END OF DAYS: This pickup truck to low Earth orbit was neither cheap nor safe.
Image: COURTESY OF NASA
In Brief
We'd like to wave goodbye to:
- Daylight savings time
- The space shuttle
- Teflon
- Landfills
- Walled gardens
- Dropped calls
- Bunker fuel
- Gene patents
- Human drivers
- Bisphenol-A
More In This Article
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Overview
The End
Daylight Savings Time The extra hour of sunshine comes at a steep price
Daylight savings time has marginally scientific origins: its inventor, New Zealand naturalist George Vernon Hudson, published two papers in the late 19th century arguing for a seasonal two-hour clock shift to “more fully utilize the long days of summer.” The primary appeal, though, has always been to save on energy costs, because extra daylight in the evening reduces the need for lighting. Germany instituted Sommerzeit (“summertime”) as a means to save coal during wartime, and by 1918 Europe, Russia and the U.S. had all followed suit. Clocks went back to normal in peacetime, until daylight savings was temporarily mandated again during World War II. In 1966 the U.S. Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, the first nonwartime implementation of the practice (although, technically, each state could decide whether to go along); daylight savings has since been extended as a response to energy shocks such as the oil embargo of the 1970s.
This article was originally published with the title Good Riddance.
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24 Comments
Add CommentI must be having a senior moment - is this SA or People Magazine?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLOL- careful- SA has begun deleting comments they consider contrary to the site's agenda of fluff
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood Riddance: teaser issues.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe space shuttle?! What, are you stupid? And, just what the hell is wrong with teflon? This guy sounds like some kind of luddite moron to me. Well, it has been coming for a while now, but I think SA has pretty completely cleared the shark now. Had to say good bye to The History Channel and the Learning Channel was home-makeover-crap from the very beginning... Now it's goodbye Scientific American.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's not Daylight Savings Time, it is Daylight Saving Time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy should I subscribe to your website just to read an article? Don't you realize that you could be earning more from advertisements if your community is expansive? Locking down the content simply drives people away from your website. I'm sorry, but I feel that you have stripped this website of its value by adding a subscription paywall. I could understand paying for a physical magazine as it has real material costs associated with its production (not content production, that has always been paid for by advertising), but a digital version does not incur any marginal costs (it costs the same to produce 1 as it does to produce an infinite supply).
I don't doubt that this comment will be blocked, but hopefully at least some human moderator will read this and begin asking the right questions. Thank you.
Well, for me, reading the prior commentators excellent comments made it all worthwhile. Thanks - to them!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSa sinks to a new low with malthusian luddite philosophy. It amazes me that a business that prospers on people (the more the better contrary to malthusian theory)reading their magazine (printed on paper from cut down tree's) or on the internet powered by dirty coal electricity
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@ChrisJones. the Article is in it's entirety in the print version. I subscribe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSpace Shuttle, because if we had kept on using the Saturn, for the same cost, we would have been able to build on the moon, and still have an orbital space station.
Teflon, because the old style of non-stick often left flakes in folks gut, and was toxic to some wildlife. Newer non-sticks are not Teflon.
The article is written mostly by staff. It is worth reading. Buy a copy, or go visit the library.
Maybe some day we can say goodbye to environmentalism. The ideology that has a documented history of causing death and human suffering everywhere it is applied.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@frgough, stupidity has caused much greater suffering but I don't see you doing anything to stop it. Think globally, act locally.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Human drivers" count as an invention? Also, in the foreseeable future, AI drivers have a far greater shot at driving into walls and over pedestrians than human drivers do. Heck, in games, where the computer has supposedly perfect knowledge of the area's layout, you /still/ get AIs running endlessly facefirst into walls.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Human drivers" count as an invention? Also, in the foreseeable future, AI drivers have a far greater shot at driving into walls and over pedestrians than human drivers do. Heck, in games, where the computer has supposedly perfect knowledge of the area's layout, you /still/ get AIs running endlessly facefirst into walls.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhoops, delete one of those, obviously. And this when you do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@SolaceAvatar, "Heck, in games, where the computer has supposedly perfect knowledge of the area's layout, you /still/ get AIs running endlessly facefirst into walls" right solace, because code from computer games would be used to drive cars. I think they use a version of space invaders to control the space shuttle.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm also surprised about Teflon. Can someone tell us what is wrong with Teflon?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPatents are intellectual property; hence a gene patent does not give its holder ownership of the gene, but of the new ideas concerning it. This is true of all patents. So, unless one is against all patents, there is no reason to be prejudiced
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisagainst genes, or for that matter, software, mathematics, or laws of nature.
The Walled Garden cited does not have nearly the negative impact as software patents.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis particular issue is "Unscientific American".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll of the "Baby Einstein" products need to be eliminated. There use can probably be directly related to the rise in ADHD this country. Infants and toddlers do not benefit from constant electronic stimulation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat's really dopey is that they want more for the digital subscription than for the print. Reminds me of the old ma bell that wanted everyone to shift to touch tone phones...so they charged extra for it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy do you insist on perpetuating the myth that DST increases the daylight hours? It merely shifts the arbitrary clock time for the daylight hours. I expect more concise reporting from SA.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow about email because it wastes so much productive time? When they had to rely on faxes they only got read by who they were meant for. Now you have people sending emails to everybody in an organisation, and they have to check it out in case there is something significant to them hidden in the text. But they use the excuse that the subject header is adequate. All these whizz kids can do is create more time-wasters like Farmville, but not address this problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe world would be better off without 20th-century packaging. Carbon-chain synthetics make lousy packaging. When we are in the workshop, the kitchen, the playroom, and the garage, we re-use glass, metal and cardboard containers. Plastic sacks are less worth keeping. Worth least of all are hooked bubble packs made not to contain, but to display goods of less worth than their extravagant wrapping.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy not have one time for the whole Earth? GMT, or what ever. You could put plus or minus after it to indicate our time zone-- the way we do when we set up our computers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this