When you woke up this morning, were you groggier than usual? When the alarm sounded, were you a bear awakened in the middle of January? When you left home for work, did you grumble about the extension of darkness where just yesterday the glow of a preborn sun had been? If you answered “Yes,” congratulations! Your body was screaming that you had once again been scammed by daylight savings time (DST).
DST is a fraud guarded by a trenchwork of lies. That pious story of Benjamin Franklin originating the idea as a means of getting lazy Frenchmen up earlier? The letter he wrote in 1784 to the Journal of Paris was a joke, the equivalent of Groucho Marx suggesting the seven-cent nickel. Just read the part where Franklin says:
Your readers, who with me have never seen any signs of sunshine before noon, and seldom regard the astronomical part of the almanac, will be as much astonished as I was, when they hear of his rising so early; and especially when I assure them, that he gives light as soon as he rises. I am convinced of this. I am certain of my fact. One cannot be more certain of any fact.
If anyone still needs convincing, Franklin suggested in the same letter that France outlaw window shutters so that people wouldn’t be able to sleep in. Unless Dr. Franklin was the 18th-century prototype of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez modal of politico, Occam’s razor demands we treat his letter
