Rants

DST – Not just annoying, but Deadly???

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I haven’t always hated Daylight Saving Time (DST).  As a kid, Daylight Savings Time was kind of cool… Indiana didn’t participate in the nonsense, but since the network TV shows came from the east coast, when DST rolled around, those shows were on earlier.  Shows that were past my bedtime in the winter were on the schedule for the summer.  Cool!

Then I moved to Georgia after college.  Since I moved there in the Fall, my first taste of DST as a participant was “fall back”.  This was cool!  An extra hour of sleep!  But then in the following Spring I experienced DST’s dark side… “spring forward”.  What fresh Hell is this?  It was just starting to get light in the morning and now we are plunged back into darkness!?!  My Monday morning commute, which was never fun anyway, was now an hour earlier and populated by thousands of other grumpy commuters dealing with lost sleep.  For the next six years, I spent weeks in the Spring being grumpy and chastising Georgians on this affront to my constitution while expounding on the brilliance of Hoosiers for opting out of the silliness.  When I moved back to Indiana I took some glee in poking fun at my friends in the South as they went through the fruitless exercise of DST…  That was until 2006 when Governor Mitch Daniels pushed through legislation that forced Indiana to join the insanity.  Trust me… nothing cheered up my Georgia friends more during spring forward than laughing at me as I once again joined them in the insane practice.

But now this year, the University of Michigan has come out with a study saying that DST is not just an inconvenience that makes me feel like crap, but it could actually kill me!  Heart attack occurrences increase by 25% on the first work day after the Spring time change.  That will make my morning commute less stressful!  Geez!

I don’t expect this revelation to change anything.  DST supporters have a form on insanity I can’t understand, but I do know that they will not be influenced by logic, facts or rational arguments.  I’ll just take an aspirin tomorrow morning before heading to work.

Wonka Image Source:  daylightsavingstimechange.org

University of Michigan Image Source:  Summer Institutes

State of the Union

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Kevin D. Williams on State of the Union 1-28-14I’ve always thought the State of the Union address was a fairly worthless endeavor and actually, as an American, somewhat embarrassing to watch.  Kevin Williamson put it pretty well in an article he wrote last year for the National Review titled Great Caesar’s Ghost.  If you’re interested in reading it, I’ve linked it here.  The first paragraph is in the box to the right to whet your appetite.

The whole idea of a State of the Union address rises from Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution describing the powers of the President which says:  “He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.”

From what I have gleaned, George Washington did meet with the Congress in what was the first State of the Union “report”, but when Thomas Jefferson became President, he deemed the practice of addressing Congress too “kingly” and began the practice of sending written reports.  This proved satisfactory for 112 years until President Woodrow Wilson changed the tradition to a formal address to Congress.  This has morphed into the political spectacle we’ll be subjected to tonight.

Lest this be considered just Obama or democrat bashing, let me heap some of the blame on President Reagan for making things worse.  He is responsible for the odious new tradition of placing “guests” in the audience which serve as props for the political messages in the speech.   And as Mr. Williamson says in his article, “The next Republican president should remember why his party is called the Republican party and put a stop to this.”  Hear, Hear!

Consider the Sources:  Almost totally Internet; some from Mr. Williamson’s article and some from other searches.

Meeting Participation in Culver

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facepalmMonday night I went to the regularly scheduled meeting of the Culver Redevelopment Commission at 5:00 at the Culver Town Hall.  I arrived to find the door locked.  I looked at the notice on the bulletin board and it stated that the regularly scheduled meeting had been changed to 4:00 and that they had added a joint meeting with the Town Council which they had moved to the Culver Library at 5:00.

As I’ve said here before I tend to cut volunteer board members a lot of slack.  They give a lot of time and often only receive slings and arrows from the public in return.  I don’t think that’s an excuse for making public participation difficult.  My position as Culver’s representative on the Marshall County Economic Development Corporation Board means that my representation there is closely tied to the work the redevelopment commission does.  I attend almost every meeting of the redevelopment commission.  It is on my calendar to be there on the third Monday at 5:00.  It frustrates me to no end when I make a special effort to be at a meeting only to find that they moved the meeting, with private discussion between meetings.  I’m not special.  They don’t have to let me know.  But I think it’s disrespectful and says something about their relationship with MCEDC.   While they have fulfilled the letter of the law by posting it on the bulletin board at the Town Hall I also feel it does a disservice to the community.  There is also a page on that same bulletin board listing all of the regularly scheduled meetings.  If someone other than myself had gone down to see when the next meeting was, read that list and didn’t check later to see that the meeting had been rescheduled they would have been standing out there fuming like myself.

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TSA Rebuttal

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TSA RebuttalI ran across this ad a few months ago on the back of a magazine.  I thought it was pretty amusing, but after flying this past weekend it’s not as funny as it was.

I can’t think of a job that would be much less fun than TSA agent.  Regardless of this, it is amazing to see the difference in attitudes of the people working for the TSA and how their demeanor transfers to the traveling public.  Agent #1 is all business and that doesn’t bother me.  I’m there for a purpose, they’re there for a purpose… between the two of us we’ll just go through the necessary motions and go on with our lives.  Then there is the agent #2 –  friendly illicites friendly.  Smiles garner smiles.  When she mentions that she knows someone from Culver/Plymouth/South Bend, she creates a connection and relieves some of the stress from the situation.  That’s so much different from agent #3 that treated those of us in line as cattle.  When he tells us there are three lines and to separate into them, he audibly sighs in disgust and looks at us with disdain.  How can we be so stupid?  He’s told us this 30 times already today…  But he hasn’t.  He’s said it thirty times, but to thirty different groups of people.  But that is the problem.  We’re not people to him.  We’re the mass of bodies that continues to clog his space and acknowledging that we’re a new group ruins the easy construct he relates to his wife every night about “the idiots that can’t take direction” that he has to deal with daily.  He’s fine with us being faceless masses and in return, he being a faceless uniform that none of us could pick out of a line-up if paid to.

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Big Phones

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A few years ago phones were getting smaller and smaller to the point that they were hard to read and the idea of a phone/watch ala Dick Tracy didn’t seem too far away.  In the last few years we’ve seen the trend in phones go the other direction, to the point that one handed texting and app control is just about impossible.  The Phone/Watch has now evolved to become one of the myriad of phone accessories that are accessed via Blue Tooth or other means.  My wife, Dr. Rebecca Berger, wears ReSound hearing aids which are wirelessly linked to her phone for streaming music and even cooler, making the phone work to isolate conversations in restaurants.  (No, not other people’s conversations – the conversations at our table!  Less repeating for me… though no less repeating for her…)

Phones continue to get thinner, but they are getting larger and larger screens.  Great for watching videos, but that’s not why I have a phone nor how I use it most of the time.  The last go round I got a new Droid Razr Maxx replacing my previous Droid Razr Maxx that I loved.  Even though the increased size is minor, it’s enough to make it almost impossible for one handed use.  My thumb just won’t reach that far!

So though it pains me to admit this, maybe Steve Jobs got it right with the size of the original iPhone…  At least that’s what this article at Quartz posits.  The rise of the tablet has caused this and I’ve already opined on why I think that’s a step backward here.  I am pleased with the Swype feature for texting and typing on my phone (Something sorely missing from Apple products), but any additional growth in screen size will make this a two handed operation.  That’s not what I want in a phone.  I want a phone that I can put in my pocket.

As with most trends, there will probably be ups and downs over time.  I hope functionality wins out or at least “optionality”…  so I can have a phone that does what I need at a size that doesn’t split pocket seams and cause thumb strain…

Source:  Dick Tracy Image from www.pmag.com

Source:  Thumb Reach picture from www.qz.com

Source:  Thumb Strain picture from www.hartchirocenter.com