I grew up on a hay farm (Still here!) and have always hated Daylight Savings. LOATHED IT.
The farmers tell me it makes no difference to them as they get up at dawn no matter what the clock says. It's a natural rhythm.
High school and elementary kids in the USA never get enough sleep. I remember I was always tired. Always.
I smell a PTB rat in this mix. I think DST is a way to stress people out more, and destabilize their natural internal clocks.
Does it really help farming and school kids? Nope.
Does it help in keeping people tired and less likely to wake up to our genuine reality? Maybe.
Europe doesn't have much DST if any. In the European Union, Summer Time begins and ends at 1:00 a.m. Universal Time (Greenwich Mean Time). It begins the last Sunday in March and ends the last Sunday in October. In the EU, all time zones change at the same moment.
Am I being just a grumpy middle-aged dillweed?
What say all of you?
I highlighted important bits. Here is the official History Channel "history":
1. It’s “daylight saving time,” not “daylight savings time.”
Many people render the term’s second word in its plural form. However, since the word “saving” acts as part of an adjective rather than a verb, the singular is grammatically correct.
(Who the hell cares?––JWW)
2. Though in favor of maximizing daylight waking hours, Benjamin Franklin did not originate the idea of moving clocks forward.
By the time he was a 78-year-old American envoy in Paris in 1784, the man who espoused the virtues of “early to bed and early to rise” was not practicing what he preached. After being unpleasantly stirred from sleep at 6 a.m. by the summer sun, the founding father penned a satirical essay in which he calculated that Parisians, simply by waking up at dawn, could save the modern-day equivalent of $200 million through “the economy of using sunshine instead of candles.” As a result of this essay, Franklin is often erroneously given the honor of “inventing” daylight saving time, but he only proposed a change in sleep schedules—not the time itself.
(Ben was no idiot.––JWW)
3. Englishman William Willett led the first campaign to implement daylight saving time.
While on an early-morning horseback ride around the desolate outskirts of London in 1905, Willett had an epiphany that the United Kingdom should move its clocks forward by 80 minutes between April and October so that more people could enjoy the plentiful sunlight. The Englishman published the 1907 brochure “The Waste of Daylight” and spent much of his personal fortune evangelizing with missionary zeal for the adoption of “summer time.” Year after year, however, the British Parliament stymied the measure, and Willett died in 1915 at age 58 without ever seeing his idea come to fruition.
(An idiot do-gooder with good intentions. For once Parliament was right.––JWW)
4. Germany was the first country to enact daylight saving time.
It took World War I for Willett’s dream to come true, but on April 30, 1916, Germany embraced daylight saving time to conserve electricity. (He may have been horrified to learn that Britain’s wartime enemy followed his recommendations before his homeland.) Weeks later, the United Kingdom followed suit and introduced “summer time.”
(That's quaint, but it's still a flawed idea.––JWW)
5. Daylight saving time in the United States was not intended to benefit farmers, as many people think.
Contrary to popular belief, American farmers did not lobby for daylight saving to have more time to work in the fields; in fact, the agriculture industry was deeply opposed to the time switch when it was first implemented on March 31, 1918, as a wartime measure. The sun, not the clock, dictated farmers’ schedules, so daylight saving was very disruptive. Farmers had to wait an extra hour for dew to evaporate to harvest hay, hired hands worked less since they still left at the same time for dinner and cows weren’t ready to be milked an hour earlier to meet shipping schedules. Agrarian interests led the fight for the 1919 repeal of national daylight saving time, which passed after Congress voted to override President Woodrow Wilson’s veto. Rather than rural interests, it has been urban entities such as retail outlets and recreational businesses that have championed daylight saving over the decades.
(As I said, it's a conspiracy! President Wilson was an idiot, but that's another thread.––JWW)
Would you vote for this top-hatted, status quo, racist, Bible-thumping SOB?
6. For decades, daylight saving in the United States was a confounding patchwork of local practices.
After the national repeal in 1919, some states and cities, including New York City and Chicago, continued to shift their clocks. National daylight saving time returned during World War II, but after its repeal three weeks after war’s end the confusing hodgepodge resumed. States and localities could start and end daylight saving whenever they pleased, a system that Time magazine (an aptly named source) described in 1963 as “a chaos of clocks.” In 1965 there were 23 different pairs of start and end dates in Iowa alone, and St. Paul, Minnesota, even began daylight saving two weeks before its twin city, Minneapolis. Passengers on a 35-mile bus ride from Steubenville, Ohio, to Moundsville, West Virginia, passed through seven time changes. Order finally came in 1966 with the enactment of the Uniform Time Act, which standardized daylight saving time from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October, although states had the option of remaining on standard time year-round.
(I'll bet Americans never voted for it, only corporate lobbyists.––JWW)
7. Not everyone in the United States springs forward and falls back.
Hawaii and Arizona—with the exception of the state’s Navajo Nation—do not observe daylight saving time, and the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands also remain on standard time year-round. Some Amish communities also choose not to participate in daylight saving time. Around the world, only about one-quarter of the world’s population, in approximately 70 countries, observe daylight saving. Since their daylight hours don’t vary much from season to season, countries closer to the equator have little need to deviate from standard time.
(No confusion here! Why don't we push clocks back 2 hours?––JWW)
Yay! Our heroes, the Navajo Nation. These folks know a lot about balancing with nature.
8. Evidence does not conclusively point to energy conservation as a result of daylight saving.
Dating back to Willett, daylight saving advocates have touted energy conservation as an economic benefit. A U.S. Department of Transportation study in the 1970s concluded that total electricity savings associated with daylight saving time amounted to about 1 percent in the spring and fall months. As air conditioning has become more widespread, however, more recent studies have found that cost savings on lighting are more than offset by greater cooling expenses. University of California Santa Barbara economists calculated that Indiana’s move to statewide daylight saving time in 2006 led to a 1-percent rise in residential electricity use through additional demand for air conditioning on summer evenings and heating in early spring and late fall mornings. Some also argue that increased recreational activity during daylight saving results in greater gasoline consumption.
(Firewall those gas pedals!––JWW)
Popular Mechanics:
Besides making the world seem like a darker place, one annual effect of this event is a huge proliferation of articles proclaiming that DST is a garbage idea that needs to end. It doesn't really help anyone, they say, but it does throw off sleep schedules around the country. As a result, even more states and cities are considering bills to do away with DST.
(This is coming from a BS, idiotic, PTB publication that states we will be on Mars in 50-75 years. Please, we have been there since 1959.––JWW)
This DST history is a mystery. Did it ever help anyone at all? Why is it still an issue?
Help!
JWW
The farmers tell me it makes no difference to them as they get up at dawn no matter what the clock says. It's a natural rhythm.
High school and elementary kids in the USA never get enough sleep. I remember I was always tired. Always.
I smell a PTB rat in this mix. I think DST is a way to stress people out more, and destabilize their natural internal clocks.
Does it really help farming and school kids? Nope.
Does it help in keeping people tired and less likely to wake up to our genuine reality? Maybe.
Europe doesn't have much DST if any. In the European Union, Summer Time begins and ends at 1:00 a.m. Universal Time (Greenwich Mean Time). It begins the last Sunday in March and ends the last Sunday in October. In the EU, all time zones change at the same moment.
Am I being just a grumpy middle-aged dillweed?
What say all of you?
I highlighted important bits. Here is the official History Channel "history":
1. It’s “daylight saving time,” not “daylight savings time.”
Many people render the term’s second word in its plural form. However, since the word “saving” acts as part of an adjective rather than a verb, the singular is grammatically correct.
(Who the hell cares?––JWW)
2. Though in favor of maximizing daylight waking hours, Benjamin Franklin did not originate the idea of moving clocks forward.
By the time he was a 78-year-old American envoy in Paris in 1784, the man who espoused the virtues of “early to bed and early to rise” was not practicing what he preached. After being unpleasantly stirred from sleep at 6 a.m. by the summer sun, the founding father penned a satirical essay in which he calculated that Parisians, simply by waking up at dawn, could save the modern-day equivalent of $200 million through “the economy of using sunshine instead of candles.” As a result of this essay, Franklin is often erroneously given the honor of “inventing” daylight saving time, but he only proposed a change in sleep schedules—not the time itself.
(Ben was no idiot.––JWW)
3. Englishman William Willett led the first campaign to implement daylight saving time.
While on an early-morning horseback ride around the desolate outskirts of London in 1905, Willett had an epiphany that the United Kingdom should move its clocks forward by 80 minutes between April and October so that more people could enjoy the plentiful sunlight. The Englishman published the 1907 brochure “The Waste of Daylight” and spent much of his personal fortune evangelizing with missionary zeal for the adoption of “summer time.” Year after year, however, the British Parliament stymied the measure, and Willett died in 1915 at age 58 without ever seeing his idea come to fruition.
(An idiot do-gooder with good intentions. For once Parliament was right.––JWW)
4. Germany was the first country to enact daylight saving time.
It took World War I for Willett’s dream to come true, but on April 30, 1916, Germany embraced daylight saving time to conserve electricity. (He may have been horrified to learn that Britain’s wartime enemy followed his recommendations before his homeland.) Weeks later, the United Kingdom followed suit and introduced “summer time.”
(That's quaint, but it's still a flawed idea.––JWW)
5. Daylight saving time in the United States was not intended to benefit farmers, as many people think.
Contrary to popular belief, American farmers did not lobby for daylight saving to have more time to work in the fields; in fact, the agriculture industry was deeply opposed to the time switch when it was first implemented on March 31, 1918, as a wartime measure. The sun, not the clock, dictated farmers’ schedules, so daylight saving was very disruptive. Farmers had to wait an extra hour for dew to evaporate to harvest hay, hired hands worked less since they still left at the same time for dinner and cows weren’t ready to be milked an hour earlier to meet shipping schedules. Agrarian interests led the fight for the 1919 repeal of national daylight saving time, which passed after Congress voted to override President Woodrow Wilson’s veto. Rather than rural interests, it has been urban entities such as retail outlets and recreational businesses that have championed daylight saving over the decades.
(As I said, it's a conspiracy! President Wilson was an idiot, but that's another thread.––JWW)
Would you vote for this top-hatted, status quo, racist, Bible-thumping SOB?6. For decades, daylight saving in the United States was a confounding patchwork of local practices.
After the national repeal in 1919, some states and cities, including New York City and Chicago, continued to shift their clocks. National daylight saving time returned during World War II, but after its repeal three weeks after war’s end the confusing hodgepodge resumed. States and localities could start and end daylight saving whenever they pleased, a system that Time magazine (an aptly named source) described in 1963 as “a chaos of clocks.” In 1965 there were 23 different pairs of start and end dates in Iowa alone, and St. Paul, Minnesota, even began daylight saving two weeks before its twin city, Minneapolis. Passengers on a 35-mile bus ride from Steubenville, Ohio, to Moundsville, West Virginia, passed through seven time changes. Order finally came in 1966 with the enactment of the Uniform Time Act, which standardized daylight saving time from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October, although states had the option of remaining on standard time year-round.
(I'll bet Americans never voted for it, only corporate lobbyists.––JWW)
7. Not everyone in the United States springs forward and falls back.
Hawaii and Arizona—with the exception of the state’s Navajo Nation—do not observe daylight saving time, and the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands also remain on standard time year-round. Some Amish communities also choose not to participate in daylight saving time. Around the world, only about one-quarter of the world’s population, in approximately 70 countries, observe daylight saving. Since their daylight hours don’t vary much from season to season, countries closer to the equator have little need to deviate from standard time.
(No confusion here! Why don't we push clocks back 2 hours?––JWW)
Yay! Our heroes, the Navajo Nation. These folks know a lot about balancing with nature.8. Evidence does not conclusively point to energy conservation as a result of daylight saving.
Dating back to Willett, daylight saving advocates have touted energy conservation as an economic benefit. A U.S. Department of Transportation study in the 1970s concluded that total electricity savings associated with daylight saving time amounted to about 1 percent in the spring and fall months. As air conditioning has become more widespread, however, more recent studies have found that cost savings on lighting are more than offset by greater cooling expenses. University of California Santa Barbara economists calculated that Indiana’s move to statewide daylight saving time in 2006 led to a 1-percent rise in residential electricity use through additional demand for air conditioning on summer evenings and heating in early spring and late fall mornings. Some also argue that increased recreational activity during daylight saving results in greater gasoline consumption.
(Firewall those gas pedals!––JWW)
Popular Mechanics:
Besides making the world seem like a darker place, one annual effect of this event is a huge proliferation of articles proclaiming that DST is a garbage idea that needs to end. It doesn't really help anyone, they say, but it does throw off sleep schedules around the country. As a result, even more states and cities are considering bills to do away with DST.
(This is coming from a BS, idiotic, PTB publication that states we will be on Mars in 50-75 years. Please, we have been there since 1959.––JWW)
This DST history is a mystery. Did it ever help anyone at all? Why is it still an issue?
Help!
JWW
