Todd Stadler's blog

I am the Andy Rooney of the blogosphere

You know what's stupid? In our so-called "time system", 11:40pm comes after 12:30pm. Think about it. Gah!

I was looking at the itinerary for our trip to Australia and it took me several moments to work out how it is that we fly out of Portland (to LA) at 12:30pm, yet fly out of LA at 11:40pm. What kind of sick mind came up with that bright idea?

Probably the same sick mind that set up our itinerary so that we spend nine of the first twelve hours of our trip in LAX, lovely LAX. (Okay, there are extenuating circumstances to why our itinerary is so foul — including an even more cruel fourteen-hour LAX layover on the way home — but if I mentioned those, you wouldn't feel as sorry for me. And pity is one of this blog's driving forces, behind ego. Well behind ego.)

But enough about me. Back to my rantings on chronology.

So the aforementioned problem stems from the fact that, even after we've crossed the meridian — that is, noon, the "m" in your "am" and "pm" — we still continue to count up using the ante meridiem (before the meridian) numbers. Oddly, we reset the count an hour after crossing the meridian, and then only starting at 1, not 0.

It sounds stupid when I actually write it out like this — is the problem that no one actually bothered to do this when they came up with this system? Did they just talk a bit and then figure everything else would fall in place:

Mr. Kronos: Hey, let's invent a time system! I'm tired of having everything occur all at once!

Mrs. Kronos: Yeah, good idea! Let's break the day up into hours ... I don't know, how about twelve of them?

Mr. Kronos: Twelve? I don't know ... I was kind of hoping for more, so I could get more done in the day. Maybe twenty or more?

Mrs. Kronos: Well, okay, but I already made this clock face, and it only has twelve hours on it.

Mr. Kronos: Oh, that's alright, we'll just say that you have to go through twelve hours twice every day. So the day will start at 1 on the clock and ...

Mrs. Kronos: Um, about that ... I put 12 at the top of my clock face. Can we have it start at twelve instead?

Mr. Kronos: Hmm ... I guess. But people are going to be confused by that 12–1 jump, so let's put it at some time of day when no one will notice, in the middle of the night. Well, okay, not the exact middle ... a little closer to the beginning, really.

Mrs. Kronos: Yes, no one will be awake then to notice. And that works out, too, because when the clock strikes twelve in the daytime, it will alert people to the fact that the day is half over!

Ah, those wacky Greek plays! They have so much to teach us. Anyhow, I think you see my point: our whole time system is stupid.

I mean, who starts a day at an hour when many people are still awake from the previous day, as it were? Why not start the day, oh, I don't know, when the sun that gives rise to our very concept of "day" comes up in the morning?

If that were the only thing wrong with our measuring of time ... well, I still would have had enough fodder for this blog entry. And yet, because there is so much more that is deeply wrong with our time-counting, I have more.

For instance! We group our days into weeks and, because we are not puritanical all-work-and-no-play types, give that week a proper two-day end. All well and good. Except that the week starts in the middle of the weekend.

Weekend people! Week. End. Guess what starts after the week ends? That's right, the next week. Oh, except in our system, where the next week starts in the middle of the previous week's end. Yeah, think about that sentence for a bit. Before your head explodes, that is!

Oh, but that's not all! We break up our years into seasons. And sure, almost everyone agrees that the seasons start before they officially start. Who waits until June 21st to celebrate summer or December 21st to welcome winter?

But in keeping with the theme of "time units that start when you least expect them to", our new year starts well over a week after winter officially begins, and several weeks after winter-like weather has settled in. Why not start the new year when spring — hello? the season of renewal and new beginnings? — begins? Because that would make sense, that's why.

While I'm at it, whoever came up with these time units and their beginnings was also probably responsible for the whole Western Hemisphere debacle.

Oh, you're not aware of any such debacle? Have you ever looked at a picture of the Western Hemisphere? Sure, it's got North and South America like you'd expect. And also almost all of Britain and Spain.

So the "Western Hemisphere", which is usually used as shorthand for "the Americas and Europe", actually includes all of the former and an arbitrarily small chunk of the latter. Let's face it — the people of yore just didn't know how to divide things up well. Prime meridian, my foot!

But honestly, I'm just grumpy about the long layovers. Sorry.

Fun Australia facts

Julia and I are traveling to Australia in a few weeks to visit the in-laws. (Ha! And your in-laws live in Scranton! Neener!) Julia's brother-in-law James is a native Aussie, and he and Julia's sister now live north of Sydney.

Anyhow, I've been reading up on Australia, and thought I'd share some interesting facts I've learned:

• Australians often refer to their country as "Oz", due to their poor spelling habits. Kansans also refer to their land as "Oz", due to a movie that was filmed in California. This is just one of many similarities between Australians and Kansans.
• Some people think of Australia as a city-state, but it is more accurate to refer to it as a city-state-island-country-continent. The city of Australia is broken up into six boroughs (such as New South Wales and Queensland) — seven if you count the borough of Northern Territory, which no one does.
• One popular drink in Australia is something called "bee-uh" (orthographic variations exist due to Australians' aforementioned poor spelling habits). It was developed in the 1800's to enable people to sit through cricket matches. Bee-uh is commonly consumed in units called "three".
• "Torres Straight Islanders" refers to people living on islands off the coast of Australia, near Manly Beach. Australians take their heterosexuality very seriously.
• Australia is frequently referred to as "The Canada of the South Pacific". Along those lines, you will sometimes hear it called "South Canuckistan", "The 52nd State" (Canada is the 51st since it's closer — sorry Puerto Rico; you snooze, you lose), and "The Southern Great White North". Also, kangaroos are sometimes called "Australian mooses".
• Many places in Sydney — such as Kings Cross, Hyde Park, Paddington, and Oxford Street — were named after places in London, owing to very drunk British sailors being unsure of where exactly they'd landed. Sydney's other place names, such as Woolloomooloo, were the result of a series of dares involving a set of Scrabble tiles, also undertaken by the aforementioned drunken sailors.
• Subsequent research fails to bear up the previous statement that Kansans refer to Kansas as "Oz", but they should consider doing so, since "Kansas" sounds sort of dull and flat.

A new definition of 'organic'?

While reading a New York Times article on organic food labeling, in which large corporations made a case for watering down the legal definition of "organic", I came across an apparently serious quote that nonetheless made me chuckle. And/or wince.

The chief executive of Annie's Homegrown ("The organic food that tastes just like corporate industrial product"), in a letter to the Agriculture Department, attempted to argue that nonorganic annatto was a crucial ingredient in the company's macaroni and cheese:

Organic annatto is not readily available and does not deliver the same cheese color. Making orange colored macaroni and cheese is an important element of our offering. Without annatto, our macaroni-and-cheese products would be white.

Well, of course! I mean, can you just imagine the horror of eating white macaroni-and-cheese? Of course you can — you can buy white cheddar mac from Annie's!

Ah, but what if, to quote Annie's corporate copy, "parents ... want organic and kids ... want orange"? What then? Surely you don't expect Annie's to give up market share to other brands of preternaturally orange mac-'n'-cheez? Kids got to have their orange food!

Besides, Annie's promises their macaroni-and-cheese only contains "all-natural ingredients ... — no weird stuff", so even if their annatto isn't organic, at least it's ... actually, what is annatto?

Wikipedia is so glad you asked. Annatto "is a derivative of the [seed of the] achiote trees of tropical regions of the Americas".

Well, there's certainly nothing "weird" about adding some (nonorganic) Brazilian seed coloring to your "all-natural", organic American pasta dish for the express purpose of making it appear some color other than its natural one. I take it all back.

Because the important thing here is that kids are eating organic food — and by "organic" I mean "more expensive".