a time to gain, a song to lose

Leporine pon farr got a boost as clocks in DST-aware Bushland bounced an hour forward on Sunday, March 11, 2007. The triumphant political experiment did not, unfortunately, lead to a Y2K-esque wave of fear and IT jobs (although the computing world was not immune to the tickle of time). But what about the impact on prose, poetry and lyrics? Consider Chris de Burgh's Moonlight and Vodka:

moonlight and vodka, takes me away
midnight in moscow is lunchtime in LA

Moscow standard time is 3 hours ahead of UTC and LA standard time (aka PST) is 8 hours behind UTC: hence midnight in moscow would be 1pm PST. Moscow will go into DST on Sunday, March 25, 2007, which, had the US of A stuck to switching on the first Sunday of April, would have given us only a week when the lyrics would be dead on: midnight in moscow would be noon in LA (Moscow would be 4 hours ahead of UTC and LA would still be 8 hours behind thus giving us an extra hour between the two points). But with the decision to spring forward early, the song's "accuracy" goes for a deep six: lunch in LA gets pushed to 2pm PDT. Instead of a gap of 11 hours through most of the year and a week-long bonus of 12 hours, we are now stuck with a gap of 11 hours through most of the year with a 2 week-long penalty of 10 hours.

Mercifully, the end of the song (global warming notwithstanding) benefits
from being less specific:

moonlight and vodka, takes me away
midnight in moscow is sunshine in LA

Yes, in the good old USA.