Please Don't Change Daylight Savings Time Again

Yesterday morning (Sunday, April 5), I awoke peacefully and glanced at the clock by the side of my bed. Odd, I thought, I must have been more tired than I realized since I had slept an extra hour than normal. Then I realized that my nifty self-setting alarm clock clock from Emerson Research had jumped forward 1 hour. Yesterday was the traditional change from "Standard Time" to "Daylight Savings" time. My clock, which was smart enough to know to change, wasn't smart enough to subscribe to the Federal Register and keep up with the machinations of our Federal government. It did not know that congress had advanced the change from standard time to daylight savings time.

Likewise, my wonderful, yet aging, Dell Axim X50v PDA also jumped forward an hour. Ditto to the Windows XP system that was contolling a cool LED sign I own.

Previously, I had had to lie to each of these devices and set them forward ahead of what they thought should be the start of DST.

I have yet to see (or even hear about) any serious study which shows a savings due to changing to DST. In fact, I can think of lots of reasons why it costs money to change.

There's an old saying: "Government: If you think the problems we cause are bad, just wait until you see our solutions". Our federal government feels compelled to "solve" problems. Being clueless politicians, the solutions they choose are generally not very well thought out, and are frequently exactly counterproductive to the problem they want to fix.

Please, Please. I'm begging you. Stop "fixing" things! Maybe it's time to adopt a multi-party system that suffers from paralysis. At least then congress could live the old medical maxim of "First, do no harm."