� Answers �
Yesterday and last night kicked my tail. I was do flat out at work that I didn't eat lunch. Then after work I had to run home, pack up my stuff and head to my slam.
The slam ran late, and I ended up talking to my friend Ray who just got back from Florida and I didn't get to sleep until about 2 AM.
Rough morning.
Very rough.
I write this answer column usually on Wednesday, but this week you're going to have to deal with Thursday. Sorry.
I write 3 regular entries a week. On Monday I do a headline entry. Headlines with my own story of the day's top stories followed by true stories I find on other news sites.
On Friday I write horoscopes with meal suggestions.
On Wednesday, like today, I write an answer column. If you need advice or need the answer to something, click on this � advice link and ask away.
name: Karyn
email:
url:
question:
Hi Mr Powers! Is it safe to wear a contact lens that's 6 years old? My right lens got torn and I'm too cheap to get a new one.
The 6 year old lens looks fine (stored in saline without regular cleaning though), but I think it got yellow with age.
Your swift answer is much appreciated! Good luck with the slams!
answer:
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No. Not safe. Bad idea. Don't do it. It is probably toxic. Your eye will fall out. You will be eyeless. YOU WILL HAVE ONLY EYE!
Well, it might just sting a little and get puffy.
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name: Mad
email: [email protected]
url: http://madscientist.diaryland.com/
question:
I have a question about HTML. I don't really wnat to go out and buy any program or book to teach me, and if I want to take a class in it, I have to take all the stupid computer classes that teach you how to use Word and IE. What I am trying to say is: do you know of any good *free* HTML tutorials out there?
answer:
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Yes. Before I started writing this journal, I didn't know html or javascript at all. The way I learned was by using www.irt.org and www.webmonkey.com
www.irt.org lets you search to figure out how to do just about anything in Javascript.
www.webmonkey.com is more html oriented.
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name: Shannon
email: [email protected]
url: http://
question:
question # 2.
Every week when you post the horrorscopes you always offer a food suggestion. I'm a sagittarius and the food you pick always sounds good and seems to fit the day. How do you do that? Are you omniprescient?
answer:
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Nope, I'm not omniprescient. I am however, omnifarious,
omnipresent, an omnipresence omnivore, omnivorous, on approval and on average on fire on purpose onboard one percent or one-fourth of one-party but just one-person. The rumors of my being Onobrychis, an Onobrychis viciaefolia, Onobrychis viciifolia, Onopordon, Onopordon acanthium, Onopordum, and
Onopordum acanthium are overblown.
I'm a Sagittarius, so I am usually picking foods for that horoscope that I personally like.
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name: Shannon
email: [email protected]
url: http://
question:
Why do we still have daylight savings time? Is it really necessary anymore?
answer:
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Just as sunflowers turn their heads to catch every sunbeam, so too have we discovered a simple way to get more from our sun: We've learned to save energy and enjoy sunny summer evenings by switching our clocks an hour forward in the summer.
Daylight Saving Time begins for most of the United States at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday of April. Time reverts to standard time at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday of October. In the U.S., each time zone switches at a different time.
In the European Union, Summer Time begins and ends at 1 am Universal Time (Greenwich Mean Time). It starts the last Sunday in March, and ends the last Sunday in October. In the EU, all time zones change at the same moment.
During DST, clocks are turned forward an hour, effectively moving an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening. The official spelling is Daylight Saving Time, not Daylight SavingS Time.
Why did daylight saving time (DST) start, and why does it still continue? When asking a random sample of people we heard two answers again and again: "To help the farmers" or "Because of World War I ... or was it World War II?"
In fact, farmers generally oppose daylight saving time. In Indiana, where part of the state observes DST and part does not, farmers have opposed a move to DST. And the chief adversary of daylight saving time in the United States is the Farm Bureau. Farmers, who must wake with the sun no matter what time their clock says, are greatly inconvenienced by having to change their schedule in order to sell their crops to people who observe daylight saving time.
Daylight saving time did indeed begin in the United States during World War I, primarily to save fuel by reducing the need to use artificial lighting. Although some states and communities observed daylight saving time between the wars, it was not observed nationally again until World War II.
Of course, World War II is long over. So why do we still observe daylight saving time?
The Uniform Time Act of 1966 provided the basic framework for alternating between daylight saving time and standard time, which we now observe in the United States. But Congress can't seem to resist tinkering with it. For example, in 1973 daylight saving time was observed all year, instead of just the spring and summer. The current system of beginning DST at 2 AM on the first Sunday in April and ending it at 2 AM on the last Sunday in October was not standardized until 1986.
The earliest known reference to the idea of daylight saving time comes from a purely whimsical 1784 essay by Benjamin Franklin, called "Turkey versus Eagle, McCauley is my Beagle." It was first seriously advocated by William Willit, a British Builder, in his pamphlet "Waste of Daylight" in 1907.
Over the years, supporters have advanced new reasons in support of DST, even though they were not the original reasons behind enacting DST.
One is safety. Some people believe that if we have more daylight at the end of the day, we will have fewer accidents.
This "benefit" comes only at the cost of less daylight in the morning. When year-round daylight time was tried in 1973, one reason it was repealed was because of an increased number of school bus accidents in the morning. Further, a study of traffic accidents throughout Canada in 1991 and 1992 by Stanley Coren of the University of British Columbia before, during, and immediately after the so-called "spring forward" when DST begins in April. Alarmingly, he found an eight percent jump in traffic accidents on the Monday after clocks are moved ahead. He attributes the jump to the lost hour of sleep. In a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, Coren explained, "These data show that small changes in the amount of sleep that people get can have major consequences in everyday activities." He undertook the study as a follow up to research showing that even an hour's change can disrupt sleep patterns and "persist for up to five days after each time shift." Other observers attribute the huge spike in accidents on the first Monday of DST to the sudden change in the amount of light during driving times. Regardless of the reason, there is no denying that changing our clocks has a significant cost in human lives.
To sum up, it's a dumb sypmtom of man feeling the need to impose his will on nature.
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name: Madame Fromage
email:
url:
question:
I enjoy poetry in written or verbal form, however I have the poetic talent of a shoelace. Why is this?
answer:
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Are you a shoelace? Because if you were actually a shoelace this would be an easy answer. Perhaps you're under rating yourself. You could be a boot or a slipper. Slippers don't even have laces.
Writing poetry or any other form takes practice. Even if poetry isn't read aloud, it still has a sound to it. I suggest listening to as much recorded spoken poetry as possible. You can begin to figure out what works and what does not.
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