Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Sunday, March 13. 2011

Daylight Saving Time and the Work Ethic

Via Ace:



Massachusetts passed a law in 1663 making the wasting of time a crime: “No person, householder or other shall spend his time idly or unprofitably, under pain of such punishment as the court shall think meet to inflict.” A century later, the Boston-born Benjamin Franklin (“time is money”) proposed a version of daylight saving time as a joke to stop slothful Parisians from sleeping in. But it was an English Puritan, Ralph Thoresby, who invented an early alarm clock.


"Unprofitably"? Maggie's Farm would have been in trouble in 1663.

Posted by The News Junkie in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 09:55 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0)

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If I were King I would put an end to daylight savings time.
#1 Dave on 2011-03-13 10:03 (Reply)
Please - please - please... it's Daylight Saving Time, not savingS. The article is correct, but your headline...
#2 ChrisF on 2011-03-13 10:19 (Reply)
I HATE IT ! Now I am gonna be late for everything during the next 6 months--
#3 apple pie on 2011-03-13 12:29 (Reply)
As the old Chief said, "only a white man would cut a foot off one end of his blanket and sew it on the other end and think he has a longer blanket."
#4 JP Blickenstaff on 2011-03-13 14:32 (Reply)
Regarding the 1663 Massachusetts law; I never knew the ingrained fascism of the MA Legislature predated America. It seems sort of like the Marxist immersion of college, it embarrasingly sticks to your shoe like tissue from the bathroom.
#5 Firecapt on 2011-03-13 19:18 (Reply)
Those Puritans and Pilgrims wanted freedom to set up their own theocracies. They hung Quakers in Boston, and would put you in the stocks if you celebrated the Papist holiday Christmas.
#5.1 Bird Dog on 2011-03-13 20:29 (Reply)
Actually, Bird Dog, I am a fan of putting bullies and thieves and vandals in the stocks, with a plentiful supply of rotten eggs and tomatoes nearby. It would give us put-upon civilians a chance to vent our irritation, give grocers a useful outlet for their over-aged produce, and best of all, possibly shame the folks in the stocks, who need shaming.

Ridicule is a powerful thing, used correctly.

Marianne
#6 Marianne Matthews on 2011-03-14 23:32 (Reply)

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