Comics I Don’t Understand

Unexpected Haloloween

Cidu Bill on Oct 31st 2009

Filed in Bill Bickel, Daylight Saving Time, Family Circus, Halloween, comic strips, comics, comics that made us laugh out loud, humor, lol | 30 responses so far

30 Responses to “Unexpected Haloloween”

furrykef Oct 31st 2009 at 10:58 pm 1

You’d think he’d know which state he was in…
PeterW Nov 1st 2009 at 12:33 am 2

He’s Daylight Saving Time? Spooky.
Pirk Nov 1st 2009 at 01:09 am 3

why does he have a sickle? is father time also death?
Henry Nov 1st 2009 at 04:30 am 4

@Pirk: First, it’s a scythe. Sickles are hand-sized.

Secondly, yeah, Father Time is very often conflated and inextricable from Death.

Just ask Terry Pratchett.
Sili Nov 1st 2009 at 05:18 am 5

Do you think he can remember?
Jeff S. Nov 1st 2009 at 07:44 am 6

PeterW, he would be Old Father Daylight Standard Time now.
Mitch4 Nov 1st 2009 at 08:51 am 7

I’ve just gotta say: Hip hip hurrah for (Central) STANDARD Time! All thru October I’ve been suffering from various kinds of deranged sleep, and [TMI alert] digestive timing issues.
Pirk Nov 1st 2009 at 11:37 am 8

I knew it was a scythe, but I wasn’t sure how to spell scythe so I went with something I could spell.

I have trouble with the idea of Keane as a Terry Pratchett fan
mkilby Nov 1st 2009 at 12:48 pm 9

Congress could do all of us a big favor and nullify the silly extension to Daylight Saving Time. The most reasonable date to end DST would be the last Sunday in October (which would have the advantage of matching the European dates). Of course, if this happens, we’ll probably see a re-run of this cartoon on Sunday 31 October 2010.
Rainey Nov 1st 2009 at 02:57 pm 10

furrykef, I think Bil Keane is actually using Billy ( the character ) to speak to the readers in a way in which he can still stay in character. His readers live in all 50 states ( and in other countries for that matter )
Mark in Boston Nov 1st 2009 at 09:58 pm 11

Isn’t it wonderful how Daylight Savings Time gives us an extra hour of sunshine! (In the summer of all things. Not in the winter when we could really use it.)

I just had a great idea. We can apply the same idea to Global Warming. Is the average temperature of the earth predicted to go up by one degree every ten years? Then what we do is set back all the thermometers by one degree every ten years!
mkilby Nov 2nd 2009 at 02:56 am 12

Here I was dreading a future re-run in 2010, not realizing that this was ALREADY a re-run (from 30 Oct. 2004, see: http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g181/mikeh254/fc103004.gif)
Ian Osmond Nov 2nd 2009 at 09:38 am 13

mkilby — Congress could do us a big favor and get rid of Daylight Saving Time entirely.
Dan Nov 2nd 2009 at 10:09 am 14

Mark in Boston’s comment was a LOL for me.
mkilby Nov 2nd 2009 at 10:25 am 15

@ Ian - I’d be for that. The only (minor) benefit that DST offers is that it makes everyone check their watches twice a year. Any energy that DST ever saves is wasted by all the effort required to move the clocks around. Unfortunately, even though the theoretical benefits have never been measured, there are just too many people who believe in the basic concept to get it scrapped any time soon, so I would prefer lesser evil of making it uniform (at least as far as North America and Europe go).

Soon to come on the “silly ways to save energy” platform: making incandescent light bulb ILLEGAL, so that consumers have to purchase drastically overpriced, mecury-laden energy “saver” lamps, which waste more energy during the warm-up phase (unless it’s a location where the light usually stays on). With all that cool, greenish light in the house, most people will subconciously feel colder, and turn the heat up a notch. Bottom line: zero savings, and a mercury problem for the landfills. Europe has already started, the US plans to follow suit!
Dan Nov 2nd 2009 at 10:32 am 16

Do people still wear watches? That’s so quaint.

DST will actually become easier in the future, because the number of clocks that need to be changed will decease even further than it already has. Computers and cell phones make the change automatically, and soon other clocks will do the same.
Elyrest Nov 2nd 2009 at 12:26 pm 17

My cell phone doesn’t make the change automatically. I still wear a watch. I like daylight savings time and the time switches. I find compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL) on sale at cheaper prices than regular lights and there are ones that produce pinkish rather than greenish light.

It’s Monday. I have a headache. I’m grumpy.
Mark in Boston Nov 2nd 2009 at 01:34 pm 18

I wear a watch. It’s the latest in high-tech. It runs forever and it never needs a battery! It doesn’t run on solar power. It doesn’t use electricity at all. All you have to do is turn the little knob a few times once a day. If you wear the watch every day you don’t even have to do that.
Chuck Nov 2nd 2009 at 04:02 pm 19

I think it should be DST all year. Pitch black by six PM? That is ridiculous.
Cidu Bill Nov 2nd 2009 at 04:08 pm 20

Chuck, are you old enough to remember, during the 70s, when we did have year-round DST for a year or two? The additional evening light was nice, but pitch-darkness at 7am in mid-winter was a bit freaky.

The lesson being, I guess, there’s no such thing as free daylight.
Lola Nov 2nd 2009 at 06:19 pm 21

There is one really practical purpose that the time changing twice a year has. It’s the reminder for everyone to change the batteries on their smoke detectors. I guess we could tie it to something else, but what that would be escapes me at the moment.
DPWally Nov 2nd 2009 at 06:28 pm 22

Is mkilby playing curmudgeon? Or is it genuine?

My softball season would be impossible without daylight savings time. That hour of daylight would be wasted in the morning. I suppose we could convince every workplace, school, TV station, etc. to shift its schedule one hour earlier during the summer, but it seems a lot easier to shift all the clocks an hour later.

Though I can see how people in Michigan would find DST silly.
Mitch4 Nov 2nd 2009 at 07:13 pm 23

I’m not against DST in general, nor the switching of clocks it entails. I just can’t deal with it lasting so late into the year. MKilby mentions “the last Sunday in October” but that isn’t far off the beginning of November, which was what it came to this year. How about first Sunday in October?

Yes, it’s unpleasant to come home in the dark. But it’s equally hard to get up in the dark. As others have pointed out, there is a limited supply of sunlight hours, whatever end you plan to take them from.
Yes, I can (and do) turn on lights. But (1) that sort of defeats the “energy savings” point, and (2) that means waking to the alarm and turning on the light, instead of being gently stirred by the gradual sunlight. It’s a shock to the system.
Elyrest Nov 2nd 2009 at 08:51 pm 24

Mitch4 - someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the time change has been done at the beginning of October before. They’ve switched the beginning and end a number of times in my lifetime and this is the current one. I know it is easier to awaken to natural light, but in many places in fall, winter and spring it isn’t light till late in the morning even with the switches.
Dave in Boston Nov 2nd 2009 at 10:56 pm 25

The time change coming after Halloween really messes Halloween up, especially for the younger kids whose bedtime doesn’t allow them to just go out an hour later.
Oz Nov 3rd 2009 at 02:05 am 26

I prefer to call DST “war time” since that’s the way it was introduced to me.

And, as a kid, I hated war time because all the fun stuff occured after dark (but I had a particularly misspent (but enjoyable) youth).
Chuck Nov 3rd 2009 at 03:09 am 27

Mitch4, I wake up in the dark no matter what time of year it is.

Bill, I am not old enough to remember that. I am 22.

Think of the kids, you guys! Has anyone checked to see if more kids get hurt when it gets dark earlier? Then again… I guess kids don’t play outside anymore.
mkilby Nov 3rd 2009 at 04:48 am 28

@ Mitch4 (23), DPWally (22), Lola (21) -

I don’t mean to sound like a pessimist, it’s just that the practical realities are not as good as the original theory. Daylight Saving Time made much more sense in the first half of the twentieth century, when a larger fraction of energy expenditures was used for lighting, and before so many time-dependent systems became interwoven. This was especially true during the two world wars, where energy resources were very limited.

With modern computer technology, everything could (theoretically) be controlled by a single master clock, but the reality is that we have a multitude of separate, competing systems (just flip through all your cable TV stations, and compare the differences in the clocks displayed), and not everything is or can be connected.

In Europe, there is a radio transmitter that provides synchronous time information, and many clocks and even watches use that signal to adjust to DST automatically (and the TV stations are all exactly in sync). However, many battery operated wall clocks do not have this feature, and most plug-in clock radios still use the old method of synchronizing to the 50/60 Hz power cycle. Most video recorders still need to be set by hand, as do many computers, Internet notwithstanding. Your cell phone may switch automatically, but mine does not, and the base station for my (quite modern) cordless house phone doesn’t either.

This is why I have come to believe that the primary benefit of DST is that it makes us check our clocks twice a year, or as Lola (@21) mentioned, our smoke detectors.
Mitch4 Nov 3rd 2009 at 07:13 pm 29

As a belated footnote, on the matter of going around resetting clocks etc. — I do have a couple thing that need completely manual changes (a wristwatch, in particular), and several that keep track of the date and handle the switch to Daylight or back to Standard quite on their own.

And then there’s a third category, sort-of in between. These are like clock-radios (plus an iPod dock) and tend to have lots of unclearly-marked controls, different on each one. So finding the time-set method and rolling the time ahead or back by an hour (or on some, ahead by 23 hours, ugh) is puzzling and tedious. BUT most of these have a small two-position switch, labelled something like “DST” and with the two settings of the switch labelled something like “+” and “-”. It just moves the displayed hour ahead or back by one hour, just what is wanted at DST day! That’s such a convenience, I can almost forgive the engineers / designers for making the controls otherwise so complex and obscure.
mkilby Nov 4th 2009 at 05:23 am 30

@ Mitch4 (23) - The only reason I would prefer the last Sunday in October is to synchronize the USA with Europe. I find it annoying to juggle the changing differences between the EDT/EST and CEST/CET time zones (5, 6, or 7 hours, depending on who changes DST when). Ideally, the Spring change would occur on the last Sunday in March. Most Americans don’t have this problem, of course, but anyone who conducts international business does need to consider it (twice a year).

(29) - The DST on/off control is a superb idea, I wish it was more widespread. Of all the many time-keeping objects I have to reset, the only ones that support the simple DST option are my Palm, and an inexpensive wall-socket timer that I bought at a hardware store.