Much ado about nothing

[altivo]

Well, to hear the media blather about it, changing the starting and stopping dates of daylight saving time will cause the whole world to grind to a halt. Funny, just like Y2K did[n't].

I will be the first to say that I think daylight saving time is a ridiculous idea and that I don't believe it saves any significant amount of energy at all. The current political move to add four more weeks of it to the year is just that, a political move. A pretend gesture that costs nothing and can be hyped to look impressive and caring about the environment. C'mon, the biggies in this administration make money when energy is wasted. The more that is wasted, the more money they make. They are not in the least interested in conservation.

However, articles in the newspapers and commentaries on the radio and the boob tube are all aghast about how life will be disrupted by this silly change. Why, people's video recorders might miss a program or two! Horrors. The cell phone rip-off industry might accidentally give someone an extra hour of weekend rates (or not.) Computers won't know what time it is. (Like they ever did. The average PC clock is about as accurate as my grandmother's weight driven cuckoo clock. Perhaps less. I wind that cuckoo clock twice a day and I don't think it varies as much in a week as the hardware clock on my desktop machine does.)

The media gurus are utter idiots. Of course they've proven that time and time again. But how is it going to be the end of the world if we have to manually adjust a computer clock? Good grief, we used to have to do that anyway. Did it for decades before Microsloth became a busybody and tried to do it for us (wrongly about half the time.) Are we all so helpless now that we can't remember to set our VCR an hour ahead the evening before? Well, if we are, we deserve to miss tomorrow's Oprah or whatever. No big loss.

I don't let Windows mess with my clock anyway. I run multiple operating systems, and if each one tries to set the clock ahead for daylight savings I end up three hours fast. Or three hours slow in the autumn. So I don't let any of them do it.

If you're worried that your computer will quit working (it won't) then just tell it to ignore daylight savings altogether. And stop panting into the microphone about the computer disasters that will ensue if the daylight savings schedule comes to an end.

Actually, daylight savings always reminds me of a Phil Frank cartoon that was published back during the first energy crisis, the one most of you are too young to remember probably. Richard Nixon was president. He was trying to promote daylight savings time (there was no federal policy on it at the time, and each state decided individually.) Frank drew Nixon with a blanket and a pair of scissors. He was saying "Ladies and gentlemen, I will now demonstrate how to save energy by cutting a foot off the top of your blanket and sewing it onto the bottom." And that's daylight savings time, folks.

I notice too that just like back then, the price of oil products is skyrocketing. The oil companies say they are just passing along their increased costs, yet somehow their profits are also increasing by leaps and bounds. Can you say "gouging"? I knew you could. Or at least "opportunistic marketing."

Comments

[corelog.livejournal.com]

I have almost no regard for Daylight Savings--it doesn't seem to save anything to me, so it just turns into a big so what. It loses me an hour of sleep in spring and gives it back to me in fall, that's about it.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

There are of course lots of poorly calculated statistics to show how much energy it supposedly saves. I maintain that it merely moves the energy use around, in some cases from electric utilities to gas and oil consumption. When lighting was the primary use to which electricity was put, there was a better argument for it. Most electricity is now consumed for other uses, like air conditioning, heating, kitchen appliances, and entertainment devices. Most of those are operated the same number of hours in a day regardless of the clock.

The traditional argument that an extra hour of daylight in the evening causes people to "schedule outdoor activities" and not be at home using electricity is specious. Yeah, they drive to the golf course or something, using up gasoline instead. And then, guess what? They go home and watch television or cook dinner and run the dishwasher anyway, no difference there. A couple fewer light bulbs turned on for an hour is hardly significant, and given many people's habits today of just leaving lights on all the time, whether they are needed or not... well, back to my non-electric cuckoo clock. ;P

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

It may not be the end of the world, but I imagine that, if the US does go through with this change, there are going to be a hell of a lot of confused people out there.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, it does seem that the average IQ is shrinking on a yearly basis.

Shouldn't be any more confused people than there were when daylight saving time was first mandated for all parts of the US by the federal government. Of course, some areas still refused to observe it. I remember driving through Arizona in 1974, and finding to my amusement that the state had refused to accept daylight saving time, but the Navajo Reservation did observe it. The Hopi Reservation, which is completely surrounded by the Navajos, did not observe it. Federal offices in all areas were on daylight time, but the majority of the population were not. The Navajo don't pay much attention to clocks anyway, they tell time by the sun, which sort of defeats the whole silly business.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Some areas of Indiana still don't observe DST, including where Wolf Park is.

Personally, I've always thought DST was a rather stupid idea to begin with. Oh well.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I wonder, do any of these folks recall the early/mid 1970s with the attempt at year-round DST? I think it was called off due to kids waiting in the morning dark for the school bus (I recall my folks putting reflective tape on my lunch box). This change, if it happened, would be less drastic - but a few automatic devices would need some attention. The "don't have to think about it" convenience would be gone from those, perhaps, but they still need to be set to time zone and that's the same adjustment, really.

As for savings, I wouldn't expect much. People (over)use artificial lighting even when there's plenty of sunlight, so shifting the conscious portion of the day for the majority will have little impact.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, that was the daylight saving time event to which the Phil Frank cartoon referred. And no, apparently they don't recall. That's over 30 years ago, of course, so writers and commentators less than 40 or 45 years old will have no recollection at all. And no one studies history any more, or does any research into it.

Judging by the number of people around here who leave yard floodlights and such turned on 24 hours a day and cause truly obnoxious light pollution, there is no longer any energy saved by daylight saving time.

[doco.livejournal.com]

If they really wanted to _save energy_, they'd put a subvention on fluorescent lighting to get rid of all those energy-guzzling 100-watts-each Edison lamps.

But then again, it's just a nice scheme to fill the mostly boring months of summer.

[pioneer11.livejournal.com]

Yes! Exactly! I have them all over the house, and outside.

And a drawer full of incandescents now. c.c

[pioneer11.livejournal.com]

Its August, always a slow news month, they have to think something up.