A letter to the editor about Daylight Saving Time is today’s most-viewed article in the Panama City (FL) News Herald today, and it deserves more attention than it got over at whatwelookat.com. Letters to the editor routinely begin with their first sentence, but Gene Cabot’s letter begins with its first and longest sentence.

It’s daylight saving time again — called “summer time” in some of the many countries around the world that yearly move their clock hands and pretend that it’s earlier than it really is according to the sun.

Except that we don’t pretend it’s earlier than it really is according to the sun when we move our clocks forward for daylight saving time. We pretend it’s later than it really is. So much for Gene’s viewpoint that we should move daylight saving time to winter. If we had it backwards like he seems to think, it might make sense to move it to winter, but we don’t have it backwards.

Gene goes on to write,

The rationale now for daylight saving time is to save fuel, as people wouldn’t use as much electricity in the mornings because the sun was up.

Except that it’s in the evening, not the morning, that daylight saving time can cut down the amount of electricity used for lighting. With or without daylight saving time, in most parts of the U.S., the sun is up when people start their day, so there’s no effect on morning energy use.

Gene wraps up his confusing argument against a misconception by noting,

… in Miami with a Dec. 21 sunrise of 6:41 a.m. and sunset of 5:15 p.m. — they still had more than 11½ hours of sunlight, plus the twilight hours.

Except that in Miami (or anywhere else on Earth), 5:15 p.m. is only 10 hours and 34 minutes after 6:41 a.m. Unless I missed the news about Miami slipping into the Bermuda Triangle.