News & Commentary: 2004-11-05

Daylight Spending

A lot of people tell me I complain too much, or have a negative attitude, maybe it is time I did something positive for the world. Well at last I have a plan for a scheme that cannot fail.

You have all heard of "Daylight Saving", go to work early in summer, make use of the available daylight and all that crap. It used to be the bane of the IT world until someone figured out the immensely complex timezone compiler which so far is the only thing known to humanity that can actually work out what time it is "officially". Thanks to Daylight Saving there are over 500 timezones in the world, each with their own unique historical details. It's a fascinating thing to study the intricacies of how this all works but the whole thing is COMPLETELY USELESS.

A Better Way

I figure that daylight saving is a bit like superannuation, you keep seeing your money going into it but you never feel like you are ever going to see it come out again. Well when it comes to daylight, I'm not going to wait for some pie in the sky, I'm going to start spending what I have saved. For anyone else who wants to join this movement, here are the ground rules:

Sleeping In During Hot Summer Months

Thanks to carbon dioxide, methane and changes in global weather patterns, Sydney is getting hotter and muggier (that means more humid) during the summer. In short, the tropical weather is moving south. Our rainfall has reduced on average but when it does rain it really pisses down hard (not quite tropical typhoon, but heading in that direction). Some people have a genetic predisposition to living in tropical environments, some prefer savage cold. My genetic basis comes from various points around Europe and I'm comfortable in Sydney most of the year EXCEPT when trying to sleep during a hot, humid night, packed with mosquitoes and dripping with sweat.

I can (and do) buy mesh to keep out the insects, I COULD buy an air conditioner to control the humidity and temperature. Using an air conditionar means using fuel, generating carbon dioxide and making the situation worse, requiring a larger air conditioner, more fuel and so on. Evaporative coolers are bloody useless in high humidity conditions so we will forget them completely. So what else can be done. It doesn't take a genius to measure that the coolest part of the day is the morning, everything looses heat during the night so by midnight (solar time) it is cool enough to get to sleep, sun rises about 5AM (solar time) so sleeping to 8AM (solar time) lets you take advantage of the morning coolth as dew evaporates outside and the heat of the day hasn't had a chance to take hold yet.

But now we see a problem, 8AM solar time is 9AM by the "official" clock so the government wants you to be at work during the best part of the day for sleeping. Screw that! This is the primary place to start spending some of that daylight that you are supposed to save. We are a sleep deprived society and if you can't look after yourself, how are you going to be effective at whatever else you decide to achieve in your life?

RULE #1: Always allocate two extra hours to sleep-in during summer.

Discretionary Spending for Appointments

If some people are going to be an hour ahead of solar mean time, while other people are going to be an hour behind... that's going to be a problem with appointments. Not so, daylight spending is discretionary spending, you only use as much or as little as you want to. Thus, make your appointments as per the time used by the people you are meeting with, then make an effort to get there on time, but if you find that too difficult then spend a bit of your daylight time and tell people that by the rules of daylight spending time, you are perfectly entitled to do so.

RULE #2: Anywhere from on time to two hours late is still correct behaviour, but only during summer.

Accounting for Our Spending

Religion has been displaced by Accounting as the core social control for the modern world. Accounting and Advertising have become "The Big Two": Advertising to make us want to spend and Accounting to make us regret it later. So when you grit your teeth, make a big effort and get out of bed early, still half asleep, somehow get to work without killing anyone on the road (including yourself) and stagger around till noon with no clear idea of what is going on, who is making a note that you deserve credit for this?

No one. No one at all.

When it comes down to it, Accounting and Capitalism have one thing to say: if you don't get paid to make the effort then don't make the effort. You can see any number of amazing plans to: attract people to industry XYZ; encourage graduates not to leave the country; address the shortage of nurses / schoolteachers; foster an interest in science; encourage more women to join profession XYZ... the list is endless. One thing they never suggest (strangely), in any of these fantastic schemes is paying better wages.

You only have to look at the environment -- no one can find an easy way to assign it a price, thus it has no value at all. The logic of the accountant.

But when you think about it, what does Accounting actually mean? It means that services and goods have a price and that a fair price is a representation of value. All the window dressing can be thrown aside and that includes "brownie points" that get awarded for accurate clock following. At the end of the day, unless those "brownie points" get exchanged for legal tender -- they are junk.

RULE #3: If someone wants to criticize your use of Daylight Spending Time, judge their criticism by how much they are paying you to follow their time schedule.

Other People Using Daylight Spending

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