“Time zones are a relatively recent invention,” Matthew Yglesias Vox-splains (link safe, goes to Twitchy). “They date back to the 19th Century and were designed to reconcile the needs of the then-new railroad industry with the ingrained habits of a population new to clocks.” (Not to be confused with that pesky Constitution, whom Yglesias’ fellow juicevox mafioso Ezra Klein assures us is really old, like, a hundred years old, or something, man). Yglesias adds:
They were a good idea at the time, but in the modern world they cause more trouble than they are worth. Now that several generations of humanity are accustomed to abstracting time away from the happenstance of where the sun is located, it’s time to do away with this barbarous relic of the past. Everyone on the planet should operate according to a single time — Greenwich Mean Time would be suggested by tradition — and then local schedules could differ from place to place according to personal taste and local practicality.*
To get rid of them why not go all the way and introduce the Metric Leisure Week? Dan Aykroyd of Saturday Night Live was goofing on this topic almost 40 years ago, with an assist from Gilda Radner, and that week’s host, Norman Lear:
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And speaking of a man who’s already enjoying Metric Leisure Week to the fullest, behold the president — who just won’t rest — ever!
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* Yeah, I don’t think Matt believes any of this either. But hey, even fabulists need to crank out a column occasionally; that mortgage doesn’t pay itself.
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