How to Eliminate Daylight Savings Time

Never "spring forward" again.

This is the night that we switch to Daylight Savings Time. I've already set my watch an hour ahead. It will take a week or two for my internal clock to synchronize. The anticipation of losing an hour's sleep is making me cranky already.

Keely has a good idea. Instead of setting the clocks an hour forward in spring and an hour backward in fall, how about this? Everyone sets their clocks forward half an hour and leaves them there permanently. We'll split the difference between the two time seasons and call it Standard Half Time (SHT). A brilliant idea, no?

It's true that people in other countries would need to add or subtract 30 minutes to go from their time to SHT. However, it should be an easy calculation for them. They already have to do conversions for many American units of measurements -- miles, inches, quarts, gallons, pounds, etc. In comparison to some of these, the SHT time conversion would be a few seconds of simple mental math.

Did you know this? Our nation's annual change-over to Daylight Savings Time probably isn't saving any energy, according to a study at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The small energy savings from an extra hour of natural light is offset by the extra hour of air conditioning that most people require in the summer, and the extra hour of heating in early spring and late fall.

Of course I'm spoofing about SHT, but really, why do we put ourselves through this annual unpleasantness if it's not accomplishing anything?