Natural

[filkertom]

In spite of evidence that it's not saving what we thought it did, today we begin Daylight Savings Time. If you're in an affected area, set your clocks forward an hour.

Sometimes, the universe gets it right all by itself. An excellent example of that is Sir David Attenborough. The BBC has put a whole bunch of clips of his on YouTube (although, strangely enough, someone else had to post the bit with him and the gorillas). Here's one you may not have seen, courtesy of Dave Kellett's The Greatest Blog Ever.

Any particularly cool nature/space/science videos or pics we need to see?

Comments

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

Ah, but now we're being told that the social benefits of extra daylight in the evening outweigh the extra energy expenditures. And no, other than the obligatory checking of the Astronomy Picture of the Day I've seen nothing particularly special of late.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

The study results are interesting indeed. Electricity usage for *lighting* went down -- which was, in fact, the original intent of Daylight Savings Time. But electric usage for *air conditioning* went up by more than usage for lights went down.

Now, it's not clear whether the study's figures made allowances for the weather (i.e. how much AC usage increased in 2006-07 due to it being warmer than in the pre-DST years covered by the study). But still, it points up that the folks who advocated expanding DST on the basis of energy savings did NOT take into account the increased dependency on air conditioning in the US. (Our addiction to AC is, IMO, one of the biggest factors in why we're such energy hogs, but that's a rant for another day.)

For me personally, I welcome DST back. SAD seriously bitchslapped me this winter and I suspect I'll be much better off with the later sunsets. (I rarely get up before 0800.)

[pandoradeloeste.livejournal.com]

More American houses need ceiling fans. They're everywhere in Asunción. We survived two of Chicago's worst heat waves with nothing more than ceiling fans. And a tiny little air conditioner in my parents' room at night because they're wimps.

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

I like the Bower Bird, the only animal that courts with visual artistic creativity.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=GPbWJPsBPdA

Now if only we could cross-breed the Lyre bird with the Bower bird, that would be interesting.

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

Oops, almost forgot the "Squirrel Obstacle Course" video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWU0bfo-bSY

[aiyume.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I posted some video clips of the Mythbusters speaking live in Berkeley earlier this year on YouTube. You can see them on my YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=AiYume).

[kilbia.livejournal.com]

My GM decided to open up last session with a little show and tell. He had a video of the Planet Earth series, and showed us Deer Cave in Borneo because he had effectively dropped us into that place.

The cave is home to about 5 million bats, and the floor of the cave has a pile of guano 100 meters high. The dungheap is covered in cockroaches which eat the dung (and any young or old bats which fall into the dung), which are in turn food for centipedes, which are in turn food for (I kid you not) crabs.

(And in the game, the GM decided it'd be funny to have a crab follow around my character like a puppy.)

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

Better than a penguin following, with intent to mate, an overweight researcher who dressed in black and white.

Shrimp. On a treadmill.

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=TkiM1S_dMm4

Re: Shrimp. On a treadmill.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

That calls for the William Tell Overture.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

For me DST means a week of hell as my body adjusts to the new time, but getting home while it's still light for the first time in months. That's worth something. It also means I need to find a new job where I won't get home after 6:30pm.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Bit early in the US aren't you? The UK is still on good ol' GMT

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

They changed it this year, made it earlier. I think it's silly, but then I've always thought so.

[axegrrl.livejournal.com]

For a lot of companies, the DST change was Y2K Jr.

Literally months of work went into changing the hard-coded DST dates into software. Take all that time, multiplied by all the people working on it, by all that energy use... then add in all the time by the customer service people, field support people, etc. to apply all those updates to all that software... and that's a fragging shipload of energy.

{Sidebar: Because all of those people were working on what was, for most users, a free update, they *weren't* working on features that could go into paid upgrades or new products. So there was a corporate productivity and sales hit on that front. And that has other subtle (and not-so-subtle) costs.}

And from the point of view of the end users who were affected by stuff like this, there was the lost time to get their systems upgraded, when they couldn't be selling *their* products or services as effectively as they might, and/or they were less efficient than they might have been. In either case, because it's taking those customers longer to do the same amount of work, it's taking more energy, too.

So yeah, every time I hear "Daylight savings time was moved up to save energy", I have to laugh.

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

I have trouble getting into Daylight Savings Time when there's still a freaking foot of snow on the ground. *sigh*