Monday, November 24, 2008

What causes me to finally make a post?

I haven't written anything for this blog in some time. Motorcycle weather is not so good in the mountains of Virginia, and so many things are going on.

So what motivation do I have?

Is it that the elections are finally over and the house phone no longer rings with phony polls and 'very important messages' from people we don't know who mysteriously don't listen to a word we say?

Is it the broken pipe in the ceiling that trashed our bathroom and we can't seem to find anyone to come fix the damage?

Is it the new job that is enjoyable in a strange kind of way?

No, it is none of those things. Is there a new (or old) motorcycle that has caught my eye? Nope.

I just read that Mr. Obama is rumored to fulfill my life-long dream of ending the communist-plot- to-overthrow-the-USA boon-doggle called daylight savings time! I am so happy! Just think of the huge cost of 305,734,109 (as of 11/24/08 at 7:14 EST) Americans setting 2.1 (avg digital clocks per person) freakin' electronic clocks twice a year. Add to this that there is no standard way to set these abominations. Add to that the cost of people being late or early because some of these things never do get set back or forward. And keep in mind that when this plot was hatched we didn't even have digital devices! We had watches and wind up clocks. Think of the broken finger nails pulling out those tiny winding stems and broken table clocks from messing with the innards of wind-up table and big old clocks. Filing off ALL your nails so they match is a real time waster now replaced by stick-on nails and the internet.

Lets do the math: 305 million people X 2.1 devices equals 640 million devices times 3 minutes per device equals 1,920,000,000 minutes equals 32,000,000 hours or 1,333,333 days or 3653 years. This happens twice a year, so we are talking about 7306 person/years each year.* That is a lot of productivity wasted. And that is only for the US, some other countries do it as well.

When William Willett came up with this modern version of the scheme it was not well received. Not until the first world war fogged sensibility did the idea see widespread adoption. Too bad William died in 1915 before it happened. Germany and its WWI allies adopted it first in 1916, then Russia in 1917 and finally the US got sucked in in 1918.

So my cheer is "Ninety Years is enough!" Let's get rid of this thing.

Other people don't like it either:

In the New York Times Adam Hochschild laments his personal pain in So Many Clocks, So Little Time.

How do YOU feel about this vital matter?

* I made up the 2.1 digital clocks per person. It is accurate for our two person household if you count a dog as .4 person and a cat as .1 person. They don't use clocks much as far as we can tell. The rest of the figures were made up by Al Gore, inventor of the internet. Ann did the math on a laptop whose RTC was probably under the influence of DST. Oh, and the three minutes per device? In your dreams ....

2 comments:

erica said...

This is a really awesome post. Really. It's good to have you back.

Mom A said...

I think you underestimated the time it takes to do the 2.1 clocks per person. By the time you walk to where the clocks are hanging out, and search your memory for the right way to set the clock, and verify if it is forward or back, I think you have a good seven and a quarter minutes in it. If there is anyone out there that can set their 2.1 in less than then I would like to meet them.