DST is the new Y2K

An interesting calendar problem has cropped up thanks to new Daylight Saving Time (DST) rules.  It's being extended by 4 weeks starting this year, beginning 3 weeks earlier and ending one week later under provisions of the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005.  Our campus calendar system, and presumably several other electronic clocks and calendars, need a patch to be made aware of the change.

So for the window of time between March 11 (when it now starts) and April 1 (when it would've started under the old rules), we might have some calendar havoc as schedule meetings don't post at the right time.  Luckily we have a good IT department that seems to have fixed it. 

Although I'm glad to see a proactive shift to save energy--is there a good reason not to do this?--this is almost certainly bigger news for IT folks than for others, since most people have no idea when DST starts or ends anyway, we just change our clocks when they tell us to.  They are also kind enough to do it over a weekend so if you somehow miss it you'll probably figure it out sometimes Sunday.  Still, I'm frankly amazed the whole scheme works.  There must be some social science jargon for events that work simply because everyone agrees to play along, but I'm afraid I lack the vocabulary.

Speaking of clocks, I got this spiffy National Geographic wall clock for christmas:

Traditionally styled and always accurate, the clock synchronizes each night to the U.S. atomic clock in Colorado and self-adjusts for daylight saving time, leap seconds, and other time changes.

That's right.  Leap seconds.

Posted at 10:38AM Feb 07, 2007 by WILSON, JOSHUA in Bits of news  |  Comments[1]