“Time can’t just disappear. It’s a universal invariant.”
-Dana Scully, X-Files pilot episode
Scully obviously forgot about Daylight Saving Time. As I took my walk this morning, I was struck by seeing all the municipal clocks around the neighborhood that hadn’t been adjusted, since the time change always takes place over a weekend. It still amazes me that we can all decide, with dubious benefit, that no, it’s not 2 a.m., it’s actually 1 a.m. And poof! So it becomes. Group hallucination. My grandmother was a travel agent in Arizona, and suffered through a double whammy – Arizona doesn’t go on DST, but the Navajo reservation does (!). So dealing with travel times was complicated to say the least. I always feel disoriented and crappy at every time change, and I really wish we would just pick a time and stick with it. This tinkering with reality has got to have some long-term consequences.
P.S. Watching the pilot episode of the X-Files is a great way to be both incredibly entertained and upset about the sad state of TV these days.
P.P.S. Anyone who’s read Einstein’s Dreams (a masterpiece) knows that time is not a universal invariant anyway.
You know, I always tried to convince people time was just something we’d made up, but I could never get anyone to buy it.
True about TV these days. Even the X-files is now only a shell of its former glory.
Einstien’s Dreams is a favorite book of mine. Sadly it was not returned after I let a friend borrow it. Of course, that’s usually a sign of how good the book was.
The book makes even more sense to me now in hindsight, since I’m in a nyquil haze.
how very odd, i was just thinking about time yesterday too, and how it is a made-up thing.
oh, wait, that’s because they changed the clocks here, too.
I completely missed it until it had already happened and then realised how appallingly early the kids had made me get up 🙁
I was thinking about Australia, with its two timezones – 3 (I think) hours apart. I know not that many people live in the middle, but some people do. Where do they draw the line? Could you be living next door to someone and be 3 hours apart from them? that could make organising parties a nightmare…puts being fashionably late into a whole new perspective
It’s like Orien Samuelson (The Big “O”) used to say – Daylight Savings is like cutting six inches off the top of your blanket and sewing it on the bottom to make it longer.
Time Zones are, of course, a vast conspiracy by the railroad industry to make schedule timing more convenient. No, really, there’s an historic marker in Chicago I can show you.
When my wife lived in Indiana — which also didn’t (doesn’t?) recognized DST, part of the year she was on “Chicago time” and part of the year on “New York time”.
pondering the existence of time was my favourite subject of procrastination throughout college. i finally concluded that st. augustine gave the best explanation for it when he deduced that time is the result of three activities of the mind; expectation, attention and memory. memory is what makes us aware of time and continuity. anyone seen memento?
Oh man, I can’t stand the “X-Files” pilot. That scene where Scully, who became in the show a solid character with great dignity and aplomb, asking Mulder to inspect her bra-and-scanty-panty-clad body for UFO sucker marks? Ugggggggggggh.
Arizona really need to observe DST during the summer between April and October. To assure that they’ll have a good taste of having daylight/twilight later in the evening if the government allow to use DST which means still on the MST. However, since Arizona do not observe DST which means they are on California time (PST) will get dark early and California will still have daylight a little while longer. If Arizona were smart enough, they can tell the local government to move the clock 1 hour foward and still be on MST, not on PST. The Indian Reservation do observe daylight savings is on MST and the rest of the state is on PST. You may want to check on http://www.sunrisesunset.com and most of USA have daylight after 8pm. Best if the people in the state of Arizona to persuade the government or vote.