I’ve been sleeping badly this winter. I’m dead tired in the evening, but I wake up unaccountably at 3 a.m. I’m not positive what the reason is, but I’m going to blame daylight saving time.

I had to do some research even to understand why we follow this barbaric practice. Some people think farmers are somehow to blame, but farmers actually hate DST, because farm animals, pretty sensibly, don’t observe it.

The real point is supposed to be that when the days are long we shift an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening. That way, there’s still plenty of daylight after work, so everyone uses less light, TVs, VCRs, etc., which together use 25 percent of our energy. In the winter, pitch-black mornings start to take their own toll, so we shift the clocks back again.

That’s the idea, but it doesn’t make sense. I may use less light if the sun’s up, but I’ll still be watching Scrubs. And now I’ll have my A/C on. I guess they figure I might go out and play football instead, but is that really happening? Two-thirds of this country is overweight.

Worse, the time change zonks people out. This country loses $56 billion a year to sleepiness, plus 24,000 deaths, 2.5 million disabling injuries and 52 million work days. Sleep deficits contributed to the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Challenger disaster, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. We’re actually sleeping 2 hours less each night because of Edison’s light bulb.

So what’s the answer? Just drop it. Arizona, Hawaii, and most of Indiana stay on standard time year round. And having lived in Indiana, I can tell you it’s wonderful.

In 1947, the magnificently crotchety Robertson Davies wrote: “I don’t really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.” Hear, hear.

My horoscope today on astro.com says “this is a good day for a short recreational trip to indulge your desire for beautiful surroundings,” “you should be able to negotiate in business to your advantage,” and “anything that you buy today should prove to be a worthwhile investment.”

Now, let’s think about that. The current world population is about 6.5 billion, and a twelfth of us are Pisces. Can 540 million people all negotiate favorable business deals on the same day?

Astrologers would say no, those general predictions are worthless, what really counts is a personal reading. Okay, then astrologers should be able to match a person’s birth data with a personalized questionnaire, right? Well, no: A 1994 experiment showed they might as well flip coins.

Even if you accept astrology’s tenets, its reasoning doesn’t make sense. For one thing, the stars are drifting. Due to the precession of Earth’s axis, the stars have moved by 24 degrees during the last 2,000 years. Following the old charts, astrologers are now placing planets in the wrong signs.

For another, that 2,000-year starting point is arbitrary. The heavens change all the time. Four thousand years ago Taurus was the constellation of the vernal equinox. Six thousand years ago it was Gemini.

Anyway, if you’re into this stuff, the rather creepy Horoscopes of Our Time lists precise birth dates and times of various famous people, so you can practice.