Damn you, Benjamin Franklin!

OK, so first some background. This was the issue.

"Whoa", you might say, in your best Keanu Reeves impression, "isn't this just a small thing to save energy? What is the big deal?"Well, intelligent arguments about jerking people around for no significant gain aside (arguments entirely unlike this), the most compelling reason comes from its origin.

Now, if you actually READ that, you will see what a farcical piece it is. It basically calls the French lazy (and because it is Franklin, they love it):

Your readers, who with me have never seen any signs of sunshine before noon, and seldom regard the astronomical part of the almanac, will be as much astonished as I was, when they hear of his rising so early; and especially when I assure them, that he gives light as soon as he rises.

Franklin's main thrust was improvements to be made to save Paris residents use of candles. He ends with the original tone:

I will not dispute with these people, that the ancients knew not the sun would rise at certain hours; they possibly had, as we have, almanacs that predicted it; but it does not follow thence, that they knew he gave light as soon as he rose. This is what I claim as my discovery. (from a letter to the Editor the Journal of Paris entitled "Daylight Saving", 1784)

And then this guy takes a simple little joke too far (see: "“Early British laws and lax observance"):

The idea was first advocated seriously by a London builder, William Willett (1857-1915), in the pamphlet "Waste of Daylight" (1907) that proposed advancing clocks 20 minutes on each of four Sundays in April, and retarding them by the same amount on four Sundays in September.

And so yet another joke goes awry when heard by dimwits with no sense of humor.