| Let the Sun Shine In |
7 April 2003
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Daylight Savings Plan Must Be Improved
A miseable grey mist settled over the Northeastern US for the beginning of April. Foul, vile weather that suits England in October, where one can at least enjoy cheaper theatre, real beer, national healthcare, and the blessings of Chelsea playing at Stamford Bridge against Arsenal or Newcastle. During this autumnal episode, daylight savings time arrived, springing the clocks forward and shortening the week-end by an hour. While the lighter evenings are welcome, there is a way to save the hour without going back to work on Monday exhausted due to sleep deprivation.
The trouble is that no one has realized that the clock is a circle, and that moving the hands forward one hour is the same as moving them back 23 hours. In other words, daylight savings time would still happen, but there would be 2 Saturdays that week.
Traditionalists, of course, will howl that an extra day would throw the calendar off, but calendars, as Pope Gregory could attest, are flexible things. After all, there is a February 29 every fourth year.
As with any revolutionary, visionary innovation, there may be genuine problems. Certain religions groups prefer a Saturday sabbath to a Sunday or Friday sabbath, which could be affected by this change -- but with the best rabbis and Seventh-Day Adventist thinkers working on it, any objections should be minor. Of course, those who have to work on Saturday are inconvenienced, but over-time pay should lighten the blow. The only people who would really object are those for whom the work-week is not long enough. And they are troubled folk anyway.