Daylight Saving EVIL

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Summary: Daylight saving time goes away this weekend. How weird is that? Also, letters I received from Huntsville Utilities that make no sense and bringing another semester of MLIS to a close. Also, Fire Emblem.

Saturday, 31 October 2009

(07:31:29 CDT)

Daylight Saving EVIL

Ok, not EVIL, but it is Halloween this weekend, so that was appropriate...esque. And, this Sunday, we activate Daylight Unsaving Time, or Nightlight Saving Time, or Untime Savelight Daying. Whatever you call the opposite of Daylight Saving Time. I could say "regular time", but anyone who would use such terminology has not been being paying attention to the past couple of times. Due to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, DST now occupies 30+ weeks of our 52 week year (in contrast, this upcoming bout of "real time" is only going to last about 20 weeks). Does that freak anyone else out? DST is like a giant, time-devouring, cousin-eating amoeba enacting some plan of world domination. U.S. domination. You know what I mean. The upshot of which being that if DST is ever dissolved, it will likely be so only in the sense of "made the de facto time". That's the opposite of being dissolved. That's like saying that taxes will be abolished and then taking the whole paycheck. Sure, in the absence of an opposite, definitions go awry, but come on.

The whole issue of time is fascinating. For something so ultimately arbitrary, it really does dictate our lives. There only real constraint of time (meaning also dates) is that it is best when they follow natural patterns: days, years, lunar months. This is unnecessary, and society lived years without such accuracy. We could pretty much take any time, any unit that we all can agree upon, and work with it. I sometimes wonder if we should rewrite time already. Two cycles of twelve hours? One starting near the round-a-bout middle of the day (assuming by "the day", you mean the equinoxes...sort of, I suppose the extended DST has now wrecked that), the other in the dead of night? Surely we can do better than that? Or, well, maybe not. We could do worse, most definitely. Different days of the week could have different numbers of hours. Seconds and minutes could be based on complex formulae. Leap years could be decided every January: "Oh no, let's not have that extra bit of February, this one..."

Or you could be Indiana, which has counties in Eastern Standard Time. Some of which do, though most do not, have Daylight Saving Time. Some counties, though, are in Central Standard Time, and do have DST. Welcome to TV Programming Hell, I suppose.

Before I leave this topic, I'll link to a couple-three Wikipedia articles on various times, Daylight Saving thereof, and so forth:

This weekend also brings November. I was thinking, this morning: November should be sort of the halfway point of the semester, but it feels later than that. In my classes, with the exception of a handful of short readings and, in one, a handful of short reviews, all that is left is a couple of projects (one in each class). I say "all that is left" when these projects are the heavy-weighted grades; but I like bigger projects. Those I can plan and dissect, analyze and enact. Short assignments are the worst for me, the ones that require maybe an hour but you rarely give it what it deserves because that hour can always be shoe-horned in later. Big projects, though, man. You start with brainstorming and random research, and then you stitch it together like a Pacific Islander building a leaf roof, and before you know it, you have an abode with windows and a family inside. There is a part, in every big project, where you crest the wave and, assuming you have kept your head, you feel how worth it was. In some ways, this is why I hate group projects. They often ruin this moment because half of any given group is likely to disbelieve there ever will be a point, and there is always that one who thinks you should have crested weeks ago and complains about everything until he, or she, bails out in the last minute because most of the bravado was actually a coverup for being a disbeliever, and they have done nothing to show for their many and varied complaints. It robs everyone of that moment of joy. That, sweet, sweet moment. If, by some random twist of fate, I am ever in a teaching or teaching-like position, I think I will try and make the assignments meatier. No 1-2 page papers. More like 8-10 page papers. Take that, fourth graders.

By the way, before I close, I wanted to mention a letter from Huntsville Utilities about rates on deposit and such. I guess my deposit is earning them interest and they were telling me? Is it earning me interest that one day, in the future, may add up to a couple of dollars? I could look this up, but I spent all morning researching DST and do not have time. Ironically, or something.

Ok, that's it. Enjoy your Halloween (I should have "quick things to read this halloween IV", the final one for the year, posted later today). I am off to work. Oh, and remember: Realm of Fire is a fun game, but it will make you want to break your DS into pretty little pieces.

Si Vales, Valeo

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Written by Doug Bolden

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