One way to appreciate the conceptual oddness of daylight saving time is to imagine it as a new idea just cooked up by the Obama administration. An individual mandate to change your clocks twice a year, every year, to enable a government redistribution of sunshine. Or, put another way, the feds' confiscation of more than 300 million privately held American sleep hours, taken for eight months without interest payments or a penalty. All to make the nation healthier, wealthier and wiser, and for somewhat dubious energy savings. House Republicans would not be pleased — would you? Would you reset the clock radio, or would you demand that the government stay out of your bedroom and leave your dream life alone?
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But as with other aged, vaguely beneficial innovations, like chicken soup and the seventh-inning stretch, we don't ask questions. We live with it, and we do not even remember the days when daylight went unsaved. Who among us was alive when it was important to conserve candles and kerosene, and to avoid unhealthful night air? In March 1909 The Times published a short dispatch from Britain, an early adopter. "Daylight Bill Gaining," it said. "Opponents Fail to Kill the Measure by Ridicule."
The idea makes eminent sense on a tiny gray island in the North Atlantic that needs every drop of sunshine it can find. On our sprawling continent, the benefits are not as uniform, though proponents insist that its gains in energy efficiency and traffic safety are real.
Some Americans disagree, but we are all stuck with daylight saving, except in the states that opted out: Arizona, where all that extra sunshine is hot and expensive, and milder Hawaii, where the day's length doesn't change much, thanks to the nearness of the Equator and to Maui, the demigod of Hawaiian mythology who lassoed the sun and threatened to kill it unless it promised to slow its march across the sky.
The rest of us can use the coming months to savor longer dusks and brighter homeward commutes, for a modest price: a little grogginess this weekend, and periodic confusion. On Sunday, Honolulu will be six hours behind New York, not five, and Phoenix will be three.
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