random bits from the news

[cellio]

An article in my local dead-tree news reported on something I'd been wondering about for a while: are allergies and asthma more prevalent than they used to be (versus just being diagnosed more), and, if so, is it because of lifestyle changes? Yes and yes, apparently; research shows that more sterile environments mean our immune systems don't have as much to do, so they go off and find other ways to keep busy. (I couldn't find the local article online; Google found me this one from half a year ago.) I'm glad my parents let me play in the great outdoors and eat anything, and that we had pets, when I was growing up; I do have some allergies (environmental, not food), but they're mild. I feel sorry for one of my in-laws: his parents are hyper-paranoid about food allergies and are attempting to build a shield around him. They didn't come to our wedding because we couldn't guarantee that none of a long list of foods had never passed through the hall's kitchen. That kid is going to be a mess when he grows up, and he's probably going to think this is normal when he has kids of his own. Ugh.

Via Slashdot: daylight "saving" time actually increases energy usage. ("Saving" is a misnomer; we should call it "daylight shifting time", which is all it accomplishes. There are not, after all, storehouses in which we collect excess sunlight for use during lean times; nothing is saved.) The researchers were handed a great data-collection opportunity: they did their work in Indiana, where until recently some counties did DST and others did not. So they not only had before-and-after data, but also a control group nearby to factor out weather and the like.

A few days ago a house in Plum (near Pittsburgh) exploded, apparently from a gas leak. (I actually saw this on national news before I saw the local news.) This made me wonder whether it's possible to build a detector (other than the human nose) for household use. We have smoke detectors and carbon-monoxide detectors; why have I never heard of a gas-buildup detector? Granted that such incidents are extremely rare, but they are potentially much more devastating than fires and CO buildup, so if an inexpensive household gadget could provide some potential warning, that'd be great.

In lighter news:

You know that "who do you want to answer the phone at 3AM?" ad the Clinton campaign is running? The little girl in the ad was stock footage; she's now an adult and working on the Obama campaign (via insomnia).

Headline of the day, from thnidu: Skywalkers in Korea Cross Han Solo.

Comments

[cellio]

Yeah, DST saves on lighting, but that's now dwarfed by other things. While heating and AC are the big hitters here, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a secondary effect from other appliances. People who would in principle wait until after dark (= cooler) to run heat-generating devices like the dishwasher might not be willing to do so if that means starting at 10PM. Contrast this with our parents' generation, when the dishwashers had names and were self-powered. :-)

DST is disruptive, has no economic benefits (today), and has only marginal social benefits (most people do not spend the time after dinner doing stuff outdoors). I would prefer that we pick one time standard and just stick with it. The reduction in IT costs and medical errors alone would probably be worth it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

The reduction in IT costs and medical errors alone would probably be worth it.

We had to put a lot of effort into fixing things when the DST boundaries shifted last year, because hardcoded things were hidden deep within the codebase. Which is bad, but then again, arbitrary time shifts are just as bad...