Don’t Forget To Update
Hey all you people who are going to be asking me for computer help next week. Don’t forget to let your auto-update run. You will probably be fine anyway since most computers deal with incorrect dates and times, however there are some things that may become more difficult. As such these updates will let your computers know that DST has changed.
A note on time: The sun is not overhead at noon (though it is close). Unless you live on 24 very precise sections of the earth, the sun is directly overhead at some time within a half hour of noon. Not only that, but those sections of the earth move from day to day! To see how far off you are, check out the Analemma for your location. Time is just a way of coming up with a common consensus for when we need to do certain things. It turns out that changing that common consensus is much more difficult than simply changing the time. (Also, Ben Franklin was an understated, sarcastic prat, which is probably why I like him so much.)
March 8th, 2007 at 21:55
During discussions about whether or not the millennium changed when the calendar changed from 1999 to 2000 or from 2000 to 2001, I enjoyed pointing out that if we all agreed on when it changed, that’s when it changed, since the argument was really about common consensus.