Sometimes I’m a Crank.

by · November 5, 2012

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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25 Responses

  1. Ramblin' Rod says:
    November 5, 2012 at 4:20 am

    Here’s my crank on the subject. Daylight Savings Time, i.e., the non-standard time now runs from March through October. That’s eight months out of the year. So if “Standard” time runs for half as long out the year as the super-special, daylight-savings, time, which time is really standard now and which one is “different”? Hmmm??Report

  2. Jaybird says:
    November 5, 2012 at 9:10 am

    Remember when we originally lengthened Daylight Savings Time? “It’s to save energy!”, the Republicans told us.

    Of course, it didn’t. People used *MORE* energy, thus lining the pockets of their oil baron friends.

    Let’s go back to the way things used to be. Six and Six. Come on. For the People.Report

  3. KatherineMW says:
    November 5, 2012 at 9:11 am

    Daylight savings time seems like a relic of an era where use of electrical lighting was not as ubiquitous as it is now (or was more costly for the average person). There’s no real point to it given that people don’t regulate their sleep cycles based on when the sun is up.

    Time zones, though, I can see the point of, because people in the rest of the world shouldn’t have it arbitrarily declared that noon is in the middle of the night just because of the time in Greenwich. Or do you mean multiple time zones within one country? Changing that would still be very weird (a “9-5 workday” would look very different on the east coast versus the west) but not as much as abolishing them worldwide.

    And it would mean Canada could stop fighting over reporting of election results. (Broadly, years ago we brought in a law saying you can’t report results from the east coast until the polls close on the west, because people in the Prairies and BC got tired of finding out the Liberals had won before we actually voted. Now the Internet has made that law kind of moot.)Report

    • Will Truman in reply to KatherineMW says:
      November 5, 2012 at 12:13 pm

      My view is that midnight and noon are decoupled with 12pm. Maybe add an official dusk and dawn in between the two for comparison sake. So midnight would be 12am in Greenwich, but 4am in this other place, and 6pm, and so on.

      Also, to me, part of the reason for this would be to move away from 9-5 (well, 8-5 in the US). It would provide the perfect opportunity for more companies to stagger their workday. Some might start at what we now call 8:00, some at 9, maybe even some at 10 or 7.

      The big thing for me, though, is that when someone on the east coast and west coast say “6:00” nobody is having to ask which (even if – internationally speaking – we have to figure out what the time’s proximation to noon-dusk-midnight-dawn so that we’re not calling them in the middle of the night.

      And it would mean Canada could stop fighting over reporting of election results.

      One of the many issues in Florida in 2000 was that they called Florida for Gore before the while the polls were still open in (Bush-heavy) western Florida. It’s a pretty legitimate concern, though with the Internet it’s hard to enforce (the media never called Ohio for Kerry, but they were implying that Ohio was looking bad for Bush in 2004 while other states were still voting).

      My belief is that vote-counting shouldn’t even start until the last ballot has been cast in Hawaii.Report

      • KatherineMW in reply to Will Truman says:
        November 5, 2012 at 12:55 pm

        My belief is that vote-counting shouldn’t even start until the last ballot has been cast in Hawaii.

        Aw, but nobody wants to wait until the next morning for election results! (Or longer, if you assume the actual ballot-counters on the east coast want to get some sleep and start counting ballots the next morning, in which case you might not have results until the evening after election day.)Report

      • Kolohe in reply to Will Truman says:
        November 5, 2012 at 4:58 pm

        Well, there’s also a North South divide too. There’s almost an hour difference in daylight between Detroit and Jacksonville (Fl) right now. (and a bit over an hour for San Diego v Seattle)Report

  4. Kazzy says:
    November 5, 2012 at 1:10 pm

    #humblebragReport

    • Trumwill Mobile in reply to Kazzy says:
      November 5, 2012 at 5:44 pm

      Cause I’m talking about how many watches I have? It’d seriously undermine my brag if I talked about what kind of watches they are. My digital-analogs are the prize of my collection and they were $30. It’s downhill from there.Report

      • Kazzy in reply to Trumwill Mobile says:
        November 5, 2012 at 5:46 pm

        Heh. There is something funny about complaining of the woes of owning six watches. But I was really just razzing you.

        I own one nice watch but never wear it, because I always end up getting a rash from the band. Seems to signal me I shouldn’t wear watches. Also, in my line of work, any watch I wore would get torn up, dirtied, or otherwise destroyed in short order.

        But as someone who owns lots of belts because I think they are a fun way to accessorize, I see no issue with owning multiple watches. Again, just a cheap razz… :-pReport

  5. Glyph says:
    November 5, 2012 at 1:27 pm

    Sometimes I’m a Crank.

    I see what you did there.

    Would you say that this issue gets you unnecessarily (wait for it) “wound up”?Report

  6. James Hanley says:
    November 5, 2012 at 1:56 pm

    One of the little discussed issues of changing times is that when we “jump forward” it leads to an increase in traffic accidents, with an attendant increase in mortality and injury.Report

  7. dhex says:
    November 5, 2012 at 4:28 pm

    the biggest question here is “why do you have six watches?”

    second biggest: do you wear them all at once? ’cause that’d be kinda bitchin’.Report

  8. Patrick Cahalan says:
    November 5, 2012 at 5:04 pm

    Just everybody switch to using GMT as a standard so that we can have time stamps mean the same thing the world over.Report

    • Trumwill Mobile in reply to Patrick Cahalan says:
      November 5, 2012 at 5:36 pm

      Yeah. That’s what I was getting at with my last bit. I’m not sold on the idea, but I think I may soon be.Report

      • Patrick Cahalan in reply to Trumwill Mobile says:
        November 5, 2012 at 5:54 pm

        People’s brains are pretty fungible on that score. “We get up at 3 pm GMT” means that wake-up time happens to coordinate with 3pm GMT. “Lunchtime” is an abstraction, it doesn’t need to equal “noonish”. I suspect it would make switching time zones a lot easier, too.Report

  9. Brandon Berg says:
    November 6, 2012 at 3:53 pm

    I’m not sure what it says about you thta I saw “six watches” on the front page and thought, “Tha’s gotta be Will.”Report

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