Saving Daylight:

Some phrases and terms are so astounding that they simply take my breath away. Free lunch, the goodness of mankind, and the Easter bunny are other examples of this strange way of thinking. Let’s take a closer look at daylight savings time and try to discover how we think about it and why it is disconcerting to so many.

To better understand daylight savings we need to understand what measuring time is all about and to do that involves understanding a bit of science. I am going to use some approximate numbers here so let’s not get upset if the math is not sound down to a gnat’s eyebrow. The earth is approximately 24,000 miles around at its fattest point. That imaginary line around the earth is known as the equator. Most of us have never experienced the equator or lived anywhere near it. Increasingly today world commerce is in both the northern and southern parts of the sphere that we call the earth and so in fact more people cross this line than ever before.

Most of us can understand what I have said so far. Now the interesting part starts. We all know that the day is composed of 24 time segments we call hours. By worldwide convention there is what is called local noon. At this point the sun is at its highest point above the horizon. At the equator this high point always divides days that are composed of the same number of hours of daylight and darkness. Days do not get longer in the summer and shorter in the winter at the equator. Year round the number of hours of darkness of night exactly equals the number of hours of light of the day. What is less obvious is that there are no seasons at the equator. There is no summer and winter no spring and fall. Each day of the year is the same. Each month of the year is the same. Each decade of the century is the same. It is as if time stops at the equator. Which of course is not true, what can stop is the incentive to write about days that seem to repeat endlessly.

As I said things are more complex than they appear and so it is with the seasons. The earth is tilted on its axis. What that means is the center of rotation (the imaginary line thru the center of the earth that forms an axis of rotation) is not straight up and down to the rays coming from the sun. This axis is tilted. Because it is tilted the parts above and below the equator receive different amounts of sunlight on any given day. Consider that the shortest day of the year is December 21 in the northern half of the globe. In the southern half of the globe however this is the longest day of the year. If you are thinking it would be the first day summer you are correct. The reason we change the time of the local noon in the summer is so that we more closely track the real local noon. That is we compensate for the fact that our clocks are not providing sound information.

To bring this whole discussion back to politics my question is “Why can’t we adjust our attitude towards political time keeping that also no longer reflects local noon?” Why do we cling to a way of telling time that is clearly wrong? The answer of course is that we are creatures of habit not intellect.