Times They Are A Changin’

I’m going to be upfront with you here. I hate the time change. It serves no purpose, other than to mess with our circadian rhythms and I promise to vote for the first Politian who swears to abolish it.

The New England Journal of Medicine published an article linking the shift to Daylight Savings Time (DST)to a rise in incidents of myocardial infarction (heart attacks). Different studies have shown there is an increased risk of stroke in the days following a time switch. There is an increased number of traffic accidents and more on the job accidents in the days following the time change.

Danish researchers uncovered a link between time change and an increase of hospital admissions for depression. Another study shows a link between time change and an increase in suicides. This begs the question, why do we still do it?

Supposedly, the switch to DST saves us money on energy. Moving that extra hour of daylight from the morning to the evening means we can work longer, play longer, and have a longer exposure to vitamin D. But studies have shown this isn’t really the case. Just because it’s still light outside doesn’t mean we’re out there enjoying it. And the decrease in energy used in the evening is offset by the needed increase of use in the mornings.

Forbes Magazine published an interesting article showing that the top 5 reasons for keeping DST have no science to back them up. You can read it HERE.

So back to my question, why do we still do it? The only answer I can come up with is that we do it because we’re told to by the government. And that doesn’t seem like a good enough reason to me.



Prompt of the Week

You may have noticed I forgot to post my take on last week’s prompt. Yeah, well, you didn’t send me anything either, so there! LOL

On the weekend I spent some time with the prompt jar actually going through the prompts which I had mostly copied from the Writer’s Digest site, not realizing that a lot of them you had to click on to get the whole prompt. And prompts from other sources that I again mostly just cut and pasted from proved to be . . . lame.

But the jar is refilled now and my friend and I both chose a prompt for the week, so you get to have your choice:

Prompt 1:
To get the story straight. Dave, we think, has become a chicken. Just the worst of luck with that guy. Tom is claiming he married the futon that’s now covered in yogurt, Carl is on the chandelier with the dog and you just walked in after getting groceries. What the heck is going on?

Prompt 2:
You take a sip from your drink and feel different. That may be because your torso has an extra arm protruding from it. Another sip, another arm. Then a wing. What happens if you finish the drink?

Bonus

My friend has extended a challenge: Everyone has had a villain in their life. Challenge. Write a paragraph or two about a villain’s point of view. What makes them tick.

Remember, these prompts are just to flex your writing muscle, so have fun with them!