The year’s in the Spring. And the clocks spring forward an hour. It’s daylight saving time from today to Nov 1st. The persistence of generalized collective idiocy can be explained by some kind of social inertia. Daylight saving time is a prime example. It was meant to reduce energy use. A little bit of thought should be enough for one to realize that there cannot be — in this present day and age — any energy savings by futzing around with clocks.
Perhaps when energy for lighting was a significant proportion of electricity use, there may have been some justification. But today lighting (commercial and residential) accounts for only 12 percent of total electrical energy consumption. (Source: US Energy Information Administration.)
Energy savings benefits are probably negligibly small at best. But the costs of changing clocks twice a year is not small, and it is growing. That proposition is too obvious to necessitate elaboration. Think international travel and communications. Think timetables. Think about the fact that the clocks will be adjusted at different time zones and therefore the change is not globally synchronized: places in the East will “spring forward” hours ahead of places in the West. All this pushes what was plain idiocy into insanity territory.
Bottom line: changing clocks saves about as much energy as it saves time: zilch. Solution: make DST the time year round.
[EDIT: I have a habit of calling it “daylight savings time”. That’s wrong. It is “daylight saving time”. Savings is what you have when you put money away in a bank for later use.]
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 
Sincerely, I had exactly the same doubts on this DST business many years ago but didn’t care to enough to come to this ‘plain’ conclusion. It is insanity indeed.
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