Sunday, November 2, 2008

Standard Time vs Daylight Savings

Okey dokey, one more thing to put on my complaint list for this weekend. Something I don't have any control over.

I see no reason for us to keep flip flopping back and forth in March and November from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time. We're in the modern age. We don't need this change anymore. I read an interesting article on Yahoo yesterday about just this subject.

Statistics from various sources (look it up on the Net) state there is very little energy savings at this point in history for switching time twice a year. Keep it on Standard time and we'll all be fine! The world won't end! Retailers won't lose money or waste energy. The argument for farming doesn't fly anymore. They'll still be out there in the dark, using their lights and equipment to plant their crops when they need to. Most people could care less about Daylight Savings in the spring because, there really is no savings. So what if it getst dark at 8:30pm in the summer here in Ohio? What difference does one hour make?

I'm a clock person, unfortunately. I do pay attention to "what time it is" so these changes tend to be for me, few days of resetting my internal clock.

This morning I woke up at 5:30am. My mind knows it's still really 6:30am but I decided to go back to sleep for another hour. Well, by then it was 6:30am or rather 7:30am by my internal clock. It was light outside. I didn't get out to feed the animals until 7:30 am, really 8:30am and I could tell they were all a little testy with me since I had not been "on time". Especially the horses. They were really peeved at my lateness. Then I thought, well sure you are, my clock changed but yours didn't. So, now I go into transition of morning feed being at 7:30amST vs the 8:30am horse time. Oh, and the night time feed. Well, that one goes smoother because I always feed the horses at dark anyway so that feed time has slowly been changing with the setting sun since about September. The dogs and cat don't seem to mind too much about any of it.

Congress decided in 2007 to move the spring Daylight Saving time up 3 weeks, to the last Sunday in March and the switch back to Standard Time the first Sunday in November. I really truly think, if we kept our clocks on Standard Time, the world would still revolve and our country would adjust just fine. Does anyone really look forward to these changes? Seems to me it's just a pain in the................well, that's my thought on it anyway.

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