Sunday, March 10, 2013

cheated

So at 2AM this morning, America had to spring forward, thus cheating me out of an hour's sleep. I think the concept of Daylight Savings Time has run its course, and it's time for this country to drop the tradition. Korea, where I lived for eight years, doesn't shift its hours back and forth, and I thought that was just fine while I was there. So what if the length or shortness of days seems exaggerated by the lack of adjustment? The advantage of not changing the time is a greater sense of chronological stability.

Thanks to today's adjustment, Korea is once again only thirteen hours ahead of the American east coast. In the fall, this will change to fourteen—a perfectly unnecessary seasonable wobble. Time-changing began in the United States in 1918 and didn't catch on until just after World War II, although the concept of time-changing originated in the late 19th century. As traditions go, this isn't one of our older ones. My feeling: if a tradition can begin so recently, it can also end suddenly.

Let's kill this silly practice.


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3 comments:

John from Daejeon said...

I second this. Get your Whitehouse petition going.

Charles said...

Agreed. I've lived without DST for the past 17 years, and I can say that I never regretted its absence.

I've always seen DST as another attempt by humanity to rebel against the rule of nature. Let time runs its proper course!

John said...

I love Daylight Saving. Here in the bottom of the South Island I can be outside and playing tennis at 10 pm and then up to go fishing at 5 am - all in daylight. Winter sucks so putting the clocks back means nothing to me - it is dark and shitty anyway.