We just got a letter from our school district, explaining that they will be making some changes to the school schedules for next year. My son's school is not affected, so I only perused the letter out of curiosity. They said that the reason for the change is because Congress is changing Daylight Saving Time [yes, it is "Saving" and not "Savings"] to start two weeks earlier in the spring and end one week later in the fall.
What the freak?
I googled for information about DST. This page from the California Energy Commission seems to have a decent description of why DST is. Basically, it all boils down to energy conservation. Save more daylight in the evening, and people will use less energy after work.
Here's an idea. Instead of confusing the heck out of people by constantly adjusting clocks, why not simply move the standard work day back an hour? Same effect, but the clocks can stay the same. I doubt making people adjust to a 7-to-4 schedule would be any worse than making people remember "second Sunday in March, first Sunday in November".
Did the politicians even consider the impact this will have on all the clocks, watches, and COMPUTERS that have to deal with DST, that will have to be reprogrammed? Maybe it's some deranged plan to stimulate the computer economy. "Hey, that Y2k thing gave all those old programmers big jobs in '99; let's get businesses to dump more money at 'em!"
Maybe I can spend the rest of 2006 learning COBOL...
No comments:
Post a Comment