Beer and Pretzel Truffles

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My wife believes in magic potions, which used to make me laugh. But since Halloween season started this year, she’s been acting in a way that frightens me. She seems to think she’s a modern-day “witch.” Give me a break!

Now she has three friends who think they are really casting spells when they get together! And this year on Halloween night she’s being formally accepted into their little witchy group meeting at one of their homes, and is getting a new sorceress name. It’s creepy! How do I cope? I’ve had enough of this.

— Seriously Upset, South St. Vital

Dear Upset: Don’t buy into the hocus pocus by being afraid of it and expressing any trepidation to your wife. She needs you to be strong, so she knows she has a solid anchor and can drop out of this witchy group if it becomes too scary or silly for her.

When Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew declared Sept. 17 that the province would remain on permanent daylight time, he suggested it was a historical moment people would share with their “great-great-grandkids.” But, while Sunday, Nov. 1 has been heralded as the date many Canadians will stop changing their clocks, there are rumblings behind the scenes suggesting this will actually cause more trouble than ever before.

There are, of course, the warnings from chrono-biologists and sleep scientists about the damage permanent daylight time will do. The lighter evenings will mean many more dark mornings. But there is another set of problems in the offing in the critical infrastructure that underpins our digital lives.

While it used to be common to spend the Sunday morning after a time change going around our homes updating the clocks, we now wake up to devices that have already adjusted to the new time. These automatic updates occur regularly for daylight time, as well as when we travel to new time zones.

Our clocks are able to change by themselves owing to the hard work of a group of volunteers who were recently named in a list of the people who hold up the internet. This group, led by Paul Eggert, a computer scientist at UCLA, maintains a little-known tool called the Time Zone Database. Since the 1980s, it has kept track of regional, national and international debates about clock time and provided an up-to-date table of what time it should be on our walls.