April 07, 2005
fall forward spring back
4/7/05
When so much of the news is so terrible, you truly have to celebrate a piece of information that is, in a word, awesome. Congress is trying to extend Daylight Savings Time two months, by making it start earlier in the spring and end later in the fall. This has to be the best governmental decision since mandatory vaccinations and the Louisiana Purchase.
When you're a kid, Daylight Savings Time means you get to play after school – you ride your bike, climb trees and fuck around in the neighborhood. The entire day is no longer just the fettered confines of your rotten junior high, you feel as though your life has dimension. When the first day of Daylights Savings comes – like it did last week – the afternoon begs to stretch out forever, and offers the prospect of infinite possibility.
In Chapel Hill, DST meant that we could play hoops after work. It was tough driving home from the Research Triangle (during the heady dot-com days) in order to have a few games at Carrboro Community Park before the sun went down, but it was possible with DST. In New York, it means languishing on the stoops, actually conversing with your neighbors, celebrating Breast Liberation Day with my brother Sean.
When the sun sets at 3:30pm in the winter, I want to fucking kill myself. For those of us especially tormented by the weather and suffering from some Seasonal Affective Disorder or another, Daylight Savings Time is a shot of love and caffeine right in the arm. PLEASE let this happen, and you'll get 15% less bitching and moaning from yours truly!
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two votes for SUNSHINE
AMEN! I always say that the first day of daylight savings is the BEST day of the year, bar none. And I seem to have started referring every October to the impending end of daylight savings as "The Dark Times." One possible caveat though: For us folks out here at the western edge of the Eastern Time Zone, schoolkids are already waiting for the school bus in pitch darkness a couple months out of the year. Extending daylight savings a month on each end would only make this particular activity that much more dangerous. Under such a scenario, in early March the sun wouldn't rise here until, like, 8:30 am. But I think I'm willing to risk the schoolkids.
as i understand it, extending DST is also meant to cut down on energy use, because more of our waking lives will be conducted during daylight hours. yay!
I come here for the bitching and moaning.
I just want to play devil's advocate here... I really don't think Congress understands now, nor ever will understand, the fact that every single mission-critical software application that is time sensitive will have to be altered. The costs of this will be huge. So add these costs (that will be spread to us through product and service increases) to our gas costs, our deficits, and the costs of war and it appears as though this Repulican controlled government will ruin the chances of future generations of Ruplicans to claim that Democrats will spend the country into the hole. Oh yeah, and they will bankrupt us while they are at it... and not protect us from credit card companies. These guys rule!
Does this mean we in Canada have to fall into lock step? Is this some sort of conspiracy? A first breach in the walls of sovereign time keeping? Come to think of it, Newfoundland had double daylight savings in my youth which meant (due to its northerly position) sunny bar patios until 10:30 pm). Start that invasion, time masters.
i doubt Canada will be affected because they measure time with their goofy metric clocks
Jacques Noir: Alors! It is ten hours!
Campbell MacPherson: Aye, laddie. The new day dawns.
I think they should shift it three or four hours, year-round, so that folks like Ian and myself could finally rise with the sun.
Why should the polar regions get all the midnight sun, anyway?