Daylight Wasting Time

I was recently thinking about how, a long time ago, I deduced that Daylight Saving Time is actually quite wasteful. So, I tried to go back and re-deduce my previous logic.
First of all, DST obviously doesn't change, in either direction, the amount of daylight that there is. The clouds don't part, the Earth's spin doesn't change, and Earth's sun doesn't brighten or dim based on how we've set our clocks.
Moreover, though, DST makes us have to deal with nighttime more. Think of it this way. Imagine that, on a certain day, sunrise would be at 0600. This is just to make the math simple. Let's say that you would wake up at 0600. In that case, you would get up at sunrise. But wait! What if it's DST? Well, we set our clocks 1 hour ahead. Now, sunrise is at 0700. If you're anybody besides a farmer (or hunter-gatherer), though, then your schedule isn't based on sunrise; it's based on the clock. So, if you're waking up at 0600, then you're waking up 1 hour before sunrise. This can be applied to any time, of course. If you'd get up at 0615 - 15 minutes after sunrise - then you'll get up at 0615 - 45 minutes before sunrise.
I noticed this back when I was going to school, since it increased the frequency and extent to which we would have to travel to school in the dark. Of course, this also affects teachers, bus drivers, and parents who have to get their kids ready for school. This also tends to affect anyone who works an 8-5 job, which is probably at least half of all workers.
I mentioned farmers, so I've probably gotten someone thinking "but DST was made for farmers!" Well, that doesn't really make sense. Farmers don't care what time the clocks say. Sunrise could happen at gobbledygook mcsquigglepants and it wouldn't matter.

Survival Mode Tweak

I've come up with a tweak to what I'll call "Survival Mode" in this post. Survival Mode, for our purposes, is a mode in a video game (usually a first person shooter) where each team (usually 2, possibly more) has a certain number of lives, and the first team to run out of lives loses. (Problems arise with 3 or more teams. Does the game end when 1 team is out? (presumably, whoever has the most lives left wins) Or do you keep going until there's one team left with lives? (creating a player elimination - or in this case, team eliminatiion - mechanic))
But what if the teams have different numbers of players? For instance, what happens in a 5v4 game? Well, usually, each team gets the same number of lives. In some games, though, the larger team might have an advantage, as 5 people are better at killing 4 people than 4 people are at killing 5 people, all things being equal. Here, I propose a tweak to this sort of gameplay.
Instead of counting deaths, count spawns. In this way, the team with 5 players uses up 5 spawns right away, while that with 4 players only uses up 4 spawns. Of course, this shortens the game unless the base level of "lives" is changed, but that's up to each game, anyway.

Inuyasha and the Lord of the Jewel?

OK, so, a while back, I saw a parody of The Lord of the Rings and of Inuyasha that used Inuyasha clips and its own dialog. Basically, Inuyasha & pals = fellowship, sacred jewel thing = one ring, etc. I think that it was called "Inuyasha and the Lord of the Jewel", though I could be wrong about this. Sadly, while I can find other, similar, shorter parodies, I can't find this one.
So, if you know where I can find it, or even if you just know a little detail, like that I got the title wrong, then leave a comment below, or send me an e-mail. That's all for now.

... No Evil Shall Escape My Might ...

So, yesterday, I was thinking of something. This probably came about due to looking at Amazing Freaking Grace on TV Tropes. I'm pretty sure that whatever I was thinking used the "common meter".
Basically, I was thinking of a song or poem in English whose first two lines end in the /ait/ sound, i.e., "-ite"/"-ight". I was thinking that it would be amusing if the third line, as I continued reciting it, went "No evil shall escape my might", which does not belong there, of course, but would continue the rhyme and meter.
I can't remember what the first two lines that I was trying to use were, though. If you can think of it, then leave a comment or send me an e-mail.

Conversations Regarding Conversation Hearts

So, we got some conversation hearts recently, and, as usual, some of them struck me, but this time, since I'm trying to blog a bunch this year, I figured that I'd blog about them.

"Marry Me"
Forward much? This is either a very forward proposition for a conversation heart or a very poor choice in marriage proposals, unless you met at a NECO fan club or something.

"Adore Me"
Note that this does not, in fact, say "I adore you", but rather says "adore me". The giver is instructing the receiver to adore him or her, which works just about as well as saying "love me" or "have the same interests as I do".

"Tweet Me"
Oh, I see that twitter has become mainstream now. Well, that's going to be about as effective at stopping me as the mainstreamness of blogs is at stopping me from blogging.

P.S.: It's a short post this week, as I forgot about what subject I had originally intended to blog.

Vulcans and Spock

I've thought about this in the past.
Vulcans generally treat Spock, who is half-Vulcan and half-Human (for which I just turn off my understanding of evolutionary and developmental biology), as having a disadvantage toward being as disciplined and logical as other Vulcans. Supposedly, this is because the Human component makes him more emotional and less rational.
This makes no sense.
I don't say that because I think that Humans are extremely rational or anything like that. The thing is that, as I understand it, Vulcan logic is cultural. Specifically, Vulcans developed their logical culture as a reaction against their extremely chaotic and destructive nature. Becoming logical allowed Vulcans to rise up from their very real savagery and become a very well-developed intelligent species.
So, innately, Vulcans are a bunch of savage brutes, more so than Humans, and their culture, reacting against that, has allowed them to become extremely rational, more so than Humans. The thing is that culture is not built into one's biology. A half-Human half-Vulcan, raised as a Vulcan, should be just as logical as any Vulcan. Indeed, a Human raised as a Vulcan would actually have an advantage, since his urges would not be nearly as strong as those of his Vulcan counterparts.
Well, that's it. For any of you who know Star Trek: What do you think? Am I wrong? Did I miss something? Or am I right, and there's a big hole in the Vulcan treatment of Spock?

Crazy Idea: Double-iPad

I had an idea on the day that the iPad was announced (yesterday, I think). Imagine 2 iPads, next to each other, touching, longer side to longer side, facing the same way. Now, imagine that they are connected by a hinge, and that they could close together all the way, such that the screens face each other, similar to how a laptop closes screen-to-keyboard. Finally, imagine that these two devices are the same device, rather than two separate devices tacked together. I think that this device - which I will tentatively call the iPad DS - would be good. It's like a cross among an iPad, a conventional laptop (or perhaps a tablet PC - I don't know much about them), and a Nintendo DS.
This layout has some advantages over the other devices:
-The maximum potential screen area is double that of an iPad.
-With the right settings, one vertical, landscape screen could act like a normal laptop screen, and the other screen could function as a keyboard. Thus, it could effectively be a laptop with a touch-screen, but it adds versatility, since it doesn't have to be.
-The ability to close it means that the screens are better-protected than that of the iPad.
-It would potentially be very nice for reading newspapers or books. Think of holding a laptop book-wise, with the keyboard replaced by another screen.
I estimate the cost for the basic version of such a device at $1000 if it's made by Apple. The cost of $500 per iPad is a good guideline, and there is added complexity, but at the same time, the hardest part of development is already finished.
I have no plans to buy an iPad, for many reasons. I don't have a job yet, I already have a computer that's new as of 3 months ago, and I like using my computer on my desk (keyboard down and monitor up). However, if a double-iPad were released, then I would seriously consider buying it once I have consistent work.