Spring Forward - Daylight Savings and You

Spring Forward

(Don't forget to turn your clocks ahead at 2AM Sunday!)

Spring Forward, Fall Back.

We've all heard that mnemonic phrase numerous times before. A memory trick to remind us of how Daylight Savings Time works. We move our clocks an hour ahead in the Spring, and an hour back in the Fall, reordering our lives based on a 200 year old idea by Benjamin Franklin, and enacted in the US in 1918.

Yup, blame ol' Ben for losing an hour sleep tonight, and for all those people late to church tomorrow. This is the same guy who flew a kite in a lightning storm and wanted the turkey as our national symbol.

Okay, okay. So Ben Franklin was one of this nation's greatest leaders and inventors. And, his 1784 light-hearted letter to the Journal of Paris urging people to get up an hour earlier to save candles didn't actually involve turning any clocks back. We can blame William Willet for our real chronometric woes.

Willet is the true inventor of Daylight Savings Time, or DST. Even if ol' Ben tends to get the credit, or the blame in some cases.

Willet, an Englishman, wrote a pamphlet The Waste of Daylight in 1907 proposing a similar, yet slightly different manner of advancing and regressing clocks to save daylight, hence power and money savings. Though it wasn't until the First World War that DST was implemented as a way to save coal, and other energy supplies. First by Germany, then by Britain in 1916, then followed by many other nations.

Unfortunately, Willima Willet did not live to see his world altering idea come to fruition. He died of influenza in 1915.

The United states adopted the measure in 1918, but Congress repealed it in 1919 due to its unpopularity with the general public. The standard times zones also introduced with the 1918 DST law were retained, however. Daylights savings remained in local option use until 1966, when the Uniform Time Act reinstituted it back into law.

In the winter of 1973, for 15 months, President Richard Nixon set the clocks ahead an hour in response to the energy crisis of that time. Clocks reverted to standard time in the winter of 1974.

In 1987 federal legislation set the US daylight savings time to take place the first Sunday in April until the last Sunday in October.

2007 marks the beginning of an extended DST in the US, with daylight savings now taking place from the second Sunday in March (tomorrow for you non-aware readers) to the first Sunday in November.

Not all of the US uses DST. Both Arizona and Hawaii are exempt.

Nor does the entire world use DST. Webexhibits.org, a resource used in much of this article, provides a page of who does and doesn't use DST.

In the US, the official time to change your clocks is 2AM of the particular Sunday. But who in their right mind gets up that early in the morning to change a lousy clock? Most people change their clocks some time on the Saturday before, typically before going to bed. This leads to much confusion as to when their favorite television shows really come on, and what time their favorite eatery closes.

I use it as a trick to get the kids to bed earlier. Hey, if they are too lazy to look up Daylight Savings Time, it's their own fault. Right? ~.^

Oh, and when you bustle about spinning the analogs back, and button-mashing the digitals into subservience, take a few minutes to change the batteries in your smoke detectors, eh? Test them, too. Nothing worse than missing an hour's sleep AND getting burnt up because your smoke alarm didn't go off.

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Today's Penny Doubled Daily Cumulative Amount for 69 days is:

$5,902,958,103,587,056,517.11

Sick as a Dog (and Other Odd Phrases)

Warning: If you are weak of stomach, or if the word etymology fills you with dread, you might want to skip today's post. The title of it will give you an idea of what to expect. You have been warned. (Wuss!)

I've used the term "sick as a dog" a few times over the last several days. Almost everybody has used it, or at least heard it said. But, what exactly does it mean?

Contrary to popular usage, "sick as a dog" does not refer to a simple cold, or the flu. Aches, pains, chills, fevers, coughs, and runny noses have little to do with the origin of this oft-used turn of phrase. It does, however, refer to dogs. More specifically, to the rather unpleasant after effects of a dog eating things which are less than agreeable for their little doggy tummies. Yup, that's right. Dog yak.

In America, we might say we are "sick" to describe a cold or flu, while Brits would say they are "ill". In the United Kingdom, the word "sick" typically refers to vomit. To "be sick" in England would mean "to vomit".

If you know anything about dogs, you know when a dog eats something (and they eat damn near ANYthing) that is not good for them, it comes back out in worse shape than it went down. Usually on your freshly cleaned carpet. Or the middle of the couch. It's never pleasant, and I'm sure the dog doesn't much care for it either. (Though many of them will sniff their recent stench wafting ejecta and eagerly slurp it back up .. only to redeliver their payload to another part of the house).

All that rather uneeded printed visualization brings me to my point ... "sick as a dog" means to vomit like one.

Which is exactly what I've been doing for several days. Except for the lapping it back up part. Mainly because my head won't fit in the toilet. (Kidding! I'm so kidding ... stop looking at me like that!)

Another phrase commonly used to describe someone who is sick (ill, not sick, ill ... didn't I just go over that? sheesh), and one much less disgusting than the above colloquialism, is "under the weather".

Now this one seems pretty straightforward. Or, is it?

Several different attributions to the origination of "under the weather" can be found.

The most commonly accepted origination comes from America around 1827 and refers to how the literal weather can affect one's moods or health. Therefore, with this meaning, "under the weather" simply means climatological effects have influenced your health. Likely this has also helped given rise to the old-wives tales about cold weather and getting sick (I mean ill!).

Another possible origination of the idiom might be derived from an old nautical term "under the weather bow". A weather bow, on a ship, is the side of a ship's bow that is taking the brunt of a storm or other rough seas. If you've ever been on a ship, you may have experienced the up and down, back and forth motion waves cause. You may have even gotten nauseaus from it, or seasick, to be exact. Having a cold or flu can make you feel very similar. You might even become sick as a dog from being under the weather.

A third, less cited, origination is also nautical in derivation. When a sailor was indeed ill, he was kept below decks, or out of the weather. Thus, being under the deck was being under the weather. The phrase may have slipped into common usage by sailors describing someone who was ill (or sick!).

I had more phrases to discuss, but as I'm feeling green around the gills, I think I will retire before I toss my cookies.