In a rare move not seen since the closing passages of "The Odyssey," the sun agreed to wait an extra hour before rising on Sunday. Interesting strategy, Cotton.
This past weekend, the time warlocks came in and snatched an hour of my life. And just like every year, I was rull rull confused. 2:00 a.m. rolled around, jumped immediately to 3, and suddenly I'm wondering if someone spiked the punch real hard. Now it's already Sunday afternoon, and this column was due two hours ago (Sorry, editors).
Anyway, I thought I'd dive into a little Daylight Saving Time (DST) history. Fun fact, there is no "'s" after Daylight or Saving. Who knew? In 1895, the world−renowned mustachioed entomologist G.V. Hudson from New Zealand proposed the idea for modern DST. Several years later, some British golfing chap by the charming name of William Willett thought up the same idea and then celebrated with tea and crumpets. Will Will, however, was a plagiarizing clown and clearly never went to his freshman year panel on academic integrity. In 1915, he died of the flu. Karma's a b****.
Although many people believe that DST was adopted to help farmers, whose schedules revolve around the sun, it actually came about as a wartime move to help reduce energy costs. True story. Midway through fighting the French army in WWI, a couple of Germans yawned, took a nap, woke up, ate some Bratwurst, checked to see that the French were still retreating and then passed legislation to defy Ra, the Egyptian God of the Sun. Once it became clear that the Sun God was not going to smite them, other countries jumped on the German bandwagon (I think it was a Volkswagen).
DST, however, suffered a bumpy ride in its early years. After the war ended in 1918, people weren't too concerned with energy usage. Woodrow Wilson tried to keep it around, but DST was repealed in 1919. Wilson's successor, Warren G. Harding, turned out to be a real prick, as well as a terrible president. He thought that people should man up and go to work earlier in the summer. To that end, he actually ordered federal employees in D.C. to start work at 8 a.m. instead of 9 a.m. in the summer of 1922. A year later, during a conversation with his wife, Harding died suddenly. Yes, Florence Harding literally talked her husband to death. Again, karma.
Nowadays, Daylight Saving Time is observed by all continental U.S. states except for Arizona, which is too busy expelling illegal aliens and encouraging racial profiling to focus on much else. Critics of DST complain that it complicates work schedules and computer applications, and that they can't figure out how to skip the appropriate amount of sand in their hourglasses. Businesses that support leisure activities, however, boast massive economic gains due to DST. A 1999 study found that revenue in the European Union's leisure sector jumped by about 3 percent due to the extra hour of sunlight.
What are my thoughts on DST? Well, for starters, it sounds way too much like STDs, which I generally avoid. Other than that though, I'm all for it. It gives me an extra hour to wear obnoxiously colored sunglasses. It makes barbecuing easier. It makes me feel like less of a bum when I wake up at 2 in the afternoon. And last but not least, it gives me a solid excuse for sending this article in several hours late. Sweet.
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