G.V. Hudson is to blame
It is time for my semi-annual rant and wish that G.V. Hudson had a different hobby. Hudson, a New Zealander, collected insects and was a shift worker. In 1895 he proposed Daylight Savings Time so he could collect insects after work in daylight. The world rightly ignored his idea but it was also championed by a golfer William Willett in 1907. He fought for it tirelessly and the world rightfully ignored him as well. But, to save energy during WWI Germany adopted Daylight Saving Time and soon other countries in the conflict followed. The pox has been on humanity since. Nov 6th this year Americans set their clocks back to standard time, or what I call solar time.
Golfer William Willett had the same bad idea
As I have mentioned before I stopped changing my clocks years ago. I absolutely refuse to go on “daylight savings time.” The entire idea strikes me a silly particularly when one considers there is a fixed amount of daylight no matter how we set our clocks. It is rightfully called “daylight slaving time.” Only the government would cut the top foot off a blanket, sew it on the bottom, and then argue the blanket is longer.
What really got to me was the seasonal flipping, spring forward, fall back. It always left me out of sorts for weeks. Now I don’t flip. I don’t change when I get up, when I eat, when I go to bed or when I feed the cats. This family stays on solar time. I just recognize that for half the year the rest of the country thinks it is ahead of me by one hour.
Semi-annual nonsense
Fortunately nature is not so wrong headed. Animals and plants ignore the time change. Cows get milked at the same time no matter what hour it is. Plants grow the same while we pretend there is more light in the evenings during summer. (Though as a kid I remember marveling that at 9 p.m. it was still light outside.)
There is also a philosophical reasons. So much of our lives is artificial. And artificial “daylight savings” time is but one more thing to knock us out of sync with the world around us. I spend a lot of time with Mother Nature and I prefer her time to man’s. And grumpy me, I like to use my watches (12 and 24-hour) as compasses, and that’s easier if one stays on solar time. Thus I do.
From a factual point of view, the majority of people on earth do NOT go on daylight savings time. How sensible. Asia doesn’t nor does Africa. Most equatorial countries don’t. Great Britain and Ireland tried staying on DST permanently from 1968 to 1971 but went back because it was unpopular. Daylight Savings Time is a bad idea that needs to go away.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I disagree with changing the clocks, but I think that in the Eastern US we should stay on DST all year round; that is, we should turn the clocks forward one fateful Spring, and never change them back again.
This is even more true in the UK, where in the dead of Winter it’s night by 15:30.
If you want to stay with Solar Time (and there are good reasons that makes sense), then I suggest that we shift our lives back an hour. The normal work day would be 8-4 instead of 9-5; children would start and end their school day an hour early; the 10 o’clock news would become the 9 o’clock news, etc.
While I could live with DST I prefer solar time, but what I really hate is flipping twice a year. That is why I refuse to do it. If I remember correctly the UK tried not long ago staying on DST for three years and it didn’t work out.