NEWS
By FRANK ROYLANCE | October 25, 2009
It's the last Sunday in October, time for Europe to switch its clocks back an hour to standard time. We used to do the same thing, but since 2007 we've waited until the first Sunday in November to "fall back." We'll remain on Eastern Standard Time in Maryland until the second Sunday in March, when we'll "spring forward" again. Almost two-thirds of our year now falls within Daylight Saving Time.
NEWS
By Frank Roylance | September 24, 2009
John Polyniak in Lake Shore notes that on Sept. 22 - the fall equinox - daylight lasted nine minutes longer than the night. "So how can it be a true equinox?" he asks. The center of the sun's disk set 12 hours after it rose on the 22nd. But "sunrise" and "sunset" occur when the top of the disk is on the horizon, adding a few minutes of sunlight to the day. Day and night are most equal here on Sept. 26.
NEWS
By Frank Roylance | July 2, 2009
In case you're keeping track, 2009 will be exactly half over today at 8 a.m. That assumes you're going by Universal Time. If you run your life on Eastern Daylight Time, as most of us around here do, the midpoint of the year comes at 1 p.m. Did you make any New Year's resolutions back on Jan. 1? If so, half the time available to make good on your promises has now slipped away.
NEWS
April 17, 2009
News item: Auditors uncover $39.7 million in an obscure city tax collection account that had been left untouched for years. Baltimore finance director says he is embarrassed by the oversight, which is blamed on staff turnover and poor communications. To: Edward J. Gallagher, director of finance Fm: Baltimore taxpayers Re: Some helpful reminders No offense, but have you checked all the city's collection accounts? Replaced the batteries in the calculators? Read every bank statement?
NEWS
By FRANK ROYLANCE | January 11, 2009
Feeling better? We're now a week past the year's latest sunrise, and Old Sol is already climbing above the eastern horizon about a minute earlier than he did on the 4th. We'll gain 12 minutes more morning sunshine by month's end, and we'll add 22 minutes in the evening. So get out there. Enjoy the increasing daylight. Rejigger your circadian rhythms. Expose your skin and try to manufacture some vitamin D.
NEWS
By ANDREW RATNER | December 23, 2008
Raymond Fielding chronicled the last great convulsion between old and new media a half-century ago. It ended in the only modern extinction of a major type of news media. He does not believe what's going on now between print and the Internet will end like that. (Insert huge hopeful sigh from print journalist here.) Fielding wrote The American Newsreel: 1911-1967, which laid out the rise and fall of a now-forgotten form that delivered news to the masses in moving pictures and sound in movie theaters through the first half of the 20th century.
NEWS
By SUSAN REIMER | November 3, 2008
I was sure I'd missed it. You know, the "fall back" part of the "spring forward, fall back" time changing that we do every year. I was sure it got by me somehow. As we moved through the month of October, I kept looking for the little clock on the front page of my newspaper that reminds us that this is the weekend to turn the clocks back, but I never saw it. Turns out, we don't do it in October anymore. We do it during the first weekend in November, so yesterday was the big day. We did it in November last year, too, but it apparently didn't leave much of an impression on me because I spent all of last month waiting for that extra hour of sleep.
NEWS
By FRANK ROYLANCE | August 31, 2008
September arrives tonight, the longest month of the year (count the letters). It's also Baltimore's wettest (3.98" on average), probably thanks to a century of passing tropical systems. Average high temperatures at BWI slip from 82 degrees to 73. Average lows dip from 61 to 51. Records range from a high of 101 degrees on Sept. 7, 1881, to a low of 35 degrees, on Sept. 25, 1963. We'll lose 74 minutes of daylight.
NEWS
By David Steele | June 22, 2008
It's pretty simple, actually: Whether or not you believed he was grandstanding or using gamesmanship (and, seriously, why would you?) all last weekend, if that U.S. Open playoff hadn't included Tiger Woods, would you have paid any attention to it? It took the Boston Celtics six more years to win their next NBA championship after Len Bias died than it took Maryland to win its first national championship afterward. Nobody would have guessed that 22 years and three days ago. More people cheered and supported Rafael Palmeiro after his return from flunking an actual steroid test than cheered last week for Miguel Tejada, who is only suspected, not proven to have used performance enhancers.
NEWS
By Rita St. Clair | April 13, 2008
My 220-year-old townhouse has a formal dining room with a pair of tall windows opening onto a busy street. The room gets plenty of daylight but presents privacy issues. We have therefore covered the windows with heavy floor-to-ceiling draperies. But there's little wall space for stacking the draperies and under-curtains when they are not drawn across the windows. Can you suggest a less ponderous treatment that would allow daylight to enter the space while still preserving our privacy? Yours is a situation in which both practical aims can be achieved without resorting to a treatment of questionable stylistic integrity.