Spring Forward, Fall Back

It's not magic. It's just a matter of being in the right place. And time zone.

And it's also an annual event for many people in the world, when they make the switch from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time.

The brainiacs at NASA tell us that time, that most precious resource, can be measured in different ways, including the oscillations of atoms,the orbital movements of earth and other planets, and also the rotation of the earth on its axis. Most of us, they say, can use the earth's rotation method, and we can call it Universal Time, or Greenwich Mean Time.

In North America, the clocks are turned back at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in October. The switch to Standard Time is easy -- just move your clocks back before you go to bed Saturday night, and voila! Sunday morning rolls around and you've magically gained an hour's sleep. Makes my atoms oscillate just thinking about it.

Not everyone is as enthusiastic as I am, however. Most of the resistance occurs in the spring, when many of us switch to Daylight Saving Time. In order to take advantage of more daylight hours, the clocks are moved forward. At the very least, we lose an hour or two of precious sleep, and some say any sudden shift in our living patterns has a detrimental affect. Livestock farmers especially say the time change is difficult when caring for herds of animals.

And certainly any parent of young children knows that a time change can upset a household for days.

Today, not every country in the world uses DST for their summer months, and not every state and province in North America uses it, either. World Time Zone has a time zone map that outlines the countries currently on DST. And the U.S. Naval Observatory tells us that Arizona, Hawaii and most of Indiana do not use Daylight Saving Time. In Canada, part of British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Quebec don't switch to DST.

There are some, in fact, who would like to see our entire time measurement system overhauled. 28-Hour Day suggests adding four hours to our current, standard 24-hour day. The average work day would become 10 hours instead of eight, and we would gain an hour for leisure and an hour for sleeping. As part of the plan, they also suggest totally eliminating Monday, leaving us with a four-day work-week.

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