Time Zones Again

No, not the Time Warp Again. Time zones again.

Just over four years ago I posted a blog about time zones. I mistakenly said that there were 34 times zones in the world. 

Recently I found a list of all time zones. Turns out there are 38.

The earliest time zone (where the day starts) is UTC +14 (14 hours earlier than Universal Coordinated Time or UTC, also called Greenwich Mean Time or GMT). That is Kiritimati, Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. I don't understand why it's the earliest time zone. But Australia (which it is part of) has some weird time zones.

The latest time zone is UTC -12 which is Baker Island. According to Wikipedia, it's uninhabited and in the Pacific Ocean.

I live in the Pacific Time Zone of the US which is eight hours behind of UTC (UTC -8) except during daylight saving time with it's seven hours behind (UTC -7). I would love to go on permanent daylight saving time but that's another subject.

There are some weird time zones. For example, there is an Australian time zone that is UTC +8.75. There are a lot of time zones that are a half hour off everyone else. For example two in Australia (Australia has six time zones if I counted correctly), parts of India, at least parts of Afghanistan, and Iran, and Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada. 

There is a border you can walk across and get jet lag because the time zones are 4.5 hours apart (that's China and Afghanistan)(Assuming you could walk across that border). China has one time zone for the entire country, which must be convenient in some ways yet weird in the western parts of the country.

Why is "Universal Coordinated Time" abbreviated "UTC"? That's explained here.

Do you have to deal with time zones? Or are they just boring to you? Or do they confuse you? Let me know in the comments below.

Two Scoops

Here's an example of how my brain works.

For years we had an ice maker in our freezer/fridge combination. I loved it, ice through the door, crushed or "cubed" (they were half-crescents). The guy who repaired my appliances kept telling me he wouldn't have one because of the "liability." I was wondering what he meant by that.

Then one day not long ago, I was sitting in my basement office and I heard water running. I looked in the furnace room and water was coming from the ceiling. I assumed a pipe broke. I ran upstairs to get a bucket and noticed the kitchen floor was flooded. It looked like it was coming from the fridge. I pulled it out but the back was dry. Then I noticed the front of the freezer section was wet. I opened the freezer and water was pouring out of the ice maker. I hit it with my fist and it stopped. I'm assuming a valve was stuck open. I turned off the water to the ice maker and turned it off.

TL;DR: We bought a GE Solo nugget ice maker. If it springs a leak, the worst it could do is spill the three quarts that the side tank holds. It makes a good amount of nugget ice. One problem with it is that it wants to be cleaned about every 12 days which is a twenty-hour process (seriously). The other problem is it likes to howl at times. Or hammer. Not sure what causes that.

The ice maker came with a little scoop to get the ice out of the bin. It takes just over two scoops to fill a 16-ounce glass. And that reminded me of an old marketing campaign for cereal. My mind doing what it does (making weird connections). 

In the 1980s, Kellogg's Raisin Bran was advertised as having "two scoops of raisin in every box." Here's a typical commercial. And it got me thinking, how did they get away with that? Why didn't the FTC call them on it? But "scoop" isn't exactly an SI unit of measure. Those scoops could be whatever size Kellogg's wanted them to be. 

Now, I assume Kellogg's probably precisely measured out the raisins in each box in order to control costs and I'm sure they didn't use "scoops." I think raisins are more expensive than the cereal they put them in.

And that's an example of how my brain works.

Does your brain make weird connections like that? Let me know in the comments below.

Yellow Headlights

A while back I saw a car in the U.S. with yellow headlights. I thought "that's weird." Probably some after-market addition. I wondered if they were legal. I see a lot of illegal after-market changes to cars, mostly LED lights that show red or blue at the front of the car.

In one country in Europe, yellow headlights were not only legal, but required.

Have you ever noticed maybe in old movies set in Europe or maybe you've traveled to Europe and seen it: some older cars in Europe have yellow headlights.

If you do see that, you immediately should know the car is from France. 

In 1937, France mandated yellow headlights to, "filter out violet, blue, and indigo light, which cause glare and dazzle for oncoming motorists" according to Google AI. Also, during World War II, it helped distinguish civilian cars from those of the Germans.

The French required yellow headlights on civilian cars until 1993, when European Union laws superseded French law. And EU law does not allow yellow headlights. If you're French and you want to put yellow headlights on your car, it has to predate 1993. Otherwise, it's illegal.

It would be interesting to see if the yellow headlights achieved their goal of making the road safer in France. Did anyone do a study on that? I don't know. 

I frankly think the yellow headlights are ugly. But that's just me.

What do you think of yellow headlights. Let me know in the comments below.

Spielberg's Machete

There's a concept in fiction (movies, books, television, etc.) that if you introduce an element in the story, it must be used later. That is, if you introduce a gun in the first act of the play, someone needs to fire it before the play is over. It's called "Chekhov's gun." Google AI says:

"This principle, popularized by [Russian playwright] Anton Chekhov, emphasizes that authors should avoid including unnecessary details or making false promises to the audience. It's a way to ensure that every element serves a purpose and contributes to the overall narrative."

WARNING: SPOILERS (if you somehow haven't seen Jaws in the past 50 years), 

I recently watched the movie Jaws because last year it was 50 years old and I hadn't seen it for a long time. There's a moment in that movie that I think violates Chekhov's gun. And I thought that when I saw the movie when I was 15 years old (although I didn't call it "Chekhov's gun").

At one point, the shark hunter Quint rams a machete into the gunwale of their boat, the Orca. The camera lingers on it for just a moment (see the picture above). Even when I was 15 I thought "that's going to come into play in the future, probably in the climax." And guess what? It didn't. We never see the machete again. 

My current opinion is that Quint should have grabbed it when the shark was eating him and tried to use it on the fish. But he doesn't.

Therefore, I think Spielberg violated the principle of Chekhov's gun. Quod erat demonstrandum.

What do you think? Am I crazy to critique one of the best directors ever? Let me know in the comments below.

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.

We Are a Quarter of a Century into the 21 Century

Happy New Year!

Now we actually are a quarter of a century into the 21st century.

Why now and not last year?

Because there was no year zero. We went from 1 BC (BCE) to 1 AD (CE).

So the first century was 1 to 101.

The second century was 101 to 201.

The third century was 201 to 301.

And so on until the 21st century will be 2001 to 2101.

So 25 years into the 21st century is 2026. Which starts today.

But dang, a quarter of a century into the 21st century. That's amazing.

Merry Christmas

 Merry Christmas!

That is all.

Die Hard and Ghostbusters

It's that time of year for everyone's favorite Christmas movie: Die Hard. I watched it last week on Amazon Prime Video in 4K UHD. 

And on a recent weekend (which is when I watch movies), I watched Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II. I watched them on a cable channel which means they were "edited for content." I hate that. Also, I haven't seen Ghostbusters II since probably 1990 or whenever it was available in my local Blockbuster. I have Ghostbusters on DVD so I can watch it whenever the mood strikes.

While watching Ghostbusters, I remembered the connections it has to Die Hard. Everyone pretty much knows that Reginald VelJohnson played an unnamed cop in Ghostbusters and played a cop (Sgt. Al Powell) in Die Hard. (He also went on to play a cop in the sitcom Family Matters.)

Also in Ghostbusters is William Atherton as a pesky, annoying EPA bureaucrat. And he's in Die Hard as a pesky, annoying television news reporter.  

But then I went on to watch Ghostbusters II and it, too, has Die Hard connections. In it, Mary Ellen Trainor plays a mother at a birthday party. She was also a news anchor in Die Hard.

Finally, Wilhelm von Homburg plays Vigo (the bad spirit) in Ghostbusters II and James (one of the terrorists) in Die Hard.

Welcome to the party, pal!

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.