Time
What about Daylight Saving Time? What good is it? We have it for about 8 months and Standard Time for the other 4. So shouldn’t DST be called Standard Time and Standard Time be called Daylight Losing Time?
It was not Benjamin Franklin who proposed DST, as is commonly believed, but rather a New Zealand entomologist George Hudson first proposed modern DST.
It can cause confusion, missed flights and worse. It disrupts human circadian rhythms, and increases fatal traffic collisions and heart attacks. Workers and schoolchildren have to begin the day in darkness.
Must we be slaves to our clocks? If we want the benefits of DST without legislating it, couldn’t “officials” just tell us in March: “Hey, everybody, you might want to consider eating earlier, etc.”, and in November, the opposite? Likewise, during the warmer months, businesses and schools could have the option of starting earlier. The number of hours of sunshine will be the same no matter what. To dull the adverse effects, the schedule changes could be made gradually.
A case can certainly be made for keeping the time system the same year-round. So then we have to decide if it should be DST or Standard Time. This is a no-brainer. DST would promote the disadvantages I already mentioned, whereas Standard Time would not.
Furthermore, there is something gratifying about noon having its traditional meaning of the time when the sun reaches its highest point. This meaning is lost during DST.
A fun experiment is to put a bottle on the pavement at “real” noon, when it has the smallest shadow. At the time of the summer solstice, about June 21, at the Tropic of Capricorn, it has no shadow at all. When I did this experiment in Sarasota, Florida, which is close to the Tropic of Capricorn, the smallest shadow didn’t occur until about 1:30 p.m. That is because of DST plus the fact that Sarasota is in the Western part of its time zone.
