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| Google Images |
Twenty-four little
hours
Brought the sun
and the flowers
Where there used
to be rain’
Dinah Washington’s 1987 song gently pours its sounds
in my ear, her voice beating the time on the lyrics translated into English by
Jamie Cullum from Maria Grever’s Spanish lyrics ‘Cuando vuelva a tu lado’ (When
I Come Back by Your Side). But how little
is an hour of those twenty-four?
Doubtless, the song is loveable: where there’s fusion,
there’s value to be found. What about that one little hour that – we are told –
we’ll be gaining for advancing the clock – or having advanced it by now? Is it
a gain or a loss?
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| Google Images: Decimal Clock, in Fritz Lang's Metropolis |
Waste Not, Want Not
Ten words have been removed from the text below. They
are to be found among the fifteen words written below the article. Five of
those words are then extra – or, better to say, distractors. Find the good ones
and complete the text:
[adapted from the Wikipedia article on DST]
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| Google Images |
As days shorten again in autumn/winter, sunrises get
later and later, meaning that people could then be 8. _ up and spending a significant portion of their mornings in the
9. _ so clocks are then returned to
the "standard" time. The actual effects of DST can vary significantly
by location depending on its latitude and position relative to the centre of
its time zone. For example, DST is almost redundant in extremely
northern/southern locations because the very long/short days mean that the
artificial manipulation of time has little or 10. _ practical effect.
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| Google Images |
Why do we do it? Or why do we (here and now) have to
do it?
Is it observed everywhere on the globe?
Whose hour is it, anyway?!
If it were just for that biological time of 60
minutes, maybe we wouldn’t mind. In favour of advancing the clock in October,
and as homage to its promoter William Willett, Churchill said (in 1934) that “it enlarges the opportunities for the pursuit of
health and happiness among the millions of people who live in this country”…
This automatically sends our thought to DST for interests far above the
individual’s own life span. But
Man is made of subtle rhythms which belong to his ancestral heritage: not even
five thousand years of evolution could make such important changes in human
biology as to help an organism cope with all the changes triggered by shift in
circadian rhythms.
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| Google Images |
We suffer from SAD (Syndrome of Autumn Depression) and we
project our suffering on people around us. We feel like eating without stop and
we blame ourselves for every ounce of food because we think we lack strong will
to shed the extra kilos: in fact it has to do with leptin, serotonin, cortisol,
and other hormones that regulate the chains of chemical reactions taking place
in our body while awake vs. while we are asleep.
No, definitely, I won’t buy this – unless someone shows
me the real advantages of changing the clock and consuming more power both early
in the morning and late at night!
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| Google Images |
1.
Rather
– 2. To – 3. Same – 4. Great – 5. Round – 6. May – 7. Whereas – 8. Waking – 9. Dark
– 10. No.
Hi Eugenia,
ReplyDeleteI feel just like you about this subject. Here in Brazil we have this change in the hour in the summer, just when Europe begins the autumn... but here we can find a midpoint in this case, one part of Brasil starts the summer time and the other, the most equatorial part, remains with the regular hour. After many years discussing the time problem, the citizens won the battle against the goverment and proved that this "summer time" is an absurd in a part of the country, because here (in the northest) the sunrise starts at 4am, so what is the point to have sun at 3am??? Everybody are asleep and nobody could adapt your body to start the day so early. This is completly absurd and no politician or economist could prove the energy economy found in this action.
Christiane, this IS very interesting!
DeleteI'm looking forward to having you back in class, I'm sure that all your colleagues will listen to you raptured in amazement when you tell them what happens about clocks and conventional time!
It must be awful to have to fight against something so natural like circadian rhythms. Take care!
I think understand that when do you use the questión "what is ...... like? has a broad spectrum where you can answer as extensively how you want, without limitations, however when the question is what does ........ look like? you must answer about appearance or how do I see it. is it so?
ReplyDelete"I think I understand that when you use the question 'What is...like?' you can answer as extensively as you want, without limitations, because it has a broad spectrum."
Delete- Yes, that's right. You can ask 'What will life be like in 2525?' and answer 'Robots will be used instead of people for everything.'
"However, when the question is 'What does...look like?' you must answer about appearance, or at least that's how I see it. Is that so?"
- Yes, it is. Again, you're right. But the structures you use have to do with physical description.
This is an interesting question.
ReplyDeleteI disagree about the change of time during the year but if I had an opportunity to choose between the "summer time" and the "standard time", I would choose the former.
According to experts in this field, stepping into the "summer time" can influence the humour of people and, the most important thing, it allows to reduce the electricity's costs as families as State.
I'm in favour of it because through it we can take advantage of all light in a day.
In Italy as in Spain, the last sunday of October, people adjust their hour hand backward an hour, passing through "summer time" to "standard time" which the latter will last until the last sunday of March. Even though these countries have the same hour, the light's distribucion during a day is different and this is due to their different latitude.
As a result, in Italy we'll have, for example in November, a shorter day and we'll see sitting the sun approximately at 5:00 PM, whereas in Spain we'll have daylight until approximately at 6:00 PM.
Many people prefer the "summer time" because it induces them to splend more time doing sport or also any other things after work.
On the other hand, these changes from summer time to standar time or viceversa can cause some disavantages for someboby such as, insomnia, depression, feeling nervous because they are forced to change the hour hand.