On expressing an opinion

In the UK, the clocks go back an hour tonight. We revert to "Greenwich Mean Time" from "British Summer Time" a.k.a. daylight saving time. I, with many other people, think this is silly, so I thought I might make a comment on it on the blog.

It was then that I was struck with the curse of academic integrity. When was BST introduced? Who invented it (it was William someone). If the counter-argument to the reversion (how about that for abstraction calculated to lose one's readership?) concerns traffic accidents as children go to school in the dark in Scotland (which is a major plank in the argument. [Isn't it? where's the evidence?]) then how realistic is it? And is it still true today, when fewer children walk to school? (Is that true? Particularly in Scotland?)

• Norway extends even further North than Scotland (doesn't it?) How do they handle that problem? (Can I get that from http://www.regjeringen.no/en.html?id=4 ?)
• And Sweden, and Canada, and Russia...

And what, for goodness' sake, does all this mean in the context of what someone has apparently called "wikieality"? Can't remember who they are, but it was in today's paper somewhere...

More seriously, the gap between the double standards is getting wider.

Asserted opinion seems to be winning; incontrovertible evidence-based research is losing (partly, of course, because there is no such thing. It's a boojum [or is it a snark? I need to check that out].)

OK, 'twas ever thus. (Prove it!)

This post clearly needs the services of a fact-checker in the New Yorker tradition. At least I can support the notion that there are (or were, of course; all evidence pertains to the past) such people. Or can I? The link was to wikipedia...

Draw your own conclusions!