Daylight not much worth saving

You may not have realized it when you happily left work on Friday, but this is the shortest weekend of the year.

If you don’t understand, then you need to reset your clock. Last night, at two in the morning, it became three in the morning. Daylight saving time went into effect and your weekend became 47 hours instead of 48. Sorry for the bad news!

It has long been known that daylight saving time adversely affects health during the first few days following clocks being set ahead. Studies have shown heart attacks increase with the change, cluster headaches are more likely, and increases in workplace accidents and auto fatalities are odds-on to occur Monday. In other words, tomorrow is probably the best day of the year to call in sick, stay in bed and catch up on your sleep.

Employers reading this, who may now be more suspicious of those calling in sick tomorrow, should also be aware that those who do somehow make it to work might not be giving you their best effort. Cyberloafing — using the internet for personal enjoyment as opposed to making sure widget sales remain steady — increases significantly on the first workday after the clocks are pushed forward.

So, what are the advantages of daylight saving time? It remains light out for longer in the evening. That’s the goal and it certainly happens, but the benefits are somewhat obscure. Some believe it saves on energy usage, but it’s debatable whether the lights not used at 9 p.m. in July amount to a savings compared to the extra lights used at 7 a.m. in March. Summer enjoyments — perhaps time at the beach, or an early evening softball game — don’t need to be curtailed because of a lack of sunlight, so that’s nice. On the other hand, driving to work in the dark in March tends to make us grouchier.

Back to this weekend, there isn’t much debate that losing an hour of a day off stinks. Let’s be optimists, though, and try to find things about which to be thankful.

There’s one less hour for Donald Trump to tweet. There’s also one less hour for Democrats to whine about Donald Trump tweeting. Take your pick — or celebrate both, if you wish, and I’ll join you.

Want more? A study published by the Review of Economics and Statistics shows a distinct decrease in crime during daylight time. This is easily explained — criminals prefer darkness. Speaking of Congress, there’s one hour less for them to meddle in our lives today, or at least there would be if they were working. They’re in session some 100 days less than the average American works, so I guess they wouldn’t really be robbing us during this lost hour, anyway. Perhaps they’ll make up for it next fall.

As for me, I appreciate you taking part of your shortened weekend to read my stuff, but I wrote this last week and I’m probably sleeping now. I suggest you might want to take a nap too. Even though it might make your short weekend seem even shorter, I’d rather you do that than kill yourself tomorrow (unless you’re a congressman, of course, then feel free to do whatever you want).

There isn’t much debate that losing an hour of a day off stinks. Let’s be optimists, though, and try to find things about which to be thankful.