I’ve decided that daylight savings time is a lot like the designated hitter. They’re both relatively recent inventions, they both artificially alter a well-established system, and they both generate an irrational amount of fear and loathing.
Personally, I like both of them. I’d rather spend an extra hour in the darnkess than watch the average pitcher take a turn at bat. I grew up with the DH – hell, I remember Ron Blomberg – so it’s always been the natural order of things to me. This may be my fifteenth season in a National League city, but that hasn’t altered my opinion. You can take all your sacrifice bunts, your silly double switches, and your pinch-hitting-by-a-utility-infielder. I’d rather watch Edgar Martinez.
As for DST, I get up to go to work a little after 5 AM. Were there no DST, I’d be waking up to sunshine in June and July. It’s infinitely nicer to have that sunshine after dinner, when I can enjoy it. I can almost understand the anti-DH arguments, but I’ll never grok the anti-DST logic. Time zones and our 24-hour clock are equally artificial, so why does a little tinkering with it bother you? Spring forward, people, it’s good for you!
(Note: the link to te DH article at Mike’s Baseball Rants may be blogspotty, so if you wind up someplace weird, look for the April 7 entry entitled “Boxing Pandora”.)
Here’s an interesting history of Daylight Saving Time, which points out that it’s Daylight Saving, not Savings, time. News to me!
I dislike DST because every April, and to a lesser extent every November, I spend about three weeks groggy while my system adjusts to having its schedule shifted. (With a small child, it’s even more of a pain.) I’ll settle for either less evening light in summer or ultra-dark mornings in winter; I just don’t want to jar my system clock twice a year. (So far, though, I haven’t gotten sufficiently sick of DST to move to Arizona.)
Arizona really need to observe DST during the summer between April and October. To assure that they’ll have a good taste of having daylight/twilight later in the evening if the government allow to use DST which means still on the MST. However, since Arizona do not observe DST which means they are on California time (PST) will get dark early and California will still have daylight a little while longer. If Arizona were smart enough, they can tell the local government to move the clock 1 hour foward and still be on MST, not on PST. The Indian Reservation do observe daylight savings is on MST and the rest of the state is on PST. You may want to check on http://www.sunrisesunset.com and most of USA have daylight after 8pm. Best if the people in the state of Arizona to persuade the government or vote.