Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Daylight Stupid Time

Posted

Am I the only one who hates daylight saving time and thinks its a big, pointless waste of time? (Get it? Waste of time?)

First and foremost, daylight is a zero-sum game. Whatever numbers we use to identify sunrise and sunset, the amount of daylight is the same. When the U.S. government decided to expand daylight saving time a few years ago, there was all kinds of talk about how it would save energy. Can anybody actually explain how moving the time labels by an hour changes the amount of air conditioning we need in a day, or makes any change whatsoever in how much energy we use in a day? Most reputable studies find no energy savings whatsoever due to daylight saving time.

There is one benefit . . . we get more daylight in the evening during the summer, which gives us more time for shopping, recreation, and so on. If this is the goal, why not just make daylight saving time into normal time? It wouldn’t make any difference in the winter when we’re all indoors anyway, we would still get our ‘extra’ hour of evening daylight in the summer, and we wouldn’t have to deal with pointless changes of the hour (and its requisite hassle and confusion) anymore. Problem solved.

I don’t personally care whether we standardize on ‘normal’ time or daylight saving time, but it’s about time that we standardized on one or the other and did away with the unnecessary time change. If we can’t pick one, let’s split the difference and shift time by 30 minutes. Time is just made-up numbers anyway, so make up some numbers that don’t have to randomly change twice per year.

The Land of Twits

Posted

No offense to my Twitter-using friends, but I just don’t get it. I understand Facebook. I understood MySpace (though it was poorly implemented and annoying, and thus rightfully lost its leadership position). Blogger and LiveJournal each made sense to me in their days. Even when I didn’t use these systems, or when I drug my feet on joining, I at least understood the appeal.

The whole micro-blogging idea has some value, I suppose, but Twitter’s big flaw (in my humble opinion) is that it is just a micro-blogging platform. It does absolutely nothing else. Facebook’s success lies in that it is a micro-blogging platform, a regular blogging platform, a photo sharing platform, a social network, and more all rolled into one in a relatively usable and integrated system. You can use it for almost anything you want.

Twitter seems oriented entirely toward pointlessness (hence, I have deemed it The Land of Twits). People who use it a lot post multiple tweets per day that don’t even approach the usefulness of a normal blog post. Even if these Tweets had value, a recent study has determined that only about 21 percent of Twits are ‘true users’ (users with at least 10 followers, who follow at least 10 people, and have tweeted at least 10 times). Really, all I use Twitter for these days (aside from posting links to my site) is reading Conan O’Brien’s tweets; that’s about all there is going on out there.

Stick a fork it in; it’s done. I’ve said it all along: Twitter is a fad, and will disappear as quickly as it arrived . . . probably fairly soon.

Stupid Lawsuit of the Month

Posted

Well, we now have a winner: washed-up former child star Lindsay Lohan has emerged from rehab long enough to file the Stupid Lawsuit of the Month. You may know the E*Trade advertisements with the talking baby. In one of these ads, the talking baby is chatting with his talking baby girlfriend about why he hadn’t called the night before. The girlfriend asks, suspiciously, “And that milkaholic Lindsay wasn’t over?” Another talking baby girl, presumably Lindsay, pops her head into the frame and says “Milk-a-what?”

It’s somewhat funny, I suppose, and I don’t think anybody thought this was a reference to any particular celebrity. The ad apparently hit a little too close to home for Lindsay Lohan though; she is suing E*Trade for improperly using her “likeness, name, characterization, and personality” without permission. She wants 100 million dollars in damages and the ad taken off the air.

First and foremost, the ad was not apparently about Lindsay Lohan. It was talking babies selling online trading services. I don’t think any viewers saw the ad and thought, “Ha, they’re making fun of Lindsay Lohan.” Secondly, even if it was supposed to be Lindsay Lohan, I really doubt her career has been harmed in any way whatsoever by the ad. If there’s no harm, there’s no damages, and no winning the lawsuit. Finally, even if there had been some sort of harm to Lohan, parody and celebrity impersonation is a time-honored and perfectly acceptable form of advertising, as long as it doesn’t imply endorsement by the celebrity. Nothing about a talking milkaholic baby who happens to be named Lindsay implies that Lindsay Lohan endorses E*Trade.

Rich People Must Be Following Me

Posted

For most of the last decade I lived in Fairfax County, VA . . . and for most of that time, Fairfax County was ranked as the richest county in the United States (even with folks like me dragging down the averages ;-)). Last year, Melissa and I moved to neighboring Loudoun County, Virginia, and now, no thanks to us, Loudoun County now ranks as the richest in the country. I think the rich people are following me.

According to Forbes Magazine, the median family income in my new home county is a whopping $110,643/year.

That sounds great and all, and Melissa and I are actually slowly creeping up toward that number, but this ranking does not (apparently) take cost of living into consideration. As I often have to point out to my friends from southern Virginia, everything costs a lot more up here. In SoVA you can get a decent apartment for well under $1,000/month; up here in NoVA, almost anything under $1,400 is a roach-infested dump. It all evens out.

If you measure by quality of life, or use cost-of-living adjusted values, I’d bet the relative ‘richness’ of Loudoun, Fairfax, and the other local counties on the Forbes list would be a bit above-average, but probably not at the very top of the list.

Ladies: Would You Wear These Shoes?

Posted

I was at Target today picking up a number of random things, and Melissa dragged me to the shoe aisle where I noticed . . . this.

I’ve noticed that many of my female friends have been complaining lately that the clothing styles are really bad this year, and I’m starting to understand what they mean. I cannot think of any reason whatsoever that any sentient human being would buy a pair of shoes like this.

It seems like some sort of jewel-encrusted starfish carcass, which I doubt is a flattering look. So what’s the verdict, lady readers? Would you wear these shoes?

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.