It’s not just a musical question .
You will, of course, remember to “spring ahead” Sunday morning at 2AM [it instantly becomes 3AM] in the process to see how many small children going to school can be run over by sleepy motorists in the dark who realized they are an hour late.
The invention of the clock was obviously the first step towards fascism.
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The invention of the clock was obviously the first step towards fascism.
you won’t get any disagreement from me.
.-= last blog ..Run, ntodd, run! =-.
The invention of the clock was obviously the first step towards fascism.
I third this motion.
Over the years, there’s only about one person I’ve met that thinks this is a good idea, so can anyone explain to me why we’re still forced to live under this anachronism?
Daylight Savings Time was enacted during war time under the belief that it would save energy. The data since the original enactment says that it doesn’t, but the belief has a tendency to trump reality, and once something gets classified under the heading of “everyone knows” there is no appeal.
…off-topic, but that’s the way it is…
As a teenager, I earned part of my college fund money as a DJ in an exceedingly small market (5 am to 12 pm) radio station in the north Idaho mountains. At night, when it was late enough that one could assume that the station manager had gone to bed, I and the other teenage DJ that traded off on end of the day shifts would put our own albums on the turntables, in violation of all the programming directives from the mother ship, and played music that wasn’t in the prescribed playlist. Some of my earliest trips across to the other side of the corporate obedience line were from this album and this song was a meaningful cut for the start or end of an evening shift…
Ah, the memories…
.-= last blog ..On Asking Stupid Questions =-.
Ah, but the invention of an accurate clock is what allowed Columbus to “discover” America!
The deal being, that celestial navigation via the North Star can tell you your latitude, but it cannot tell you your longitude. So how, then, do you tell where you are if GPS is still 500 years in the future and you’re adrift on a featureless ocean?
Well: You know the longitude of your home port. When the sundial strikes 12, set your clock to 12:00. Then start heading off to the west. Compare your portable ship-board sundial to what your clock says, and you know how many degrees of longitude you’ve traveled. Voila!
So clocks perhaps are the first step towards fascism… but only in that they’re the first step towards a world that can be accurately mapped and navigated, and fascism needs to know where it’s going or it’s just stuck wherever it is :). And that’s the way it was…
– Badtux the Navigational Penguin
(As an aside: GPS works for the same reason — clocks. But that’s a different story).
.-= last blog ..In the dark =-.
I did the 5-7am morning show in college, and a short stint on early morning later when I decided that the hours didn’t agree with me, Play List, I didn’t need no stinking play list, I had a stack of new 45s to surprise people, including myself, in the first hour. It was the British Invasion, and there was a lot of mod pop, but there were some harder things in the mix. As you say, Jack, memories.
Longitude is all well and good if you’re worrying about going to some specific place, but where’s the fun in that, Badtux. Sail East or West until you run aground and ask where you are. Maps are so limiting. 😉
The Polynesians and Inuit don’t need maps.
I don’t mind the daylight savings time. I just wish we would stay there year round. It’s the switching back and forth that is so annoying.
I have a difficult time getting up in the morning on a good day. I finally get used to daylight waking me up and I’m plunged back into darkness. I have to trick myself into thinking it’s later by turning on the bathroom light and waking up slowly as if it were sunrise. Weird, I know, but it works.
.-= last blog ..Inspiration At The Garden Show =-.
I don’t think any of us want to do away with clocks/time, we’d just like for them not to hold our circadian rhythms hostage by lurching back and forth every spring and fall. 🙂 I agree with Lady Min – pick whatever time you’re going to use and stick with it. Please.
You’re right, Bryan, it takes bureaucracy to decide that getting up two hours before daylight which is arguably the coldest time of the night, turning on the heat so you can shower and get ready for work/school, is going to save energy.
Bryan! I thought you were male! Men don’t ask where they are, they just *know*. Or pretend they do, anyhow ;).
.-= last blog ..Angels =-.
The feral cats couldn’t care less what Congress says, I’m the one that has to adjust the time I go to the feeding stations. It is annoying and it takes a while for my body to adjust, as well as my alarm clock which is set to change automatically on the basis of the original rules, not the new dates that Congress decided to use to confuse the issue and annoy people.
Oh, Badtux, I always know where I am. I am “here”. but it’s only polite to find out what the local people call it. 😉 That’s why were have so many rivers named “river”, but in the local Native American language, and the same for mountains and such.