For years now, I've hated Daylight Savings Time. As an long-standing morning person who finds it most natural to wake with the sun, it kind of messes things up when the "crack of dawn" is artificially pushed forward by an hour just as I'm starting to really enjoy it. For instance, this morning the sun rose at 6:31 am, but it was already getting light by 6 am or so. Awesome! But not for much longer, unfortunately. :( As of tomorrow morning, we're back to that wondrous invention known as "Daylight Savings Time," which means that sunrise will be 7:30 AM and that it won't start getting light until well after I'm awake. Blech.Anyway, there's not much I can do about it except bitch about it. Or, I can link to other people bitching about it, like USA Today founder Al Neuharth for instance:
When daylight saving time returns Sunday, you can add another category of its critics. Chickens.
Centi Thomson of Canaveral Groves in Cocoa, Fla., has written me to complain about what this foul extra hour of early morning darkness means to her fowl.
"They won't lay their eggs in the dark, so we have to hook up a light in the chicken house. Then we can't let them out for their morning run in the dark because the raccoons get them. You need to start a campaign to get this time change stopped," she wrote.
Ha, see even the chickens are smart enough to realize that Daylight Savings Time sucks.
So, what do we do about this situation? Al Neuharth has an idea, which I wholeheartedly endorse:
President Obama pledged that lobbyists will not run Washington during his regime. He's off to a good start. He should wipe out the lobbyists-created early morning darkness by abolishing DST altogether.
That extra hour of morning daylight would be a strong stimulus for his recovery plan because most of us use morning hours for work and evening hours for play.
Getting rid of DST would give most people — and chickens — something to crow about.
It would give early bird bloggers something to crow about as well! :)
P.S. Yeah, I know the argument that Daylight Savings Time is supposed to save energy, but I'm highly dubious that it really amounts to much (if anything). What are the other reasons for this foolishness?
