Fowlerian Time

There has been a lot of talk about daylight savings time lately but it all seems to focus on the (ridiculous) American changes to daylight savings time to allegedly save something like 1% of the energy output of North America. In my opinion, this is only going to offer the smallest of increases to our quality of life while adding hassles to our everyday lives. What I think we should really be focusing on is more significant changes to quality of life. This is what I think is great about daylight:

• You can play outside
• You can sit outside
• You can eat outside
• You can lay outside

All of these things involve being outside, so why is it that we set up our daylight schedules so that in the winter, most of the daylight goes on while we are all inside. 8-5pm is the bulk of the daylight in the winter and this overlaps almost completely with most of the hours that we are at work or in school. I propose the following:

• Every day of the year, the sun sets at 9pm

This way, we can always do outside activities in the evening when there is still light. The downside of this is that in the winter the sun will be rising at approximately noon.

Pros:

• We all get to play with our kids after work.
• We can go for evening strolls any time of the year.
• We will save a significant amount of energy in the winter because households will not need lights on in the evening.

Cons:

• Somewhat expensive replacement (or upgrading) of existing clocks to adjust the time daily.
  
• We have to wake up in the dark for most of the winter.
• This goes against millenia of the way we keep time

So, I think I have made it quite clear that there are plenty of reasons for such a system and I, for one, plan on going by this time exclusively in the future.

Birth Control

I was reading Savage Love, which I do from time to time and I discovered this interesting article:

http://www.local6.com/education/9680361/detail.html

I think it's hilarious.

Tim