The purpose of a legislature must be to legalize stupidity. The purpose used to be to write a few clear, simple laws to enable civilization. Then they invented Daylight Savings Time.

Twice a year, Americans force their biorhythms into jetlag by getting up an hour too early or going to sleep an hour too late. If anyone ever bothered to check the statistics, I’m sure they would discover a dramatic increase in all sorts of accidents in the weeks following a shift between “real time” and “Daylight Savings Time.”

Jetlag is a big problem for me—more than most people. No matter how much melatonin I consume when I travel, it always takes me three days to function at even a minimal level in a new time zone. The changing clock is just as bad as travel. I can barely form a sentence right now.

If anyone ever again says to me, “Well, at least we get an extra hour of sleep tomorrow morning,” I’ll have to find out what drugs they’re on, because that’s the only way they could possibly get an extra hour of sleep.

The History

Did you ever wonder where “they” got this goofy idea? I decided to “look it up” this morning in honor of my jetlag. The National Geographic has a fairly decent article on the topic, and something called “WebExhibits” has a much more detailed, but somewhat bizarrely laudatory, article. However, the WebExhibits article rings true to me: while it accuses Ben Franklin of dreaming up the idea, it traces the mandatory law to WW I Germany. (BTW: Wasn’t it Franklin who said, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise?” And, if so, why did he care what the clock said when he got up?) The idea that the autocrats in Germany devised this law to force factory workers to spend every waking daylight hour in the munitions factory makes sense.

The Uniform Time Act of 1966

During the Vietnam War Era, the federal government passed the Uniform Time Act. The WebExhibits article traces the law in Europe back to wartime, too. Is this just a coincidence? I doubt it. In time of war, it seems to me, governments get very insistent about everyone toeing the line.

Overtly, though, the driving force behind this 1966 enforced uniformity was so national television broadcasts could be aired from the east coast to the west without too much disruption of the on-camera talents’ day. Now, of course, if you live in the Central Time Zone you have to schedule your TV viewing time around broadcasts that begin at “seven o’clock Eastern Time and five o’clock Pacific.” And if you’re in global business, you still have to get up at two in the morning to make a conference call in Europe.

If uniformity is so valuable to the government, why don’t we just do what they do in China? In China there’s only one time zone, Beijing time.

The Junk Science of Daylight Savings Time

Does anyone really believe that changing the clocks gives anyone more daylight? Someone recently told me her farmer-father benefitted from Daylight Savings Time. I was so stunned I couldn’t think of anything to say. I walked away from her without asking the obvious: “How?” Surely her father doesn’t think his corn crop gets more sun because of it.

In 2005, the Congress extended Daylight Savings Time several weeks, because (“they” said) the extension would help save energy—which we all know is expensive (The Energy Policy Act). Lets analyze this: Depending on where you live on the planet, more or less sunlight strikes you at any given time than strikes other people at other places on the planet. There’s nothing you can do about it except move elsewhere. When it’s dark out and you’re awake, you have to turn on lights. If you have 12 hours of darkness, for instance, and you sleep 8 of those hours, you need to turn on the lights for 4 hours. If you have only 8 hours of darkness, you might not have to turn on the lights at all. Shifting your sleeping and waking hours 1 hour in either direction doesn’t change that fact.

In 2005, I heard a local news commentator say the extension would help school kids who have to stand in the dark in the morning to catch the school bus. Interesting. I could swear the dawn comes earlier beginning in December—earlier and earlier every day—without the help of my alarm clock.

Since the school year in America (late August to late May) was originally designed to permit farm children to help out on the farm during peak growing months, it’s rather ironic that now we’re worried about school children standing in the dark. Besides, Daylight Savings Time runs (now) from October to mid March. Why not extend it from August to May to help out the kids? For that matter, if Daylight Savings Time is so great, why not do away with Standard Time all together?

Well, because the problem with the dawn isn’t an east-to-west problem; it’s a north-to-south problem. I’m not a planetary astronomer, but I have experienced this phenomenon personally, so I know this is true.

I went to grade school in Canada. I walked to school in the dark in the morning, and I walked home in the dark in the afternoon. I went to high school in the southern U.S. I rode the bus in the morning in broad daylight, and I went to sleep at night in broad daylight, too. I’ve traveled as far north as Sweden and Iceland in the summer when the sun never set. No amount of “saved daylight” will ever decrease the number of hours per day the people of the north need to have the lights turned on or increase the number of hours the people of the south have to keep their curtains closed to block out the sun.

“They” standardized on Daylight Savings Time when I was in high school in the south. I remember for months every time I went to a movie they played a “public service announcement” lobbying against it: “Save God’s Own Time.” Even as a teenager, I realized how stupid that was. But I didn’t worry then about the stupidity of Daylight Savings Time itself. I had much more to worry about. Now I wish the adults who were in charge then had worried about it a little more than they did.

I’ve heard rumors that the impetus behind the crackpot 1966 Daylight Savings Time idea was that Congressmen wanted to be able to play more golf before and after legislative sessions during the winter. I’ve also heard rumors that manufacturers of leisure equipment (barbeque grills and golf carts) thought they could increase sales by mandating clock changes. In 2005 I personally heard the Congressman behind the extension say he had calculated how many fewer light bulbs would have to be purchased.

I would say this was corruption or madness if I didn’t know for a fact it’s just stupidity.