Twice a year most Americans have to change their clocks forward or backward one hour. That's crazy. There's no rational need for that. The argument that it saves energy is a non-starter.
Bills had been introduced in the Texas Legislature the last session, but they dropped the ball and didn't do anything with it. So here we are once again having to fall back an hour.
Other than the nuisance of manually changing all the clocks and watches, there's the disruption to our biological clocks and the pet feeding schedule. But here's another reason -- Daylight Saving Time reduces crime.
Jason Russell at Washingtonexaminer.com tells us about a paper which establishes just that. Excerpt:
"Effects are largest during the hours directly affected by the shift in daylight," the paper says. It was authored by Jennifer Doleac, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Nicholas Sanders, with Cornell University. Compared to the 7 percent daily drop in the spring, crime drops 27 percent in the evening hour with extra sunlight.
"It's easy to imagine why light might have a deterrent effect on crime: Offenders know they're more likely to be recognized and get caught if they're fully visible," Doleac and Sanders write on the Brookings Institution's blog.
So let's do it already. Yesterday would have been nice.
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