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entries for 2002/6/05
changing phase
The jargon file understands!
phase
1. n. The offset of one's waking-sleeping schedule
with respect to the standard 24-hour cycle; a useful concept among
people who often work at night and/or according to no fixed
schedule. It is not uncommon to change one's phase by as much as 6
hours per day on a regular basis. "What's your phase?" "I've
been getting in about 8 P.M. lately, but I'm going to wrap around to the day schedule by Friday." A person who is roughly
12 hours out of phase is sometimes said to be in `night mode'.
(The term `day mode' is also (but less frequently) used, meaning
you're working 9 to 5 (or, more likely, 10 to 6).) The act of
altering one's cycle is called `changing phase'; `phase
shifting' has also been recently reported from Caltech.
2. `change phase the hard way': To stay awake for a very long
time in order to get into a different phase. 3. `change phase
the easy way': To stay asleep, etc. However, some claim that
either staying awake longer or sleeping longer is easy, and that it
is shortening your day or night that is really hard (see
wrap around). The `jet lag' that afflicts travelers who
cross many time-zone boundaries may be attributed to two distinct
causes: the strain of travel per se, and the strain of changing
phase. Hackers who suddenly find that they must change phase
drastically in a short period of time, particularly the hard way,
experience something very like jet lag without traveling.
one nation under what?
In high school, they used to make us say the pledge of alliegance every monday morning. That struck me as funny. A pledge should be voluntary, not manditory. Oh well. Anyway, I'm all for the flag and the republic for which it stands, but do we have to mix the church and state?
The Pledge Restoration Project tells the history of the pledge, and how it was rewritten in 1954. Here's what it said originally:
I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which
it stands- one nation indivisible-with liberty and justice for all.