Excuse Me, Do You Have the Time?

Okay! It's that time of year again: daylight savings time! Early Sunday morning was the time for the semi-annual pointless ritual of changing every clock you can think of by one hour. You are required by federal law to do so - in fact, if you do not own a watch, you are required to purchase one for the express purpose of changing the time on it (although unfortunately, you may not claim the expense as a deduction for income tax purposes).

Here in Israel we're not changing our clocks until April, so for a while, the time difference between the US and Israel will be just six hours instead of seven. This is excellent for confusing those of us who were finally just barely getting used to the seven hour time difference to begin with. Not that I'm complaining or anything. No siree.

Daylight savings time is referred to by the acronym "DST", which stands for, well, "Daylight Savings Time". Although I personally feel it would be more accurate to say it stands for "Dumb, Silly Thing", because in my opinion, that is exactly what it is: a pointless attempt to "save" daylight, whatever that's supposed to mean.

There is a major misconception that DST was invented by Benjamin Franklin. This directly leads to many people believing that DST has to be a smart idea, because after all, if it was invented by Benjamin Franklin, it must be a brilliant concept. However, we must not forget that Benjamin Franklin was also the same genius who flew a kite in a thunderstorm which got struck by lightning (the kite did, not the thunderstorm), which fried his brain so badly that he spent the rest of his life speaking in silly idioms like "don't think to hunt two hares with one dog" or "we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately". So maybe we should be taking his "brainstorms" with a grain - or perhaps a whole sack - of salt.

But as it turns out, that doesn't really matter, because Benjamin Franklin was in fact not the one who invented DST, although he did lament the waste of daylight hours that came about through waking up late and going to sleep late. Or, as Franklin put it: "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man - OUCH!" (At that point, Franklin was finally smacked across the face by some heroic individual whose name escapes me at the moment, which shouldn't really matter to anyone, since I just made him up anyway out of wishful thinking.)

According to Wikipedia, DST was actually invented by somebody called William Willet. I don't blame him: if I were him, I would also try to come up with some brilliant concept so people would remember me for something other than my absurdly silly name. Mr. Willet published some kind of pamphlet advocating the concept of forcing the day to start earlier after observing that many people's shutters were still closed during his pre-breakfast horse ride. Personally, I'd like to know why he was trying to look into other people's windows - the pamphlet went through nineteen editions, and none of them actually explain this critical detail. Maybe he was trying to make sure they were up for Shachris.

But getting back to the main issue here, another thing that disturbed Mr. Willet, who was an avid golfer, was that he had to cut his round of golf short at dusk. So he came up with the idea of shifting the clock. If DST were implemented, he argued, not only would people's shutters be open in the morning (although I frankly cannot determine the advantage of that, anyway), but he even would be able to play all the way through his round of golf while it was still light outside. Apparently he figured it would be easier to put the whole nation through the hassle of changing their clocks and getting used to a new schedule than it would be to simply start his round of golf a little earlier.

So anyway, fast-forward a bunch of years to today, and that's where the matter stands right now: we have to change our clocks twice a year because of someone's lousy game of golf. This should further highlight what a pathetic sport golf is: in addition to being the only sport where the game would look exactly the same and proceed at exactly the same pace with the exact same level of excitement as it would even if all the players involved were deceased, golf now has the distinction of being the only sport capable of getting the clock changed in its favor.

Hang on, I think there's a thunderstorm brewing outside. Let me go get my kite...