My Conspiracy Theory friends are (strange as it sounds) very angry at Daylight Saving Time, claiming it’s the government’s way of asserting arbitrary power over us, that it represents man’s insane assertion of human will over Nature.  After arguing with them all day yesterday, I’ve finally come up with a post that should suffice.

You might say I’ve sprung forward to the truth and fallen back on a handy explanation of it …

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If you’re using anything other than a sundial (and we’ve been using mechanical clocks since the 13th Century), noon by the clock is almost NEVER noon by the sun at any place on the earth on any given day. Perhaps twice a year sun noon will correspond to mechanical clock or digital clock noon within a few seconds.

And this correspondence is rarely on the days of Spring or Autumn Equinox. This is because your location on earth will never be matched up with the “time zone” to the exact minute. Solar noon for Eastern Standard Time Maine will be far earlier than noon for Eastern Standard time Indiana. For that matter, solar noon for western Maine will be later than solar noon for Eastern Maine.

My point is we count hours for the sake of convenience, so that we can all plan things. The hours we count have some relation to the sun, but not an exact correspondence. This has been the case for about 700 years. Therefore Daylight Savings Time is really no big deal. It’s just a way of adjusting a somewhat arbitrary system that is never in exact accord with nature.

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But even making this case has been a struggle.

We live in strange times, whether Daylight or Standard.

Salisbury Cathedral, home of the world’s first mechanical clock.