Slashdot Mirror

Daylight Saving

I always post this when the topic comes up. I'm a fan of Franklin and really enjoy reading this.

"Surprisingly enough, daylight-saving time was thought up by Benjamin Franklin, not drunken voters. According to http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/, it seems that one day Benjy got bored and wrote a little something called An Economical Project. It was an essay mostly about "himself, his love of thrift, his scientific papers and his passion for playing chess until the wee hours of the morning then sleeping until midday," and it was meant to be a joke.

However, an Englishman named William Willett (how can you take someone with that name seriously? Come on!) was apparently too dense to realize that Franklin was joking. Therefore, he thought it would be a novel idea to set clocks back for 20 minutes on each Sunday in April, and then turn them back on the Sundays in September. Eventually, daylight-saving time came to be as we now know it."

Taken from here

The study in question was specifically measuring the effects of DST compared to the same months without DST: they extended DST into March and April for '73, '74, and found that, compared to '75, DST saved energy, about 1%, due to decreased light and appliance usage.

Link

Seems like a significant saving since it happens for free.
As for people complaining about the switch, and how it affects their internal clock, I sympathize, but I think the solution is to switch to DST all year.

According to this page, a store with a closing time of say 2am actually is closed at 1:59am. So, technically, the jerk was right (and may have been explicitly instructed by his boss to do that). Also, according to the page, many bars do stay open the additional hour, milking the time change for additional business. That's up to the establishment, though I would imagine that an officer that's had a bad day could ticket them for violating whatever public code forces them to close at 2am.

Chances are that if you had had the time/inclination, you could have found someone willing to sell you alcohol after the time change, but it probably wouldn't have been worth it to drive all over looking.

A site explaining the rationale behind DST and then some is available at: http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/b.html

-sp-

Yes, this site at webexhibits.org tells us the correct spelling and all that. Also the letter by Benjamin Franklin on the issue of daylight saving is an interesting read. In short, why the hell do we all stay up late at night, wake at noon, and complain that we don't have enough daylight? Just go to bed early and wake up early!

Yes, this site at webexhibits.org tells us the correct spelling and all that. Also the letter by Benjamin Franklin on the issue of daylight saving is an interesting read. In short, why the hell do we all stay up late at night, wake at noon, and complain that we don't have enough daylight? Just go to bed early and wake up early!

Yeah, well, I don't really think he expected anyone to take him seriously, just laugh at the French. This is what he actually said.

Saving is used here as a verbal adjective (a participle). It modifies time and tells us more about its nature; namely, that it is characterized by the activity of saving daylight. It is a saving daylight kind of time. Similar examples would be dog walking time or book reading time. Since saving is a verb describing a single type of activity, the form is singular.

Source: http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/b.html

Actually, in Indiana it depends on what county you are in.

Clark, Dearborn, Floyd, Harrison, and Ohio counties observe Eastern Standard Time with DST (5 hours after UTC, 4 hours in the summer.)

Gibson, Jasper, Lake, LaPorte, Newton, Porter, Posey, Spencer, Vanderburgh and Warrick counties use Central Standard Time with DST (6 hours after GMT, 5 in the summer.)

The remaining 76 county all observe Eastern Standard Time year-round, with no DST (5 hours after UTC year-round.)

More here: http://www.mccsc.edu/time.html

Also, those parts of Arizona which are part of the Navajo land do observe DST.

more here: http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/

An Economical Project

Definitely not a new idea.

The main purpose of Daylight Saving Time (called "Summer Time" many places in the world) is to make better use of daylight. We change our clocks during the summer months to move an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening. Countries have different change dates. see http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/c.html for more info on DST.

This is a U.S. law only. The U.S. Federal government has to make laws on DST covering the entire country or else states and local governments make their own laws. Three states currently get away with staying on standard time. We had a patchwork of DST laws across the country until President Johnson signed the Uniform Time Act of 1966. The public rallied behind it when it learned that you would drive through seven time changes in the 35 miles of road between Steubenville, Ohio and Moundsville, WV.

For example, changing Daylight Saving Time could prevent terrorist attacks:

In September 1999, the Palestinian West Bank was on daylight saving time while Israel had just switched back to standard time. West Bank Palestinians prepared time bombs and smuggled them to Arab Israelis, who misunderstood the time on the bombs. As the bombs were being planted, they exploded--one hour too early--killing three terrorists instead of two busloads of people, the intended victims. (from webexhibits.org)

While European nations have been taking advantage of the time change for decades, in 1996 the European Union (EU) standardized an EU-wide "summertime period." The EU version of Daylight Saving Time runs from the last Sunday in March through the last Sunday in October. During the summer, Russia's clocks are two hours ahead of standard time. For example, Moscow standard time (UTC+3) is about a half-hour ahead of local mean time (UTC+2:30); this is about the same situation as Detroit, whose standard time (UTC-5) is also about a half-hour ahead of local mean time (UTC-5:32). During the winter, all 11 of the Russian time zones remain an hour ahead of standard time. With their high latitude, the two hours of Daylight Saving Time really helps to save daylight. In the Southern Hemisphere where summer comes in December, Daylight Saving Time is observed from October to March. (The clock at above right is viewed from within the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.)

"The official spelling is Daylight Saving Time, not Daylight SavingS Time."

Btw, there's lots of other cool info about DST on that page, e.g.: In the U.S., the changeover time was chosen to be 2 am, when most people are at home and, originally, the time when the fewest trains were running. This is practical and minimizes disruption. It is late enough to minimally affect bars and restaurants, and prevent the day from switching to yesterday (which would be confusing). It is early enough that the entire continental U.S. has switched by daybreak, and the changeover occurs before most early shift workers and early churchgoers (particularly on Easter).

Also, Hawaii doesn't observe DST. I guess they get enough sunlight as it is. Either that or something to do with being so much closer to the equator.

Even the linked article got it right, why must people insist on calling it Daylight Savings Time?

Daylight Saving Time info.

I decided to test two of my favourite search engines - Teoma and Vivisimo. And guess what - they both outperform Google, returning 4 out of 4 relevant results with the answer. Clearly, at least for this one topic, they are both better than Google (and the rest of the pack).

Teoma

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010518.html Contains Answer
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Flamingos/home.h tml Contains Answer
http://www.thewildones.org/Animals/flamingo.html Contains Answer
http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/7.html Contains Answer

Vivisimo

http://www.thewildones.org/Animals/flamingo.html Contains Answer
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010518.html Contains Answer
http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/7.html Contains Answer
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Flamingos/home.h tml Contains Answer

I decided to test two of my favourite search engines - Teoma and Vivisimo. And guess what - they both outperform Google, returning 4 out of 4 relevant results with the answer. Clearly, at least for this one topic, they are both better than Google (and the rest of the pack).

Teoma

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010518.html Contains Answer
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Flamingos/home.h tml Contains Answer
http://www.thewildones.org/Animals/flamingo.html Contains Answer
http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/7.html Contains Answer

Vivisimo

http://www.thewildones.org/Animals/flamingo.html Contains Answer
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010518.html Contains Answer
http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/7.html Contains Answer
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Flamingos/home.h tml Contains Answer

In my capacity as a web developer, here are the software packages that I feel you should have a firm understanding of:

1. XHTML - not just 'HTML', XHTML has a few changes that you should get used to (such as closing all tags, even <img src="..."/> and <br/> tags, and all tags being lowercase). For the upcoming specifications, such as XHTML 2.0, which will be very different (you can apply an href="..." property to ANY object, instead of having to wrap it in an <a href=..."> tag), it never hurts to be prepared.
2. CSS3 - May as well read up now, it's going to be relevant in not too long.
3. Photoshop - Use The GIMP if you must, but I find Photoshop generally does what I need it to with less hassle.
4. PHP, ASP, Coldfusion, and J2EE - You don't have to learn how to program in each one, but learn about these solutions, if for no other reason than to make compelling arguments against them if the bosses ever ask you about them (or worse, fail to ask you about them)
5. Apache and IIS - for the same reasons as listed above; also, a lot of things in Apache (mod_rewrite, for example) can help you solve problems down the road. Good things to know.
6. A good editor. I use ViM myself, but what you use is up to you. What you'll want is syntax highlighting, auto-indenting, and a powerful (preferably regex) search/replace. Learn to use your editor and you will save hours of work with seconds of typing.

And now for some soft skills. First, you'll need to learn to give effective presentations. You could use Powerpoint for this, or Keynote or Impress or just print them on transparencies and put them on an overhead projector. How you do it is up to you. Will you ever need to give presentations? Not really, but effective presentations require a lot of soft skills - eye contact, graphic design, pacing, speech tones, body language - that to be skilled in presentations in general means to be skilled in a lot of other areas.

You should also familiarize yourself with colour. Learn about Pantone, just so that you know about it. Learn how colours play off each other, which colors look good on which backgrounds. Learn about bordering, whitespace, balance, and form. Consider the Pantone Guide to Communicating with Color - out of 61 reader reviews, it got 4.5/5 stars, and is a good place to start.

Learn about logos. How companies make logos, and why. What goes into making a logo, subconscious suggestions from logos (there's a reason Playboy picked a bunny for their logo, and it's not obvious). This will help in your graphic design and page layout.

Learn about accessibility and colour-blindness.

I'm probably missing a ton of important stuff, but if you do it right and are willing to learn (and posting on slashdot seems to imply that), you'll probably learn what you need to know as you go. If not, just come back and post another Ask Slashdot.

In my capacity as a web developer, here are the software packages that I feel you should have a firm understanding of:

1. XHTML - not just 'HTML', XHTML has a few changes that you should get used to (such as closing all tags, even <img src="..."/> and <br/> tags, and all tags being lowercase). For the upcoming specifications, such as XHTML 2.0, which will be very different (you can apply an href="..." property to ANY object, instead of having to wrap it in an <a href=..."> tag), it never hurts to be prepared.
2. CSS3 - May as well read up now, it's going to be relevant in not too long.
3. Photoshop - Use The GIMP if you must, but I find Photoshop generally does what I need it to with less hassle.
4. PHP, ASP, Coldfusion, and J2EE - You don't have to learn how to program in each one, but learn about these solutions, if for no other reason than to make compelling arguments against them if the bosses ever ask you about them (or worse, fail to ask you about them)
5. Apache and IIS - for the same reasons as listed above; also, a lot of things in Apache (mod_rewrite, for example) can help you solve problems down the road. Good things to know.
6. A good editor. I use ViM myself, but what you use is up to you. What you'll want is syntax highlighting, auto-indenting, and a powerful (preferably regex) search/replace. Learn to use your editor and you will save hours of work with seconds of typing.

And now for some soft skills. First, you'll need to learn to give effective presentations. You could use Powerpoint for this, or Keynote or Impress or just print them on transparencies and put them on an overhead projector. How you do it is up to you. Will you ever need to give presentations? Not really, but effective presentations require a lot of soft skills - eye contact, graphic design, pacing, speech tones, body language - that to be skilled in presentations in general means to be skilled in a lot of other areas.

You should also familiarize yourself with colour. Learn about Pantone, just so that you know about it. Learn how colours play off each other, which colors look good on which backgrounds. Learn about bordering, whitespace, balance, and form. Consider the Pantone Guide to Communicating with Color - out of 61 reader reviews, it got 4.5/5 stars, and is a good place to start.

Learn about logos. How companies make logos, and why. What goes into making a logo, subconscious suggestions from logos (there's a reason Playboy picked a bunny for their logo, and it's not obvious). This will help in your graphic design and page layout.

Learn about accessibility and colour-blindness.

I'm probably missing a ton of important stuff, but if you do it right and are willing to learn (and posting on slashdot seems to imply that), you'll probably learn what you need to know as you go. If not, just come back and post another Ask Slashdot.

It is funny though that we are being slowly transitioned and nobody notices.

I think we can survive without a complete transition on the consumer level -- which is where most of the resistance is. What's unforgivable is the degree to which English Measure (the original name; the system predates the Revolution!) is still used in science and technology. It's most conspicuous and painful when we lose a space probe. But think was this lack of standardization does day-to-day to U.S. competitiveness!

It's also important to note that the metric system took over not because it's "more rational" but because it was a system everybody could agree on. Before the metric system, you saw different units of measure for different countries and even different professions.

Which brings us back to our original discussion. The same people who invented the metric system tried to fix the calendar too. Never caught on outside of France. Nor have dozens of other "reform" measures ever attracted more than a few overenthusiastic proponents. It's just not worth the trouble.

Unlike this post I LIKE time zones. It is less confusing to have a standardized time with just an offset for your region than to learn when the sun comes up every day as you travel. If having coordination is important be like the military and talk "Zulu" or GMT time. Memorize your offset is all cases because it really does help with people in other cities/countries.

Now on Daylight Saving Time. It is a nice concept that was invented for economic reasons that daylight is used more efficiently. While I support it, it is a PAIN! I live in a daylight saving time zone, but am sometimes working in a NON-daylight saving time zone. End result is I am usually slightly early when I am at that site(it is west of me) and then have a habit of showing up before the doors are unlocked! I'm glad I am not at that site very often!

On the other hand, I can enjoy the evening during the summer. Go out sailing in the evening winds and still have time to get back before dark.

Daylight savings is a good thing for most people. It is a difficult thing for IT professionals who are never seeing the light of day in the first place.

Then again never seeing daylight is a bad thing too.

Phil

• What Is the First Day of the Week?

  The Bible clearly makes the Sabbath the last day of the week, but does not share how that corresponds to our 7 day week. Yet through extra-biblical sources it is possible to determine that the Sabbath at the time of Christ corresponds to our current 'Saturday.' Therefore it is common Jewish and Christian practice to regard Sunday as the first day of the week (as is also evident from the Portuguese names for the week days). However, the fact that, for example, Russian uses the name "second" for Tuesday, indicates that some nations regard Monday as the first day.

  In international standard ISO-8601 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has decreed that Monday shall be the first day of the week.

So, actually, it depends rather on you (your beliefs) and how the people from your country choose to go ... BTW, here's a helpfull link to discover who choose what :)

had to contend with T Rex

Not so. The Tyrannosaurus Rex was, according to consensus of scientific opinion, a opportunistic scavenger rather than an out and out predator, despite what films such as Jurassic Park portray. Heavy plate armour is so successful a defense mechanism, you might wonder why many more species don't utilise it.

This just goes to show that Nature, with a decent head start, can produce some pretty spectacular materials, an example that springs to mind is Morpho menelaus a butterfly with striking laser-blue irridescent wings, which uses an optical trick to make them shine so brightly. I was always fascinated by a little tray my father had when I was a kid, which was just the top side of the wings of these butterflies pressed under glass. I had a hard time believing it was from an organic being. Anyway, you can't get things like that anymore (I've looked) which is probably due to them having to be a protected species. Shame on all of us really, for hunting these creatures to near extinction, like the dinosaurs.

Unfortunately for them, their own plans are about to lead them to cultural ruin. Bush's plan to provide High Speed internet to the nation should be read as what to him would seem akin to the Rural Electrification Project. Where the idea was, lets get power to the people out in the farms so they will be more competive and produce more. That sort of backfired. They got used to the power and started wanting more. More TVs, DVD, Fancy cars and the lowly Banana.

The upshot was that the young started to abandon the farms in droves. As they did the cheap labor of the farm children was replaced by cheap labor from immigrants. The old cycle was that the Farm would be inherited by the children of the farmer and next generation would take over. As the found new jobs as computer programmers and got MBAs they let their parents sell of the old family farm to large agro businesses. Large Farms got larger and Cities got bigger.

Wiring the rest of the county will give reason for companies to relocate to cheaper parts of the US and bring good jobs to town who's main income was the local speed trap. If your a Conservative Rural Republican in a Red State, visions of selling farmland to city slickers for housing and commercial parks must seem like heaven. Voting for Bush was voting your pocketbook.

Now here comes the other side of the coin. Unlike mining towns of the 19th and early 20th Century you really can't lock people in. Your neigbors will undercut your housing deals because they all got buckets of land and nobody to grow whatever.

City Slicker Programmers and the upper skilled workforce are not Conservative Rural Republicans, There those damn Blue State Liberals. They eat fish RAW!!!!, A lot of them aren't even from the USA, most dress like they were extras in that confusing movie The Matrix. As Techs and Tech businesses move to the boondocks they will turn the red states blue.

Right now the current FUD is that Liberals don't respect people with Faith. The fact is that the rural people can't afford to break the back of the liberal technology complex. Ever wondered why Strict harsh and very communist China hasn't stompped all over Hong Kong? China needs Hong Kong more then Hong Kong needs China.

I'm colour-blind. Not massively so, just the most common red-green deficiency (deuteranopia, I think?) that affects around 5 in 100 males, maybe more (http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/2.html)

I'm not a pilot, but I've done a fair bit of sailing; my last trip was a ~1500 nautical mile blue-water passage from the Azores back home to the Isle of Man. That's 12 days at sea, and even with four crew you spend a couple of hours on nightwatch per day. You're bound to encounter various situations where coloured light recognition is *very* useful, nearing on essential. For instance: you see a very large tanker directly ahead; the very fact that she's already over the horizon means that she's going to have a hard time stopping within those 5km, and probably hasn't seen you. You may need to get out of her way, and fast. While you can try hailing someone on the VHF or SSB, even with DSC some ships don't pay attention, and a surprisingly large amount of don't have their radar on all the time (due to the limited life magnetrons, I guess?). So, can you tell if he's actually coming towards you, or going away? Can you tell the configuration of the lights? Is that red or green on their port side? (Yes, you should be able to see their white aft light, but bulbs die.)

Personally, I wouldn't be 100% sure. My general daytime vision is pretty good, and I can usually tell what colour an object is, but low-intensity lights at night? Not with confidence. (Even with bino's.) On a ship it's not too bad: you have time to play with, so you can take a bearing, wait a minute and take another one, then calculate if she's on a collision; you can check the radar if you have it (we do); or you can piss off one of your crewmates by waking them up ;) But you're going to have trouble with vessel identification from their lighting (is that a ship or a rig?), and you're going to have some trouble coming into ports; not something I'd want to have to deal with single-handed.

Personally, I wouldn't be confident enough to pilot a plane at night. I'd imagine that things happen much faster compared to sailing (we travel an average of 6 knots an hour, and most motor vessels do 30kts tops) and that extra dimension of movement must make a lot of difference! Sailing's got plenty of procedures, knowledge requirements & useful instrumentation; I'd imagine that piloting has many more, so I guess what I'm interested in is whether you feel these would cover absolutely any situation that happened? I know that if it came down to it, if I was stuck on a boat by myself I'd be able to manage in spite of being colour-blind; can you say the same of yourself as a pilot?

(This isn't meant in a confrontational manner, I'm genuinely interested.)

The problem is not the brightness contrast (which you can change by reducing the transparency level), but the colour contrast.
Choosing the right colours is more important than choosing the right brightness difference. Most PC user are not aware of this fact.

Equiluminant colors is only once think that comes to mind when I think what can go wrong ...

FWIW, Ben Franklin came up with the idea as a way for farmers to more or less work with the sun (and not be vastly different from city folk's schedules) in the 1700s

It goes a LOT deeper than that. I gave the totally wrong description (i.e. farmers) to my friend's kid and ended up having to look up the correct info. It had a lot more to do with train schedules than with farmers. Keep in mind when ole Ben was living in my 'hood, the size of the U.S. wasn't anywhere near what it was 50-100 years later when the trains really brought the issue to a head. There's a TON of history between BF and the oil crisis. See here.

nigritude
ultramarine
nigritude ultramarine

Links go to the top site for "ultramarine".

Help keep "Pigments Through the Ages" at the top of the ultramarine world.

nigritude
ultramarine
nigritude ultramarine

Links go to the top site for "ultramarine".

Help keep "Pigments Through the Ages" at the top of the ultramarine world.

nigritude
ultramarine
nigritude ultramarine

Links go to the top site for "ultramarine".

Help keep "Pigments Through the Ages" at the top of the ultramarine world.

"These four days I have lived mainly on 23 cups of coffee, with bread which I still have to pay for."

- Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (8 October 1888)

Link

http://webexhibits.org/bush/

Color blindness - example images and details
Tetrachromates

Surprisingly, buttermilk is actually somewhat lower in fat than 1% milk. It got its name from being the liquid that was left over after butter was churned out of it. (The stuff you can buy today is made quite differently, but has similar properties.)

Your restaurant is wrong, it was the year of sheep. Rat will be 2008.

Szo

Mars' atmosphere is not dense enough to cause the light-scattering and light-filtering which makes Earth's sky appear blue. However, the Martian atmosphere is loaded with suspended dust particles. (Remember, this is the planet which is sometimes almost entirely shrouded by colossal, seasonal dust storms.)

The dust particles in Mars' thin atmosphere are larger than what we usually find in our own atmosphere. The large dust particles scatter longer wavelengths of light--i.e., the red spectrum. Thus, the pinkish tan color of Mars' atmosphere.

Here's some excellent information about the color of the sky on Mars.

See? A little education and science goes a long way to calm and debunk conspiracy paranoia. ;)

during the last daylight savings time switch i actually went and read a bit about it. what i found particularly interesting were some details behind the creation of standard time:

"Standard time in time zones was instituted in the U.S. and Canada by the railroads on 18 November 1883. Before then, time of day was a local matter, and most cities and towns used some form of local solar time, maintained by some well-known clock (for example, on a church steeple or in a jeweler's window). The new standard time system was not immediately embraced by all, however.

[SNIPPED]

Detroit kept local time until 1900 when the City Council decreed that clocks should be put back twenty-eight minutes to Central Standard Time. Half the city obeyed, half refused. After considerable debate, the decision was rescinded and the city reverted to Sun time. A derisive offer to erect a sundial in front of the city hall was referred to the Committee on Sewers. Then, in 1905, Central time was adopted by city vote."

the notion of living according to local solar time is very appealing to me. i wonder how my natural rhythms might be different from what they are now and how i would feel if i lived more in harmony with the ebb and flow of light.

it's interesting to note that *when* plants and animals receive sunlight has a huge effect on their existence. not only that, the whole environment the plant or animal exists in changes with the arrival of sunlight (other critters wake up, temperatures rise, moisture levels change, etc.). the whole biology is mind-bogglingly complex.

it seems to me that standardizing time adds more complexity to an already complex system that already works fine without the notion of _time_. i also notice that the desire for knowing the answer to "what time is it?" is deeply rooted in a desire for control.

human attempts to control biological systems has seemingly contributed to a vast destabilizing of our environment everywhere on earth. moving back to true local solar time seems like something that might move us back in the direction of our natural rhythms and encourage us to relinquish the notion of needing to control.

on Christmas Eve i decided to have a potluck with my friends. i told them all to bring candles because i wanted to turn of the electricity while we ate. this was partially inspired by some of my friends that have instituted "no-electricity sundays" in their home. every sunday (for the whole day) of every week they turn the juice off at the breaker box.

after everyone arrived i lit all the candles, but i left some of the lights on. i was concerned that there would not be enough light. after the potluck ended i realized that being accustomed to having daytime quantities of light available at night led me to choose to leave electric lights on. realizing this led me to dine by candlelight (with even fewer candles) for my Christmas dinner. the dimness of the candle light made me much more aware that it was the evening. it also caused me to reflect on the sustainability of using electricity and contemplate how i might use less of it.

peace

david

Where that period of civility was noted is especially important to your question of whether an adjustment was made for daylight saving time, because at the time the U.S. had no federal DST. Congress had previously enacted DST in 1918, followed it in 1918 and 1919, then repealed it. Certain states and cities kept following it, though. The full story is at this site about DST history.

As far as I remember, this mythical tenth planet was called Niburu. It would be our link to the stars. I believe much of the talk about it can be credited to Zecharia Sitchin. According to this site Niburu will be back in 2012 or so, near the end of the Mayan calander.

If you're right and the authorities know about this and aren't inclined to tell us, that could be very bad indeed. Let's hope that they come clean with us. I must say, our leaders are smart to be laying the groundwork for a one-world government now, so when something bad happens they can implement their vision right away, and remake the world in their dark image. No doubt the lives of billions of "ignorant masses" is not too high on their list of priorities.

I think there will be more strife between the people and their government. Hopefully nationalism is dying a messy death. However, conflicts occurring between sane people and religious fanatics are likely to become more common as fundamentalism grips larger and larger amounts of people.

I'm not too worried about giant rocks flying into, or closeby us. If it happens, it happens. If shit hits the fan, I believe all the good people in the world will pull together, and then pull through. Was it an old Chinese curse?...

"May you live in interesting times."

Indeed.

Red is the colour of blood and, since the time of cavemen, has been the accepted colour for danger.

In your (and my) culture, maybe. But this is hardly a universal fact. Just using your explanation above, red could also be the accepted color for life and health.

In China, for example, "Red, a bright, auspicious color associated with warmth, life and the Fire Element, denotes good fortune and happiness." (See here)

Also: Symbolism of the color red in antiquity

Here - and yes, they meant EDT (GMT-0400).

In practice it was the duty of the priesthood to keep track of the calendars, but they failed miserably, partly due to ignorance, partly because they were bribed to make certain years long and other years short. Furthermore, leap years were considered unlucky and were therefore avoided in time of crisis, such as the Second Punic War.

A leap year is just because somebody screwed up with time (which I personally think that if we could accept the 1.25 year year, then we'd be a lot better for it)

A leap year is just because somebody screwed up with time (which I personally think that if we could accept the 1.25 year year, then we'd be a lot better for it)

Deuterium has different hydrogen bonding properties from H-1. This is a problem because a lot of biology (DNA, for instance) relies on hydrogen bonding to hold things together correctly. If you started drinking a lot of D2O, the differently shaped molecules wouldn't fit together correctly and you would begin breaking down at the cellular level. If I recall correctly the effects are a lot like radiation poisoning.

Another way that D2O differs from regular H2O.

• Twelve months of three ten-day weeks
• The months named things like `warming,' according to their position in the year
• Five or six national holidays at the end of the year, each dedicated to a particular celebration
• One day of rest each decimal week
• The days called Onedat, Twoday, Threeday and so on in maddeningly pedantic fashion
• Each day divided into ten hours of one hundred minutes of one hundred seconds
• Each day of the year dedicated to a particular plant, animal and agricultural tool

Frightfully insane--just as insane as the units they invented, but thankfully less popular.

There's plenty of good reasons for daylight savings time.

Water is not blue. It is clear and transparent.

Read this.