President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela turned back Venezuela's clocks by half an hour on Sunday. The adjustment to Venezuela's relationship with Greenwich Mean Time was a one-off thing, that Chávez says will put Venezuelans more biologically in tune with the sun.

"It's about the metabolic effect, where the human brain is conditioned by sunlight."

Many within Venezuela, however, question the move, and think of it more as a impulsive initiative of a leader hell-bent on changing just about everything. After all, this is the guy who renamed the country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela after Simón Bolívar, and who ordered the horse on the national flag to face left instead of right, in order to reflect his socialist orientation.

Some scientists, however, endorse the time change as a rational move, given that Venezuela's Caribbean coast is actually wide enough for two time zones. A few other countries worldwide, including India, Iran, and Afghanistan, have 30-minute variations from the standard hourly deviations from GMT. Nepal has an even rarer difference of 15 minutes.

The Venezuelan government has been studying the time change since it was first proposed in 1999. Venezuela had previously been four and a half hours behind GMT up until 1965, when the 30-minute variation was dropped for convenience.

The change was originally scheduled to occur in August, but was postponed three times due to technical difficulties.

Chávez said, "I don't care if they call me crazy, the new time will go ahead. I'm not to blame. I received a recommendation and said I liked the idea."