Daylight Savings Time
This week, it’s back to daylight savings time. When I was a kid, I used to think I hated daylight savings time, and then I found out it was the non-daylight savings time I hated.
So, why not just stay on daylight savings time all year round? Or, why not just do away with daylight savings time, and have the 10:00 PM news come on at 11:00 PM, and get the schools to start an hour later, which would automatically move rush hour back an hour, and…
Living on Elvis Time
In a famous experiment, Michel Siffre, a French cave explorer, spent six months in a cave, with no clues to tell him what time of day it was. His biological clock eventually settled on a 25-hour day instead of a 24 hour day.
One theory was that the earth used to have a 25-hour day before the moon started slowing down the rotation, back before our ancestors evolved legs and crawled out of the ocean. Another theory was that humans were transplanted from Mars a long time ago in a cosmic crisis far away, but that’s delving into Arthur C. Clarke territory.
The closest I’ve come to Siffre’s experiment is having a week off at Christmas, when I find myself staying up later each night and rising later each morning, until I’m on what I call “Elvis Time,” because, like, the king lived in a sort of bizarre reverse time where he and his friends and the Memphis Mafia slept all day and stayed awake all night.
But, anyway, it’s great to be driving home from work before the sun sets, and it really makes me think how wonderful the people in Longyearbyen, Norway must be feeling right about now.
Here Comes the Sun
Longyearbyen, Norway bills itself as the northernmost town in the world–about 600 miles from the North Pole. And every year about this time in March, the sun returns after last being seen in October. After a few weeks of increasingly longer days, the nights will give way to solid daylight from April till next September.
Read More: daylight savings time, Elvis, Norway
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March 11th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
I loved it when I was in Lithuania in June. The sun set about 10:30 at night and it began getting light about 2 in the morning.It felt so nice being out on the streets at the late hour and it was still light out. It was just that you felt so much more alive, with all that daylight to play with. I know I wouldn’t want to be there in the winter, with all that dark. If your a vampire I guess it would be great.
March 11th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Pelmo: Some of the folks in the Norway article actually felt sad to see the sun return, because they liked all the introspective time staying inside over the winter afforded them. But, I think I’m like you–I wouldn’t want to be there too long over a dark winter. Lithuania sounds interesting…that must be pretty cool to spend some time where the sun only goes down for a few hours.
March 12th, 2008 at 6:11 am
I noticed there and in Canada, people tend to enjoy the outdoors more during the summer, then we do.