Time and energy

A few weeks back, the president declared that moving the clocks ahead one hour would alleviate the energy crisis (read: persistent blackouts). One day she announced the time change, a few days later the congress approved it, and a week or so later we were all changing our clocks.

(It reminded me a lot of when her husband declared a new national holiday with about a week's notice.)

Alas, now one of the provinces says it's not happy with the time change and will be switching its clocks back. Those clock-watching surrender monkeys. Why do they hate this country so much?

Meanwhile, a rebounding economy and consumer credit have meant a sharp rise in the purchase and use of air conditioners, which has strained the electrical grid. So the other brilliant strategy for taming the energy crisis is an air conditioner census. Since the air conditioners themselves are unable to fill out the census forms, the collaboration of the city's doormen has been requested.

A survey has been sent out asking them how many air conditioners are in the building.

The government is convinced that if it could just get a handle on how many air conditioners there are in which neighborhoods it could . . . it could what exactly?

It doesn't even matter. After people pitched a fit, the government clarified that participating in the census was voluntary. If you don't want to tell the government how many air conditioners you have or don't have, that's fine.

So now we have self-selected respondents answering a meaningless question.

Such a waste of time and energy.