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Is Daylight Saving Time Worth Saving?
Daniel_Stuckey writes "In politics, health, and academia, there are plenty of detractors that say daylight saving might not be worth saving. One vocal opponent is Missouri State Representative Delus Johnson, who wants to end the watch and clock switchery altogether. In short, he says we should spring forward this one last time, without ever falling back. He wants Missouri – and other states willing to join a pact – to permanently adopt daylight saving time and call it Standard Time. He's sure that it'll increase economic development in the later part of the year; giving people a little more daylight to do their Black Friday shopping. Matthew J. Kotchen and Laura E. Grant at the National Bureau of Economic Research have argued that DST has had adverse effects on energy spending. They calculate some extra $10-16 million spent by Indiana due to time changes. Their research concluded it's probably a much bigger loss in other states. A year ago, Motherboard's Kelly Bourdet reported on a health study that concluded DST might actually kill you. Chances of heart-attack were stated to increase by 10 percent on the days following the spring change, and to decrease by 10% after gaining the hour in the fall."
There's even a We The People petition about it.
So, we should throw out trillions of dollars of infrastructure because the Europeans can't cope with our measurements?
As far as metric goes, there's absolutely no reason to learn them if you're not a scientist. It makes a few things less convenient like cooking, and makes nothing more convenient that you would normally do in daily living. It's mostly elitists in Europe that have this obsession with making the US change when really there's no incentive at all for us to do so, and a huge incentive not to ever change.
I lived under the metric system for a year and it did absolutely nothing positive for me beyond what imperial measures did.