Why Daylight Saving Time Will Kill Us All
LatestIn the wee hours of Sunday morning, ancient black magic dictates that most of our clocks will magically spring forward an hour, which means we lose an hour of precious, precious sleep. Which means that for the first few days of next week, right as this intolerably long, cold winter is starting to crack, we’re all going to be a bunch of cranky fucks.
The terribly annoying tradition of Daylight Saving Time didn’t, contrary to popular belief, start with farmers swarming the Town Hall with pitchforks and clamoring for more daylight, so we can’t blame this modern day debacle on Monsanto (don’t worry; pretty much everything else bad that is food and farm-related is 100% Monsanto’s fault. Source: The Internet). DST started with noted horny genius Benjamin Franklin, who thought that forcing people to wake up earlier would make them healthier, wealthier, and wiser, but his great idea didn’t start to catch on until World War I. During World War II, Daylight Savings Time became a year-round thing in the US because SUPPORT THE TROOPS, and after World War II, keeping the clock-monkeying to twice a year, for the most part.
In recent years, Daylight Saving Time has come under fire by people who argue that there isn’t much of a point to the whole thing. Longer, lighter evenings don’t save energy; they encourage people to go out and do things that require energy. And then there’s the matter of “Risky Monday,” which is what one behavior expert calls the day after the day we spring our clocks forward and lose an hour of sleep.