Isaac Asimov explains Daylight Savings Time:
It turns out that as the days grow long, people sleep through several hours of sunshine in the morning, and then stay up after sunset and consume energy in order to light hours of darkness. If people got up earlier in the summer half of the year and went to bed earlier, some of that energy would be saved.
Can you imagine the American government ordering everyone to wake up an hour earlier and go to bed an hour later just to save desperately needed energy? Why, the American people in their proud independence and individuality would rise as one person and denounce those Washington bureaucrats who tried to tell them when to rise in the morning.
So the government sets up “daylight-saving time” and shoves the clock an hour ahead. When it now says 7 A.M., it’s really 6 A.M. The clock is lying and everyone knows the clock is lying. However—
While Americans would scorn to be slaves to the government, they are pathetically eager to be slaves to the clock. An earnest, well-meaning government may tell them to get up at 6 A.M. instead of 7 A.M. and get a Bronx cheer in return, but when a lying clock tells them to do so, up they get like good little boys and girls.
I’ll leave it to you to work out the moral of the story.
Shamelessly appropriated from concocted glimpse.
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