In the spirit of the excellent “Advice from an old man to young men” thread, here are some more gems, courtesy of my little brother.
Things It Takes Most People 50 Years to Learn:
The badness of a movie is directly proportional to the number of helicopters in it.
You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight-saving time.
You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests you think she’s pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.
The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above-average drivers.
There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is: age 11.
There is a very fine line between “hobby” and “mental illness.”
People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be “meetings.”
The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them.
If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and he decides to deliver a message to humanity, he will NOT use as his messenger a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle or in some cases, really bad make-up.
You should not confuse your career with your life.
A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter/janitor, is not a nice person.
No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.
When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.
Your true friends love you, anyway.
Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
A corollary to number 8: “In all the parks in all the cities, you’ll find no statues of committees.”
She was very heavy and just carried the belly like there was a child in it…
It was late, I had had a few. Worst part was we were standing in a circle with several other people and that awkward silence occurred, so I just blurted it out. In my defense, my wife did tell me she thought she heard the girl was pregnant (or trying to get pregnant, which is what my wife insisted she said).
[quote]tGunslinger wrote:
Varqanir wrote:
2. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight-saving time.
It was put in so that farmers could use all the daylight from dawn to dusk without having to start their days hours before everyone else.
[/quote]
Clear, yes, but not totally compelling. It seems to me that loads of countries in temperate zones, which have been successfully practicing agriculture since time immemorial, get along just fine without daylight savings time (Japan being one). The farmers simply get up before sunrise, whatever the clock may say.
I once heard a funny story of the apocryphal origin of the practice:
There was once an Indian chief who, every fall, would cut a one-foot strip off one end of his blanket and sew it onto the other end, in order to make it longer. Come spring, he would remove the piece and sew it back onto the other end, in order to restore it to its original length.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Clear, yes, but not totally compelling. It seems to me that loads of countries in temperate zones, which have been successfully practicing agriculture since time immemorial, get along just fine without daylight savings time (Japan being one). The farmers simply get up before sunrise, whatever the clock may say.
I once heard a funny story of the apocryphal origin of the practice:
There was once an Indian chief who, every fall, would cut a one-foot strip off one end of his blanket and sew it onto the other end, in order to make it longer. Come spring, he would remove the piece and sew it back onto the other end, in order to restore it to its original length. [/quote]
I suppose I also should’ve added that I meant specifically the United States in my post.
As to the “compelling-ness” of DST, I suppose you would have to take the issue up with Mr. Franklin.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Clear, yes, but not totally compelling. It seems to me that loads of countries in temperate zones, which have been successfully practicing agriculture since time immemorial, get along just fine without daylight savings time (Japan being one). The farmers simply get up before sunrise, whatever the clock may say.
I once heard a funny story of the apocryphal origin of the practice:
There was once an Indian chief who, every fall, would cut a one-foot strip off one end of his blanket and sew it onto the other end, in order to make it longer. Come spring, he would remove the piece and sew it back onto the other end, in order to restore it to its original length. [/quote]
My own personal opinion is that DST helped farmers adjust their workdays so that they aligned more closely with non-farmers. It was perhaps a minor nuisance for farmers to start their day at 5:30 AM and go to bed at 8:00 PM while the urbanites started work at 8:00 AM and went to bed at 10:00 PM.
Since such a large portion of the population was made up of farmers back then, it makes some sense to throw them a bone and make everyone else get their butts out of bed an hour earlier.
Truthfully, I haven’t exactly researched in detail the reasons behind DST nor the benefits of it, so I am pulling most of this totally out of my ass. I at least hope that this wasn’t too obvious.
Beyond saying that Ben Franklin started it and that it has something to do with maximizing daylight for farmers, I don’t really know.
…which I guess was kind of the point of item #2 in the OP! LOL!
[quote]tGunslinger wrote:
Beyond saying that Ben Franklin started it and that it has something to do with maximizing daylight for farmers, I don’t really know.
[/quote]
Nope. On both.
Ben may have said “Early to bed, early to rise…” and urged the lazy-ass French to get up earlier in the summertime, but the notion that he proposed DST in the US is a common misconception.
It was actually invented in 1905 by a British golfer named William Willett, who didn’t like having to cut his rounds short in the dusk. It was established in the US in 1918, but the farmers hated it. They lobbied to get it repealed, but Woodrow Wilson, another golfer, vetoed the repeal vote.
