they have now actually proved that DST is evil. Well, at least dangerous. Turns out the “falling back” lowers, and the “springing forward” raises, the risk of heart attack. Most news outlets seem to be trying to put a positive spin on this (”Good news: Falling Back is Good for Your Health!”) and I suppose that by next spring, when the headline would have to read “Bad News: You’re at Greater Risk of Dying Today,” we won’t hear about this study, because hey, they reported on that last fall. The Reuters story I linked to describes the phenomenom as a trade-off – the risk goes up in the spring and correspondingly down in the fall – but if you dig a little, you discover that the spring increase is greater than the fall decrease.
When will this madness stop? I cannot find anything on the Google about the DOE study that was supposed to decide whether the 2006 Energy Bill, the one that gave us even less months without DST, is really saving any energy. Meanwhile we have the UCSB study proving that DST saves no energy and in fact wastes more of it, now that we’re all using electricity instead of kerosene lamps.
If they found out that something else – a special strobe light display for New Year’s Eve, say – raised the risk of heart attack five percent, whatever it was would be outlawed before Sarah Palin could say “you betcha.” But this is America, the land of Magical Thinking, where we dress our children in 1940s-style school uniforms because that will make them learn more, and we monkey with the clocks because that will save gasoline.
Enjoy your sleep, Bill. You’ll pay for it next spring. No wait, I’ll pay for it, because it turns out women are more affected by the time change than men. Probably because we have to get all those sleep-deprived kids out of bed and into their stupid school uniforms.
This was brilliant editorial work. This site is rapidly moving from a glamour and society page to brilliant commentary on the world. Keep up the good work Del!
You are very kind, Bill. Thank you.