USAians, Did you remember to Change Your Clocks?

We experienced our last fall back/spring forward ‘time change’ back in 2013.
We don't observe DST anymore while living in Ecuador, but we do have to remember to consider that almost everyone we know still does, so starting today, our clocks are the same as everyone in the central time zone; whereas, the rest of the year, our clocks show the same as everyone in the eastern time zone of the US.

In case you are unaware, Daylight Saving Time is the ritual observed throughout North America (except in parts of Indiana, Florida, and Arizona) when everyone either rolls their clocks back an hour in the Fall or ahead an hour in the Spring.

Even having been raised in North American, I've always only had a vague understanding of the rationale, so every year, I think of some the DST jokes from The Colbert Report back when Steven Colbert was funny:

“You know who I blame for this? Benjamin Franklin, who invented Daylight Saving Time, probably during a syphilitic fever dream.”

Another time, Colbert blamed someone else:

"Do you know why we have Daylight Savings? Because farmers are so lazy, they won't get up and work unless we literally change the clocks and tell them its is an hour earlier."

Of course we know that’s not true, but it makes a funny joke; in reality, farmers are the most annoyed by DST. The US government really enacted DST in order to give worker-consumers more leisure and shopping time during daylight hours. Wikipedia's entry for Daylight Saving Time deftly sterilizes this fact and expertly rewords it to make it sound like the daylight is the only thing being exploited in this arrangement.

“Adding daylight to afternoons benefits retailing, sports, and other activities that exploit sunlight after working hours, but causes problems for farming, evening entertainment and other occupations tied to the sun.”

But I will save my ranting about self-hating workers and clueless consumers for another time.

Some people, however, will always blame someone for what they don't understand.

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I tweet from @Dr_Revelator about Cuenca, Ecuador, bitcoin, economics, politics, comedy, entertainment, and culture.