A glorious thing is happening in the eastern sky as I type this: the sun is rising. I know that doesn’t seem like anything special. After all, the sun rises in the East every single day and were it to do something different humanity would probably drop it’s collective brain right on the ground.
No, this is amazing because it’s the first time we’ve seen the sun here at approximately 40°N before 7am in nearly a month. Ever since Congress, in its infinite wisdom, decided to extend daylight saving time, those of us to get up early have had to scurry around in the dark until we can find a lamp to turn on so we can find our shoes and our clothes and see what we’re having for breakfast.
Of course, the downside to falling back to standard time is that it was dark, I mean midnight pitch black, by 7pm yesterday. For me, that means it’s time to break out the blinky bike light to make me more visible as I walk to and from the subway (because yes, it’s important that winter coats only come in dark colors ’cause everyone lives where there’s enough snow that a dark colored coat makes you more easily visible to search and rescue teams).
Personally, I wonder what it would take to get national leadership to just abandon the whole idea of daylight saving time. It’s not as if we’re a nation of yeoman farmers any more who need that extra light in the evenings to tend to our crops. Though, the way things have been going economically, that extra light to work in the garden might just be helpful.
And yes, this is short. I picked up an icky little cold at my cousin’s wedding (yeah for socializing with big groups of people you don’t know!) and do not claim to be vaguely coherent at this point.
On other notes: Google is celebrating the 115th anniversary of the discovery of x-rays. Kinda cute as Google doodles go.
If you want to take a look at the Internet Archives Wayback Machine you can even find the day when Google celebrated curling during last year’s Winter Olympics.
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