Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Note to self: Buy more stock in the Outhouse Rat Tin Foil Hat Co. because the wackadoodles will be breaking out of Bonkersville in short order. Lawmakers, it turns out, are thinking about exempting Alaska from daylight saving time. They might as well be deciding whether to eat puppies.
The state Senate State Affairs Committee is advancing Eagle River Republican Sen. Anna MacKinnon's entirely sensible measure that would exempt Alaska from the annual pain in the patoot time-switch beginning in 2017 -- leaving Alaska five hours behind the East Coast, instead of four, from about March to November.
She will have her hands full. She will hear from industries dependent on schedules and daylight and the vagaries and rigidities of faraway markets -- and she will hear from hordes of lunatics. Few things make crazies crazier than messing with the clocks. It, apparently, is not a new phenomenon.
"At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves," wrote Canadian journalist Robertson Davies in his 1947 novel, "The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks."
Years ago, while I was doing a radio talk show, somebody suggested opting out of the horological scam. The telephones burst into flames. For a while, it sounded like Sarah Palin on crack. Callers were apoplectic -- for and against -- and nobody wanted to hear, hey, we would not really be losing or gaining an hour of daylight, you know, we would just be switching it around. One guy was reduced to making guttural noises before slamming down the phone. I offer this only because his was the sanest call that day.
The senator is on the right track. Daylight saving supposedly was to give us more time in sunlight and conserve energy, but studies show few benefits. There are, however, traffic accident and suicide spikes on the first Monday after daylight saving time. There are increases in heart attacks and the Accident Analysis & Prevention journal says up to 366 lives could be saved annually if we dumped the change.
We need to get out off this chronological merry-go-round. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 allows Alaska to do just that.
The change is already ignored in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands and, since 1968, Arizona. The Navajo Nation observes it, even in Arizona, due to its reservation being spread over three states, but the Hopi Reservation, entirely surrounded by the Navajo Nation, does not. Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are toying with the idea of dropping it.
Since mankind's nascence, people have measured time based on the sun's position in the sky. Even ancient dynasties employed devices such as sun dials or water clocks to better utilize sunlight.
Through the ages, efficient time use has been civilization's centerpiece. While in Paris, Benjamin Franklin dashed off his tongue-in-cheek "An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light," and fired it off to the editor of "The Journal of Paris" in 1784. He suggested Parisians, if they arose before noon, could save candles by getting up earlier and better using the natural morning light. From that, Franklin gets credit for the notion of daylight saving.
It largely was overlooked until dusted off by Englishman William Willett in his 1907 pamphlet, "The Waste of Daylight."
British railroads forced a single standard time in 1840 -- London Time, they called it -- and railroads in the U.S. and Canada did the same in 1883. Before that, it was a local matter -- and confusing.
The United States and many European nations went to daylight saving time -- known in Europe as Summer Time -- in World War I.
Daylight saving time was formally adopted in the U.S. in 1918 to conserve energy, thanks to efforts by Pittsburgh industrialist Robert Garland, the "father of daylight saving." It was seen as "Big Government" interference and was repealed in 1919.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt in World War II instituted year-round daylight saving, called "War Time," from 1942 to 1945. From 1945 to 1966, it was optional, a confused hodgepodge.
It remains a hot button. There is something about shifting daylight around that drives some of us nuts. Sen. MacKinnon may soon know this.
As for me, I'm with her, but I'm buying more stock.
Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDailyPlanet.com, a division of Porcaro Communications.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.