What time is it?

It's midnight. Two hours from now, it will be one hour from now.

Just as I do when I'm trying to remember how many days there are in a certain month, I find myself reciting a silly phrase to decide what to do with my clock today. Fall back. Of course, I could fall forward, but that wouldn't go with the first half of the saying.

Modern Daylight Savings Time was first proposed in 1907 by William Willett, and saw its first widespread use in 1916. Now, our government has taken it to ridiculous extremes. At this point, we are on "regular" solar time for only about three months. I suppose, if we set the clocks an hour ahead and left them there, technically it wouldn't be Daylight Savings Time, since we wouldn't be saving anything.

Can we really save daylight? Wouldn't we accomplish the same thing if we persuaded businesses to open and close an hour earlier? I'd start work at 7 if I could be finished by 3:30. That might piss off the teachers, since their cushy schedule wouldn't be so unique anymore. Maybe they'd like to work a full year while they're at it?

Gasoline gets more expensive every day and we in the United States use more of it per capita than anyone in the world. Energy is precious and expensive and the best thing that our president and Congress could come up with last year was expanding Daylight Savings Time. They told us it was going to help us conserve energy. Far be it from me to cloud the issue with facts, but I beg to differ.

A 2007 simulation estimated that introducing DST to Japan would increase energy use in Osaka residences by 0.13%, with a 0.02% decrease due to less lighting more than outweighed by a 0.15% increase due to extra cooling.

In 2000 when parts of Australia began DST in late winter, overall electricity consumption did not decrease, and the morning peak load and prices increased.

DST may increase gasoline consumption. U.S. gasoline demand grew an extra 1% during the newly introduced DST in March 2007.

Georgie, you're amazing. Make us think that we're doing something to help, when actually we're digging a little deeper hole. I used to think you were stupid, but now I know you're more like an evil genius.

Any resonable person would have to ask themselves how moving the clock an hour would have any significant impact one way or another, but as we know, we don't have very many resonable people in government. Whatever it does, it does not change the length of the day, which I figure is the next thing they'll have to work on.

I propose a six-day week, shortening the year from 365 days to 312. That, combined with the new seven-cent nickel and 120-cent dollar should even out all this energy consumption and poverty.

Problem solved.