Saturday, March 11, 2017

Springing Forward

Tonight is the night to set clocks ahead one hour as we begin Daylight Saving Time.  
There must be someone left on the planet that likes the idea of diddling with the time, but I've never met him.  There are numerous studies that show that it does not save energy as it was supposed to, and may actually be bad for your health and well-being.  There's even one study that shows that Judges hand out harsher sentences in the weeks following the spring forward.
Arizona and Hawaii have never embraced Daylight Saving Time, and it hasn't seemed to hurt them. When Indiana finally adopted Daylight Time in 2006, electrical consumption actually went up.
My wife (and apparently a lot of other folks) think we should switch to Daylight Time and stay there. Current federal law allows states to stay on Standard Time year-round, but does not allow states to opt for constant  Daylight Saving Time.  Even so, nine of the twenty bills in various state legislatures this year would attempt to do just that.
Massachusetts has even found a way around the Feds.  They are looking at moving out of the Eastern Time Zone entirely, and into the (one hour earlier) Atlantic Time Zone, then staying on Atlantic Standard Time all year. 

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