“Last Week: Tonight” stuck up for “the farm people” on Sunday, defending them from the myth that farmers are responsible for daylight saving time.
A voice-over explained the origins of the tradition that snatched an hour of sleep from most Americans this week.
“Of course Daylight Saving doesn’t benefit farmers,” the narration said. “Cows don’t care what time it is, because they’re cows, and cows are idiots.”
After interviewing several laypeople and a farmer, the clip revealed the true source of the practice.
“The modern daylight saving was introduced during the first World War as a fuel saving measure by the Germans,” it said. “That’s right, you lost an hour of sleep this morning thanks to Kaiser Wilhelm.”
But these days, daylight saving time doesn’t tend to save fuel. Some states have even seen a slight increase in use of electricity.
“Because switching on a lamp an hour later in the summer doesn’t really matter when you’re blasting an air conditioner and staying up all night psychotically scrolling through Instagrams of your ex’s honeymoon to Morocco,” the narrator said.
Watch the clip:
Without Daylight Savings Time, on June 15th, the sun would rise at 4:45 and set at 7:37.
Anyone bellyaching about DST needs to imagine that scenario.
I honestly don’t have any problem with that.
Me either. Turns out they have these marvelous things called “curtains” and “blinds” and “shades” that enable one to sleep though the earliest dawn. And it’s a hell of a lot easier to sleep through an early dawn than to get to sleep the when it’s still dusk at 9:00 p.m.
I also note that if the problem is that the sun would come up “too early” on the day of the summer solstice, having DST begin in mid-fucking-March is goddamned imbecilic. As is, of course, everything the Republicans did under Bush. I’ve always found it rather amazingly coincidently how a measure meant show Congress was Doing Something about high energy costs just so happened to increase energy use. (Also the dreaded “lightbulb ban” that the Teahadists decided was an affront to their freedumb until their continued ability to buy the bulbs they insisted Obama had banned forced them to drop it down the Memory Hole.)
DST = “Government Time”! Get the Government out of my clock! – Teaparty Republican
Where? Sounds like you are on the east side of a time zone.