What time is it, anyway?

If you do business with folks in the states, you’ve no doubt had to deal with their retarded chronological mutant yet again: Daylight Savings Time.

Clocks–most of them, not all of them–in the states were moved an hour ahead over the weekend, which means that places you call–most of them, not all of them–are now an hour later compared to Saipan time.

Or would that be an hour earlier, since they’re a day behind us?

Oh, I don’t know. I never could figure it all out. Ok, maybe I could figure it all out if I put my mind to it, but I could also floss my teeth if I put my mind to it, wash my car, and organize my files…and that ain’t never gonna’ happen. None of it. Ever.

Daylight Savings Time is not only confusing to us out here, it’s an affront to mother nature herself. It’s an elegant arrangement to have 12:00 on the clock represent the sun’s zenith. (Zenith is a fancy term for the highest point. The term is derived from the Latin term for a crudely made American television set that was eclipsed on the market place by something called “Sony.” Zenith was the nadir of American industry.)

The concept of noon, in other words, is handed down by mother nature herself, not by some dingbat politicians who want to mess with clocks in the U.S. Why would they mess with clocks? Because they’ll mess with anything, that’s why. Yes, I’m aware of their rationale, which is stupid, and I won’t pay it any heed by regurgitating it herein.

Ever see those arrangement of clocks on walls, set to various international time zones? Hotels have them, as do stock brokerage offices. That used to strike me as daft. Now I see the wisdom in it, given that daylight savings time adds a moving target angle to the whole chronological mess.

Better yet, maybe some clever programmer has created a way for a computer to display such data. I’d like that…as long as it was free, easy to use, and could be easily uninstalled if I didn’t like it. Hmm. That’s too elegant to be true. Probably just easier to walk to a hotel and look at its clocks.

Daylight Savings Time or not, the time difference between us and Uncle Sam makes business tricky to conduct between the two areas. E-mail mitigates things a little, but only a little. It sort of cranks up the onus of responsibly on the users, since you can’t walk a moron through an e-mail directive like you can talk him through a phone call. The incompetence factor, in other words, has even more of a chance to manifest. And that’s just what is does, of course.

In the meantime, I’ll keep paying heed to mother nature. When the sun is high overhead, it’s time for lunch. Just call any office here at 12:10 p.m…you’ll see what I mean.

Ed Stephens, Jr. is an economist and columnist for the Saipan Tribune. “Ed4Saipan@yahoo.com”