My idea for Daylight Saving Time

First, a little Andy Rooney mini-rant or two.

It should be called "Standard Time." After all, DST now constitutes eight months of the year.

And, of course it doesn't "save" daylight; it just moves it around.

That said, it also doesn't save energy. Indiana's recent transition, for the whole state to go on DST a few years back, showed that. More here.

Why? Even in a city as far north as Indianapolis, more homes are being built with central AC, and more people are running it more and more. (That may be a modest contributory factor to the obesity issue, too.) It's less efficient to run a home AC for a few people than office AC for a bunch, so moving more of the heat of the day to when people with day jobs are home from work uses more energy.

Now, back to what I see.

It's true, that moving from "standard" time to DST is physiologically dangerous.

So, what if we split our springing forward into two half-hour jumps, the first weekends of March and May? Ditto on falling back; do that in half-hour increments first weekends of September and November.

Or, if as is likely, that's too complex for the typical American householder, let's just have one half-hour jump.

Other than the PITA of the jet lag in the first week or two of DST, I like the idea. As a night owl, I hate sun staring in my bedroom window at, to riff on Sherman Potter, 3:30 in the blessed a.m.!

But, it would be nice to make this adjustment a gentler one, even if that means sacrificing half the time changed on the switch.