Tuesday 10 July 2007

Daylight Savings Time

When "daylight savings time" lasts more than six months every year, it's not "daylight savings" anymore. It's the norm and the rest of the year is in "daylight spending time". The entire time zone has to be re-branded an hour ahead with a special note that, between these certain months, this part of the world turns their clocks back an hour. It starts sounding very strange indeed. Stranger still is when someone suggests a further daylight "savings" period covering the middle of the existing one so that those days are shifted by one hour further.

I think the logical next step up from Daylight Savings Time arrangements is Standard Sunset Time, where we all agree that the sun will set at, say, 7pm every single day. Our clocks will be automatically adjusted at midnight by computers so that, no matter the day of the year, sunset is always at 7pm. This will require regular and accurate predictions of sunset times for every day of the year so that clocks can be adjusted accordingly. Of course items like mechanical wristwatches will become antique curiosities, because any modern timepiece will require a GPS receiver and the ability to calculate the minute when sunset is expected for that location.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Above the Arctic Circle is where this starts getting super-strange.
PPS - And below the Antarctic Circle, of course.

2 comments:

Erin Marie said...

You are a strange, strange man.

P.S. Happy Birthday.

John said...

*shrug*

It's how I get by in the world. So far, so good.