I really don't know if the above translations are correct since none of the Asian countries observe daylight savings time, but it sounds right......daylight savings time is applied in the summer and was originally an energy-saving measure for people to use less light and electricity during the summer months....but it's not really saving us anymore, so we should discontinue it! I say as I'm sitting here on midnight of 3/8/2020, 2 hours from daylight savings time kicking in and clocks automatically rolling forward an hour.
I read a great book recently about what the world is doing right in today's era called "It's Better Than It Looks," by Greg Easterbrook, and he argued that the spread of democracy around the world has been very beneficial for the world as a whole, as opposed to dictatorships (through communism and fascism). I agree with most of his points, but that doesn't change the fact that democracy has its drawbacks, like not having easy fixes to minor problems! 2 minor issues (not existential or mass hysteria-causing like the coronavirus recently) are daylight savings time and the Electoral College. A dictator would easily be able to stop those practices immediately, starting at whatever time he wishes to, and they'd be gone. But in a democracy, Congress would need to pass a bill, Senate would have to approve it, the President has to approve it, or it might just be an issue decided by the states, etc., etc. Lot of bureaucratic red tape for something that shouldn't need that much.
1.) Daylight savings time actually kills people. It does, because in the vast population that America possesses someone will be woken up by an alarm clock that is set to be intended for a certain time but forgets that daylight savings time cuts everyone's sleep by an hour, causing a heart attack. This happens every year! And also the sleep deprivation causing health deterioration also plays a factor (I guess the reverse is true that people might gain an hour of sleep and get a better sleep in October when it switches back to standard time), but daylight savings does actually kill people, in exchange for the very low benefit of getting more daylight time in the summer, for Seattle and Vancouver to still be light outside at 9:30PM on the longest summer days, for Donald Trump and other rich golfers to enjoy golfing for a little longer in the summer. Not worth it! Arizona and Hawaii have the right idea by not implementing it.
2.) Electoral college v. popular vote: The correct answer is a popular vote, every person's vote is counted. It's pretty absurd that every presidential election year, states like California, New York, and Texas don't have any of the presidential candidates come to campaign because their states are already decided based on historical voting: it's the swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania that get all the attention. "It's Better Than It Looks" notes that the elected President is not the President of the entire US, more like the President of Ohio and Pennsylvania. And in 2 of the last 5 elections, the popular vote winner lost the election. 40% of the time! It would have been 60% of the time if John Kerry had just gotten a few more votes in Ohio in 2004! One of the most ironic things about the US version of democracy, that the candidate whom less people in the country voted for wins. Seems backwards, but we can't change the electoral college unless like enough states' senators allow for it, but guess since the small states benefit from the electoral college because they have more power from it than the big states (in a popular vote states like California and New York would have huge populations that make all the difference), the small states won't pass any legislation to do so. An ironic position America has placed itself in.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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