Above: Time explained. (I first saw this program on a Virgin Atlantic fight across the Atlantic, hurtling through time zones. Appropriate, no?)

- Bad timing: Utah should stick with daylight time - Salt Lake Tribune Editorial

“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, nonsubjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey ... stuff.”
— The Doctor
As any self-respecting science fiction fangeek can tell you, messing around with the space-time continuum can be a really bad idea. But it isn’t always clear what actions constitute the messing around and what actions amount to putting it right again. Thereby hangs many a time-traveling tale.
One such story may come before members of the Utah Legislature (a body thought by some to be stuck in the past) when state Rep. Jim Nielson, R-Bountiful, brings up his bill to end the observance of daylight saving time in Utah.
It is another one of those pointless message bills that our lawmakers are so fond of. But setting Utah’s clocks apart from those in Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming and New Mexico for half the year would be less empowering than annoying.
Nielson’s reasoning, apparently, has less to do with whether setting the clocks an hour forward in the spring and an hour backward in the fall is an energy-saving good idea than with whose idea it was. He portrays his measure as a states rights matter, objecting to the federal government’s presumption to tell everyone across the country what time it is.
The flaw in that thinking is that the federal government doesn’t require any state to observe daylight saving time. Arizona doesn’t. Indiana didn’t until 2006, when Gov. Mitch Daniels convinced the Legislature there that it was silly, and confusing, to be an island apart from its neighbors. ...
... Opting out of daylight saving time might give Rep. Nielson and his fellow lawmakers a warm and fuzzy feeling of sticking it to the man. And there is an argument to be made that the feds ought to dial DST back a bit sooner in the fall, so that morning trips to work and, especially, school aren’t so dark.
But a Utah opt-out from DST, when the state already suffers from an image of being behind the times, would be a fall back, not a spring forward.

Think daylight saving time is a big deal? How about this:
- Samoa and Tokelau to cross international date line, skip Dec. 30 - AP/Salt Lake Tribune

APIA, Samoa - The tiny South Pacific nation of Samoa and its neighbor Tokelau will jump forward in time on Thursday, crossing westward over the international date line to align themselves with their other 21st century trading partners throughout the region.
At the stroke of midnight on Dec. 29, time in Samoa and Tokelau will leap forward to Dec. 31 - New Year's Eve. For Samoa's 186,000 citizens, and the 1,500 in Tokelau, Friday, Dec. 30, 2011, will simply cease to exist. ...