From The Chief Editor's Desk...

OMG! Not again!

In the U.S., Daylight Savings Time is "starting" again. As in, "spring forward." That means we all advance our clocks by one hour. Bleh! I'm reminded of the supposed old American Indian quote (no one really knows if it is, but it makes the point perfectly): "Only white man thinks that cutting one foot from top of blanket and sewing to bottom of blanket makes blanket one foot longer."

I'm sure this insanity is also happening in other parts of the world.

This year, the U.S.'s observance of the annual time dance fiasco starts at 2 a.m. on March 12, 2023. Residents of the U.K. complete their annual time dance fiasco two weeks later, on March 26, 2023.

In case you can't tell, I ***hate*** the whole messing-with-the-clocks insanity.

Time, at least in the way that we refer to it, is a manmade construct. We've set it up to help explain night from day, to mark the passage of time during our lifespan, to help establish some order to our existence, and is precisely tailored to (and ruled by) the diurnal behavior of the only home world we have. Oh, it has other attributes, too. This list could go on for a long time, but you get the idea. Entire series of books have been written trying to explain our concept of time.

I'm more of the mind that if you want more hours of daylight, get up and get started on the day's activities earlier. Most animals rule their lives by hours of daylight. They get up and "do their thing" when the sun goes up (or down) and bed down to rest when the sun goes down (or up). The "confusion" there depends on whether the animal is nocturnal, or if it goes about its activities during the daylight. We are the only fools of the animal kingdom that think we can come up with a better way of defining our existence than that from Mother Nature herself.

And, it's not as though we "create" additional hours of daylight. Rather, we temporarily reassign different values to them. No matter how we mark them, there are still the same number of hours of daylight in any given day.

A year or two ago, in the U.S., the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan bill to permanently move us to year-round Daylight Savings Time, where we stay on the advanced hours year round and do away with the end of Daylight Savings Time in the fall. There would be no more "falling back" in November, as it is now.

The last I had heard was that although passing through the U.S. Senate, the bill never passed through the U.S. House of Representatives, and cannot be enacted unless or until it is approved by both chambers of Congress.

Phew! Narrowly dodged that one!

I'm a proponent of just doing away with the whole Daylight Savings Time mess, and keeping us on regular time all year. With one move, we can eliminate all of the stress associated with the biannual dance with our clocks. The "stress" induced is well documented, even among prestigious scientific outlets. Perform your own search for "stress of daylight savings time."

And stress is one thing we'd all like to lessen its impact on our lives. We sure don't need to add to it, and if we can eliminate some of it, then even better. Here's our chance to set things right, and to lessen stress at the same time.

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This month's cover image is by Monoar_CGI_Artist, on Pixabay.

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Until next month, I bid you peace, happiness, serenity and prosperity ... and continued good health!