Horarios en el pais de las maravillas

From The Economist:

"The new time has provoked grumbles in western Argentina, where it remains dark at 7am and clocks now run three hours ahead of Boston, on a similar longitude. “Everyone's complaining about it,” says Mauricio Llaver, a journalist in Mendoza. “You never fall asleep before 1am, and then you wake up exhausted in the morning, and it's still dark outside. One of the pleasures of summer used to be waking up to the songbirds. Not any more.” There is similar grumbling about newly-dark mornings in Patagonia in the south, Ms Fernández's adopted home region. The early signs are that the switch may not save energy.

Ms Fernández is not alone in fiddling with time. Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's populist president with whom she is friendly, decreed last month that his country's clocks should go back by half an hour permanently. The change, aimed at ensuring children go to school in daylight, “affects even the biological functioning of the body,” said Mr Chávez. Maybe, but the result is that Caracas is now two and a half hours behind Mendoza, which is further west. It's enough to make the condors drop out of the sky in confusion."

Here is the complete text.