DST and MS

[Guest guest]

Daylight saving time

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time

Daylight saving time (also called DST, or Summer Time) is the local

time a country adopts for a portion of the year, usually an hour

forward from its standard official time.

It is a system intended to " save " daylight (as opposed to wasting it

by sleeping, say, while the sun shines). The official time is

adjusted forward during the spring and summer months, so that the

active hours of work and school will better match the hours of

daylight.

It is sometimes asserted that DST was first proposed by

lin in a letter to the editors of the Journal of Paris. However,

the article was humourous and, in any case, lin was not

proposing DST, but rather that people should get up and go to bed

earlier.

It was first seriously proposed by Willett in the " Waste of

Daylight " , published in 1907, but he was unable to get the British

Government to adopt it despite considerable lobbying. The idea was

first put into practice by the German government during the First

World War between the 30th of April, 1916 and the 1st of October,

1916. Shortly afterwards, the United Kingdom followed suit, first

adopting DST between the 21st of May, 1916 and the 1st of October,

1916. Then on March 19, 1918 the United States Congress established

several time zones (which were already in use by railroads since

1883) and made daylight saving time official (which went into effect

on March 31) for the remainder of World War I. It was observed for

seven months in 1918 and 1919. The law, however, proved so unpopular

(mostly because people rose earlier and went to bed earlier than in

modern times) that the law was later repealed.

Daylight saving time was reinstated in the United States on February

9, 1942, again as a wartime measure to conserve resources, this time

in order to fight World War II. This remained in effect until the war

began winding down and the requirement was removed on September 30,

1945. From 1945 to 1966, there was no federal law about daylight

saving time. States and localities were free to observe daylight

saving time or not. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 created daylight

saving time to begin on the last Sunday of April and to end on the

last Sunday of October. Any area that wanted to be exempt from

daylight saving time could do so by passing a local ordinance. The

law was amended in 1986 to begin daylight saving time on the first

Sunday in April.

DST is not universally accepted; many localities do not observe it.

Nevertheless, proponents claim that DST helps more than it hurts. The

primary claim is that it reduces energy consumption. Opponents claim

that there's not enough benefit to justify needing to adjust clocks

twice per year. The disruption in sleep patterns associated with

setting clocks forward, and thereby " losing " an hour, correlates with

a spike in the number of severe auto accidents.

DST is particularly unpopular among people working in agriculture

because the animals do not observe it, and thus the people are placed

out of synchronization with the rest of the community, including

school times, broadcast schedules, and the like.

DST is a long-standing controversy in Indiana, not only as an

agricultural state, but also because the meridian separating the

eastern and central time zones divides the state. In the past,

neighboring communities sometimes ended up one or even two hours

apart. In the current compromise, the state has three kinds of time

zone: 77 counties, most of the state, are on Eastern Standard Time

but do not use DST; 7 counties near Chicago and 3 counties in the

southwestern corner of the state are on Central Standard Time and do

use DST; and 2 counties near Cincinnati, Ohio and 3 counties near

Louisville, Kentucky are on Eastern Standard time but do use DST.

For fairly obvious reasons, DST is a temperate zone practice: day

lengths in the tropics do not vary enough to justify DST. Hawaii, the

only U.S. state in the tropics, does not observe DST.

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I wonder if there is any correspondence (temporal or geographical)

between incidence of MS (or attacks) and DST use? I think my friend

got CPMS in 1966, after a move from Windsor Ontario to Virginia (and

back). I wonder if that was one of those states that reinstituted

DST in 1966.

I don't know when Canada changed its use of it.

" The animals do not observe it " : do they get MS? " Day lengths in the

tropics do not vary enough to justify DST " : they also don't get MS.

Maybe *that* is what the soldiers left behind in the Faroes.

Too many coincidences.

-Sullivan