cheated

So at 2AM this morning, America had to spring forward, thus cheating me out of an hour's sleep. I think the concept of Daylight Savings Time has run its course, and it's time for this country to drop the tradition. Korea, where I lived for eight years, doesn't shift its hours back and forth, and I thought that was just fine while I was there. So what if the length or shortness of days seems exaggerated by the lack of adjustment? The advantage of not changing the time is a greater sense of chronological stability.

Thanks to today's adjustment, Korea is once again only thirteen hours ahead of the American east coast. In the fall, this will change to fourteen—a perfectly unnecessary seasonable wobble. Time-changing began in the United States in 1918 and didn't catch on until just after World War II, although the concept of time-changing originated in the late 19th century. As traditions go, this isn't one of our older ones. My feeling: if a tradition can begin so recently, it can also end suddenly.

Let's kill this silly practice.


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