In Defense of Daylight Saving Time

We lose an hour of sleep on March 12.

Whoop dee doo.

From Bloomberg:

If you hate daylight saving time and all the confusion and sleep deprivation it brings, you now have solid data on your side. A wave of new research is bolstering arguments against changing our clocks twice a year.

The case for daylight saving time has been shaky for a while. The biannual time change was originally implemented to save energy. Yet dozens of studies around the world have found that changing the clocks has either minuscule or non-existent effects on energy use.

...The suffering of the spring time change begins with the loss of an hour of sleep. That might not seem like a big deal, but researchers have found it can be dangerous to mess with sleep schedules. Car accidents, strokes, and heart attacks spike in the days after the March time change. It turns out that judges, sleep deprived by daylight saving, impose harsher sentences.

“Even mild changes to sleep patterns can affect human capital in significant ways,” two Cornell University researchers, Lawrence Jin and Nicolas Ziebarth, wrote last year.

I don't consider losing just one hour "sleep deprivation."

Anyone calling the disappearance of that one hour to be sleep deprivation doesn't know what it's like to be deprived of sleep.

I don't like losing the hour but the sleep loss is not a big deal at all. I really like the extra daylight. Personally, it gives me more energy.

I would be happy with permanent daylight saving time and not switching back and forth. More sunlight later - that's good. I can't stand it when the sun sets at 4:15 in December. Too much darkness. The day ends too soon.

Celebrate the light!

Note: I tried to schedule this post to publish at 2:00 AM, but it automatically went to 3:00 AM. Apparently, Blogger isn't allowing 2:00 AM posts on March 12, because there is no 2:00 AM.