John North Editor & Publisher

Daylight saving time began at 2 a.m. last Sunday and I feel robbed of one hour’s sleep by congressional fiat.

DST now covers almost two-thirds of the year. As a result, we spend more of our lives on artifical time than on normal time.

The main purpose of DST (called “Summer Time” many places in the world) is to make better use of daylight. We change our clocks during the summer months to move an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening.

However, I am beginning to side with the theory of some blogger who shall remain nameless that “it is a plot by the shadow government to undermine the focus and resolve of the American hoi polloi by continuously disturbing their biorhythms.”

While it is sold to us as an energy-saving measure, in fact studies show that, thanks to the increased air-conditioning use it brings, it may actually waste energy.

Farmers have always opposed DST because they have to wait until the dew is evaporated off the crops before they can harvest them. When their workers show up before the sun has arisen, under DST, they must wait around for an hour before work can begin.

Here’s a clue to DST’s true purpose: The Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association and the National Association of Convenience Stores successfully lobbied for the 2007 extension to the U.S. DST. We now have the longest such schedule in American history.

When they extended it in 1987, it was Clorox, the parent company of Kingsford Charcoal, and 7-11, which funded the coalition to extend the artificial time then.

Both Idaho senators voted for it on the basis of fast-food restaurants selling more French fries made from Idaho potatoes. So it’s really about pork greasing the clock, one might say.

As for the argument that this all is irrelevant because time is relative and merely a man-made concept, that’s great if you are a dilettante with hours to kill on a beach or in a coffeeshop. But for the rest of us, the clock is gear that drives our lives, keeping the trains running and factories humming on time.

Beyond clocks, the natural time under which mankind’s system evolved still makes sense and, to me, is a healthier way to go.

I see the DST mandate as akin to an assembly-line machine, where the robots automatically speed up and slow down as ordered by a central authority.

No wonder so many people have trouble adjusting to the time change. It disrupts sleep and can severely upset people’s circadian rhythms.

In fact, the government of Kazakhstan cited health complications due to clock shifts as a primary reason for abolishing DST in 2005.

On the bright side, as ite were, only a minority of the world observes DST, with wide stretches of Africa and Asia ignoring it.

Interestingly, DST was invented by an Edwardian Englishman who loved golf. He thought up the idea during a pre-breakfast horseback ride, observing with dismay how many of his fellow Londoners slept through what he considered the best part of the day.

On his own, he advanced his clock by an hour, and lobbied for passage of DST during his lifetime, albeit unsuccessfully.

DST was not adopted in the U.S. until 1918. Ironically, Germany and its WWI allies were the first to use it — in 1916. In the next few years, Britain, Russia and, finally, the U.S. followed suit.