The Mighty Ou has thoughts about your topic.

This was a good'un, too.

Do you like the way my words pop up into your life from the keyboard of this new & elegant but not-especially-pricey laptop?

I knew you would. It's based on computer "software" from the Micro-soft corporation of Ogden, Utah, and all the kids on the street are very excited about the compelling new design features.

By the way, I did a Ted Talk in 2009.

Daylight Savings was enacted to quell the masses after an election.

Shifting your sleep schedule as little as 15 minutes s little as fifteen minutes has all sorts of interesting effects, not the least of which is susceptibility tosuggestion

Im Ambivalent about DST. However when you are in a cold northern climate, it kind of sucks to watch the sun start to set at 4 in the afternoon, the way I did today. No DST in Japan.

I like daylight savings time. I wouldn't mind if standard time was to go - to heck with those kids going to school in the dark! We

Crid,
I thought your comments looked "different". Congrats.

Interesting link about numbers, Crid. Tom Wolfe could always find some really interesting things about which to write.

Likewise, the word "forty" in ancient Hebrew was used to designate a large indeterminate amount, hence the prevalence of 40 in the Abrahamic religions.

Makes you appreciate what mathematics has enabled the human race to do, and wonder if, since it's an artificial construct, mathematics has held us back in some way.

Also makes you wonder about other numbers upon which some of us rely so heavily. Was the world really created in six days? Or did the ancients who told this story not have proper numbers with which to relate their story and "six" became ingrained in our mythology?

I'd like an extra hour of sleep every weekend, please.

Chronobiologists agree as well: Bora Zivkovic wrote a fantastic essay in which he argues DST is basically destroying our brains: "Whether or not DST saves energy is the least of the reasons why it's a bad idea. Much more important are the health effects of sudden, hour-long shifts on our bodies and minds." The entire world is jet-lagged for several days after the changeover--in other words, if on March 9th there were an alien attack, or if the rats decided to mobilize their forces, we'd be seriously screwed.

Bollocks.

It is well established that people accommodate to time zone changes at about 2 hours per day.

Amy, if you fly from LA to Paris, which, if memory serves, is 9 hours, then you would be in sync in about four days.

One hour is nothing.

When I lived in Boston, I wished it was DST all year round, I hated how early it got dark.

Now that I live in Switzerland I hate how late it gets dark and welcomed regular time so that my kids would go to bed at a decent hour.

I would go for staying on day light savings time year around.

@Conan - Interesting about the 6 days thing. The word used in the source actually means something like "cyclic units of time" - 24 hour day is just the most common usage.

My grand father - who was a farmer - use to say that DST didn't help him because his animals were to stupid to read the clock so feeding time didn't change.

> wonder if, since it's an
> artificial construct, mathematics
> has held us back in some way.

Consider the relative wealth and security of cultures with numeracy vs those without. It's maybe paradoxical that we've done the best we can and the best we could ever do.

"Makes you appreciate what mathematics has enabled the human race to do, and wonder if, since it's an artificial construct, mathematics has held us back in some way."

You've just advanced the idea that math is a religion ("artificial construct").

It's a language for describing what is actually present. If we did NOT describe the "second" as 9192631770 oscillations of the Cs-133 atom between two hyperfine ground states - whatever those are! - such atoms would still oscillate.

Being able to analyze and discard the vagaries of human opinion - and, in fact, recognize the principle of uncertainty* - has led to ridiculous successes whenever objectivity has been allowed.

*you may not realize that every measurement properly includes a term for the uncertainty of that measurement, which includes the limitations of the measuring equipment and the circumstances surrounding the measurement. Only a standard is a fixed value of no uncertainty.

It's a language for describing what is actually present. ~ Radwaste at November 6, 2016 6:13 PM

And according to the article Crid linked, language is an artificial construct. Galileo called mathematics the language that the universe was written in. What if, like the other languages, it, too, is an artificial construct?

According to one explanation of Einstein's theory I read a few years ago, time began the moment the universe was created and didn't exist before that. So, it's a construct for this universe alone. Perhaps mathematics is, too. Or perhaps mathematics is simply our brains' way of understanding our universe; instead of being a language that describes what is actually present, it's our brains' way of understanding what it has encountered. And, in that regard, since our brains are flawed, it might be flawed.

Another article I read said that language determines how we structure our thoughts and that English may not be a language that readily organizes thoughts into mathematically manipulable methods. Chinese is supposed to be the best language for facilitating mathematical thinking.

Just navel gazin' here.

It's all we've got that works, so better to go with mathematics than with anything else we've created. As another commenter put it, "we've done the best we can."

It's maybe paradoxical that we've done the best we can and the best we could ever do. ~ Crid at November 6, 2016 4:05 PM

Yep.

What Jeff Guinn said. I've experienced jet-lag; a lousy one-hour time change is nothing close.

The entire world is jet-lagged for several days after the changeover

What piffle. So if your phone rings half an hour before you normally get up, or you have a late night, you're wrecked for several days? What a sheltered life he leads.

I've been jet lagged. Oddly enough I have more trouble with a one hour time change. It is just too close for my body to reset properly. I used to stay up 24 hours just so things would reset and synch back up correctly.

As for your navel gazin Conan, at that point you are extrapolating so far you end up with irrelevance. Just going back 100 million years and 'scientists' are pushing gibberish. Yes we have dinosaur bones, but no we don't know what they looked like (scales? feathers? something else?) much less what noises they made. But you can still find plenty of 'dinosaur' toys of supposed educational value in museums. And now you are dreaming about 14 billion years ago? At that level of extrapolation there isn't enough data to support much. Especially given the rather fluid nature of time.

As for the math being flawed, often it is. And often we know it is and this is just the best we can do right now. But that isn't necessarily the best we can ever do. Mathematics is a language and it does pick up new 'verbs' and 'nouns' not to mention colloquial phrases. The language is alive and still growing even though most of us only use words and phrases thought up ~4,000 years ago.