OUR VIEW: Still adjusting after daylight savings switch
Yesterday marked that once-a-year tradition in which we turn our clocks back one hour for the end of daylight savings time. For the optimists of the world, this means Saturday night included an entire extra hour to live it up as one would see fit, but past that one night, what purpose does the time change still serve?
If anything, it caters to the people of the world who are early to rise by making their mornings brighter. Left out, though, are those who tend to never wake before the sun is up anyway, leaving their days shorter since the sun will generally be down by around 5 p.m. rather than 6 p.m. were it not for the time change during Fall.
Seeing as how the time change was initially implemented to accommodate to the farmers of the world, it would seem out of place for those of us at an agricultural university to speak ill of the time change. In this current day and age however, it seems like the impact of the confusion of changing our clocks twice a year probably causes more inconvenience to the entire population than it offers in benefit to the sliver of the population that do the farming of the world.
Not to mention, it makes for serious complications in traveling to the state of Arizona, since they do not participate in daylight savings time. Must we really be required to keep track of whether or not the clocks in Arizona are an hour ahead or behind ours when we cross their borders? Couldn’t we just play by their rules on this one?
The main thing is, why not just leave things the way they are? We generally have the simplicity of cell phones and computers updating the clocks accordingly, but that still leaves car stereos, alarm clocks, wristwatches, microwave ovens and whatever else tells time to be updated twice a year for something that seems entirely outdated in modern society.
At the very least, it would result in a lot fewer people showing up an hour late for church or work on Sunday mornings every Spring and an hour early each Fall.