Saving Light One Day At A Time

If time is an illusion, why do we bother with day light savings time?

I was recently late to several appointments until I realized that the world had set its collective clock forward one hour on Saturday.

This bizarre tradition has been going on ever since British inventor William Willett was late to work one day in 1907 and needed a better excuse than the modern alarm clock had not yet been invented. Willett claimed that we were wasting time during the summer months when the sun rose earlier in the day.

Ironically, his proposal was not adopted until a few year after his death in 1915. Since then, a majority of first world countries have bought into the confusion.

The entire United States operates on day light savings time, except for Arizona. I suppose, when you're in a desert, the last thing you want is more sunlight. Can we really trust a system that isn't endorsed by the great state of Arizona?

In response to this, I have a proposal to counter the current system of DST. Instead of falling down, we should spring into action. You can call it my contribution to humanity. Call it the next great idea.

I call it the 'Earth Spinning Axis Clock Adjustment Theory.'

• People dislike the idea that they are losing an hour when DST goes into effect during the spring. So, we should only ever fall back an hour, thus giving people the illusion that they have more time, when in reality nothing has changed.
• To compensate for the only falling back theory, we will need to fall back more often. Instead of twice annually, we should digress by an hour bimonthly, for a total of 24 times in a year. This means that every year, we will lose one entire day.
• While some might complain that this means that time will be in a continual shift, this shift will also give us more diversity. People with night jobs will get to see the sun more often. We will get to see more interesting nocturnal animals like owls and raccoons.
• Keep in mind that this change probably makes about as much sense as any of the silly calender rules we abide by like leap years.

In an attempt to keep up with resetting their clocks every two weeks, people would have to be more attentive and literally have less time to remember their problems. Watchmakers and calender suppliers would be inundated with the business as customers came in with questions about the new system such as inquiring why in the world it was adopted.