Daylight savings time is a twice-yearly reminder that you own too many damned clocks.

I was on my way home Friday afternoon when I got stuck behind a woman who thought lazily chatting on her cell phone was more important than driving. As this is one of my pet peeves, I thought about how to best get my point across to her.

A hand gesture seemed appropriate, though not the obscene kind, as the point would be lost. I thought holding up my hand and making talking movements would be better, but that still wasn’t right.

Finally, I figured out the perfect foil: a cell phone hand puppet! Imagine a puppet with a phone glued to its ear and a vapid look on its face. Upon encountering a jabbering idiot paying no attention to the road, simply hold up the idiot-resembling puppet and make wild talking gestures, perhaps punctuated with some falsetto “blah, blah, blahs!” It’s sure to get the point across and will be fun to boot!

But wait a minute, you say. What happens if the idiot in question pulls over and gets in your face? No worries, you’ve got deniability! “Oh, sorry man,” you could explain. “Yeah, that was the puppet. He has a mind of his own, you know.” Follow this with a few crazy-as-a-loon expressions and you’re home free.

I see the puppet idea really taking off and providing a good way to communicate your concern about the dangers of cell phones and driving. In fact its almost perfect, except for one tiny little flaw: fumbling with a puppet is as bad as fumbling with a phone.

Whoops. I guess I also need to invent a hands-free puppet.

The hug given by a seatbelt is a poor approximation of the real thing.

Would the media have fallen all over the JonBenet Ramsey story if she had been named Jane or Mary?

I’m listening now as the air conditioner in my office slowly tears itself apart. Bad bearings have once again caused it to wheeze as it runs, providing some grating background noise as I work. Left unaddressed for a few days, it will increase to a point where one cannot think.

The air conditioner is a fussy, mechanical affair, largely unchanged since its invention in 1842. That’s when Dr. John Corrie of Apalachicola, Florida thought to use a compressor to cool his hospital patients. A compressor is still at the heart of today’s air conditioners.

Still, in a hundred and sixty years compressors haven’t evolved much. Like the one squealing over my head right now, they need frequent maintenance, they’re very sensitive to voltage changes, and they consume a tremendous amount of electricity. Why, after 160 years of cooling air, do we still use such a troublesome part?

Why do places like California and New York suffer blackouts in the heat of summer? They do because of electricity demand fueled by air conditioner compressors. People don’t turn on more lights or run more equipment when it gets hot. That surge in electricity demand is all air conditioning.

There are ways of cooling things which do not require a compressor. A recent technology called thermoacoustics uses sound to do the work. While thermoacoustic refrigerators are still under development, they promise to solve many of the issues plaguing modern air conditioning. Should they catch on, air conditioners will become more reliable, perhaps even more quiet, and use a fraction of the electricity the compressor models use. Our need for oil, coal, and neutrons to cool ourselves will drop as well. It will be nothing short of revolutionary.

With every whine and grind of the compressor above me, I long more for this cooling revolution.

If this upcoming sales tax holiday is such a wonderful thing, why can’t every day be a holiday?

What if those random-seeming words at the bottom of spam emails are really a secret message sent to me by space aliens? I mean, if they can leave random shapes in cornfields, who’s to say they don’t know how to write spam emails?

Its a shame we welcome visitors to this country by getting a mugshot and prints from them, like they’re getting booked into jail.

Then again, maybe they are. America is a country ruled by fear.

Is there anything more worthless than the weather service information on “chance of rain?” Why bother to provide it at all? Rain is so hit-or-miss that any stats are essentially worthless.

If you think about it, the chance of somebody getting rain is pretty much 100 percent. It just may not be anywhere near you.

While driving around today, I noticed gathering clouds. Rain clouds, to be exact. They’re gonna rain on somebody nearby; the chance of that is 100 percent. Still, the official forecast says 40 percent.

What the forecast needs to say is the chance that rain will fall somewhere within the area. In addition to that, there needs to be a chance that that rain will fall on any particular spot, which is what is done now. Thus, there is a 100 percent chance of rain in the area, but only a 40 percent chance it will fall any particular place.

Or I can just poke my head outside every now and then to check. That might make more sense.