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Much ado about nothing
Aug. 12th, 2005 08:46 pmWell, to hear the media blather about it, changing the starting and stopping dates of daylight saving time will cause the whole world to grind to a halt. Funny, just like Y2K did[n't].
I will be the first to say that I think daylight saving time is a ridiculous idea and that I don't believe it saves any significant amount of energy at all. The current political move to add four more weeks of it to the year is just that, a political move. A pretend gesture that costs nothing and can be hyped to look impressive and caring about the environment. C'mon, the biggies in this administration make money when energy is wasted. The more that is wasted, the more money they make. They are not in the least interested in conservation.
However, articles in the newspapers and commentaries on the radio and the boob tube are all aghast about how life will be disrupted by this silly change. Why, people's video recorders might miss a program or two! Horrors. The cell phone rip-off industry might accidentally give someone an extra hour of weekend rates (or not.) Computers won't know what time it is. (Like they ever did. The average PC clock is about as accurate as my grandmother's weight driven cuckoo clock. Perhaps less. I wind that cuckoo clock twice a day and I don't think it varies as much in a week as the hardware clock on my desktop machine does.)
The media gurus are utter idiots. Of course they've proven that time and time again. But how is it going to be the end of the world if we have to manually adjust a computer clock? Good grief, we used to have to do that anyway. Did it for decades before Microsloth became a busybody and tried to do it for us (wrongly about half the time.) Are we all so helpless now that we can't remember to set our VCR an hour ahead the evening before? Well, if we are, we deserve to miss tomorrow's Oprah or whatever. No big loss.
I don't let Windows mess with my clock anyway. I run multiple operating systems, and if each one tries to set the clock ahead for daylight savings I end up three hours fast. Or three hours slow in the autumn. So I don't let any of them do it.
If you're worried that your computer will quit working (it won't) then just tell it to ignore daylight savings altogether. And stop panting into the microphone about the computer disasters that will ensue if the daylight savings schedule comes to an end.
Actually, daylight savings always reminds me of a Phil Frank cartoon that was published back during the first energy crisis, the one most of you are too young to remember probably. Richard Nixon was president. He was trying to promote daylight savings time (there was no federal policy on it at the time, and each state decided individually.) Frank drew Nixon with a blanket and a pair of scissors. He was saying "Ladies and gentlemen, I will now demonstrate how to save energy by cutting a foot off the top of your blanket and sewing it onto the bottom." And that's daylight savings time, folks.
I notice too that just like back then, the price of oil products is skyrocketing. The oil companies say they are just passing along their increased costs, yet somehow their profits are also increasing by leaps and bounds. Can you say "gouging"? I knew you could. Or at least "opportunistic marketing."
I will be the first to say that I think daylight saving time is a ridiculous idea and that I don't believe it saves any significant amount of energy at all. The current political move to add four more weeks of it to the year is just that, a political move. A pretend gesture that costs nothing and can be hyped to look impressive and caring about the environment. C'mon, the biggies in this administration make money when energy is wasted. The more that is wasted, the more money they make. They are not in the least interested in conservation.
However, articles in the newspapers and commentaries on the radio and the boob tube are all aghast about how life will be disrupted by this silly change. Why, people's video recorders might miss a program or two! Horrors. The cell phone rip-off industry might accidentally give someone an extra hour of weekend rates (or not.) Computers won't know what time it is. (Like they ever did. The average PC clock is about as accurate as my grandmother's weight driven cuckoo clock. Perhaps less. I wind that cuckoo clock twice a day and I don't think it varies as much in a week as the hardware clock on my desktop machine does.)
The media gurus are utter idiots. Of course they've proven that time and time again. But how is it going to be the end of the world if we have to manually adjust a computer clock? Good grief, we used to have to do that anyway. Did it for decades before Microsloth became a busybody and tried to do it for us (wrongly about half the time.) Are we all so helpless now that we can't remember to set our VCR an hour ahead the evening before? Well, if we are, we deserve to miss tomorrow's Oprah or whatever. No big loss.
I don't let Windows mess with my clock anyway. I run multiple operating systems, and if each one tries to set the clock ahead for daylight savings I end up three hours fast. Or three hours slow in the autumn. So I don't let any of them do it.
If you're worried that your computer will quit working (it won't) then just tell it to ignore daylight savings altogether. And stop panting into the microphone about the computer disasters that will ensue if the daylight savings schedule comes to an end.
Actually, daylight savings always reminds me of a Phil Frank cartoon that was published back during the first energy crisis, the one most of you are too young to remember probably. Richard Nixon was president. He was trying to promote daylight savings time (there was no federal policy on it at the time, and each state decided individually.) Frank drew Nixon with a blanket and a pair of scissors. He was saying "Ladies and gentlemen, I will now demonstrate how to save energy by cutting a foot off the top of your blanket and sewing it onto the bottom." And that's daylight savings time, folks.
I notice too that just like back then, the price of oil products is skyrocketing. The oil companies say they are just passing along their increased costs, yet somehow their profits are also increasing by leaps and bounds. Can you say "gouging"? I knew you could. Or at least "opportunistic marketing."
