It's About Time

No. 370 of the ongoing  ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast370

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Blogger’s Note: As we review our many musical shares from our musical forum activities under our ongoing “222 Day Binge Challenge”, the Friday Blog and Podcast will revisit some themes from past Tuesday Blogs. Today’s montage is part of that exercise. The Tuesday post in question was issued on March 13, 2012. The programme reuses some of the same works and the below commentary is taken almost verbatim from the original post.

As a smart man once told me, “Give a man a watch, and he knows what time it is. Give him two watches, and he can’t be sure anymore.”

At 2 AM this coming Sunday, continental North-America (except for the province of Saskatchewan and the state of Arizona) “fall backward” to Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time; gibven our current use of it,  DST is actually in effect more calendar days than Standard Time!

The common rationale for DST during the summertime is to ensure that evenings have more daylight and mornings have less. Modern DST was first proposed in 1895 and it was first implemented during the First World War. Many countries have used it at various times since then. In general, DST is in effect in the Americas, Europe and Southern Australia, with a few African and Asian countries doing so as well.

The practice has been both praised and criticized, especially on those calendar dates far removed from the Summer solstice, when young kids wait for school buses in darkness. Although an early goal of DST was to reduce evening usage of incandescent lighting, formerly a primary use of electricity, modern heating and cooling usage patterns differ greatly, and research about how DST currently affects energy use is limited or contradictory.

In Canada, there’s  been conversations about whether to abandon the practice completely – that would likely only happen in my opinion if America chooses to do so as well.

Today’s playlist is a collection of pieces of music that talk about clocks and time. From Haydn’s Clock symphony, to Leroy Anderson's Syncopated Clock. Of course, there are titles by Lukas Foss, Wendy Carlos and Ponchielli added to the mix.

Set your watches to proper time, and enjoy sleeping in the extra hour!

I think you will (still) love this music too.