Sunday, November 3, 2024

I'm Tired... So Tired of it over and over again

Today, it's not just the Flying Fertilizer (a creative way of saying bullshit) as we approach the election. It's also switching the clocks back to standard time, despite the passage of state and national laws to stay on one time all year long. 

Florida's law was passed in 2018 and it's probably not necessary for me to point out: that was six freaking years ago!!! The kicker is that Florida did it wrong (I know: quelle surprise). 

By overwhelming, bipartisan majorities, the normally fractious Senate and House agreed this week to make Florida the first in the nation to adopt year-round daylight saving time statewide. It would mean later sunrises and sunsets from November to March, peak tourist season for many beach cities.

That's right, for some reason, they want us to stay on DST all year long - in essence, putting us in the next time zone east of us. According to Federal law, a state can refuse to go on DST and they're free to do so, but to stay on DST requires congressional approval. That's even illogical for something coming out of Washington. 

As I've said before, if I wrote such ninny legislation, I would have made Standard Time the standard time.  Solar noon is when the sun is on the meridian, that line that goes from north to south passing directly overhead.  With DST, solar noon occurs closer to 1PM, not 12 noon.  Maybe I'm anal-retentive, but having solar noon at 1PM forever is just wrong. 

It's not just Florida, though, three of the New England states, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine, want to stay on DST all year, too (or move one time zone east, however you like to think of it). I don't see where the authority to regulate clocks comes out of the constitution, but to mimic Dr. McCoy from the original Star Trek series, "dammit Jim, I'm radio designer not a lawyer." 

Which makes me ask why doesn't congress scrap their legal control over staying on DST making staying on DST like a state deciding to never go on DST?  Cancel all those laws. Instead, the Senate passed a bill in March of 2022 to end DST. I assume the bill must have been killed in the house when it had to go there for approval. 

Since 2015, 30 states have introduced legislation to end the twice-yearly changing of clocks, with some states proposing to do it only if neighboring states do the same. A 2019 poll found 71% of Americans prefer to no longer switch their clocks twice a year. The only controversy seems to be if states prefer to stay on standard time year round or stay on DST all year.

Yeah, you'll have groups in each state that want the opposite times.  That's inevitable.  In Florida it appears the main tourist industry reps wanted to stay on DST. The tourist industry backing is how they got the law passed while some other groups wanted to stay on standard time.  The inevitable physics of the situation is that states get different variations of their amount of sunlight because that varies with latitude and it changes far more the farther north you get. That change in sunlight hours with the seasons is caused by the 23.5 degree inclination of Earth's axis.  

Here in the southernmost reaches of the US, (I'm not in the tropics - none of Florida is) we have less variation.  On the summer solstice, our day is just short of 14 hours long - 13:55.  On the winter solstice it's 3 hours 34 minutes shorter, 10:21. (source)  In Minneapolis, MN, their longest day is 15:37 - just over an hour and half longer than ours - and the shortest day shortens down to 8:46, virtually seven hours shorter than their longest day.  Compare that to our 3-1/2 hour difference between the longest and shortest days.  Nothing can be done to change those times.  All DST does is change what we call them. 


It may be a bit melodramatic to say the clocks are killing people, but there are some well-documented side effects of the "jet lag" people get from the time changes: more car accidents, more accidents at work, higher rates of heart attacks and strokes, and more. This image is from entrepreneur Scott Yates, who runs a website called #LockTheClock, dedicated to keeping pushing on this issue. That website is quite different from 2020 when I first used the image.  He's trying to push that boulder uphill and it's tough. 



14 comments:

  1. So happy we are in the part of AZ that stays on Mountain Standard Time all year.

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  2. I'll be glad when the election is over, I have as much control over that (half the offerings for President are appointed!) as I do over time or the weather. I've no real say in any of them but I am tired of the ads.

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  3. I agree 100%, SiG. STAY on Standard Time. I try and avoid ALL the MSM "News" outlets. Makes my BS Detector go off-scale....

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  4. It's a demonstration of the power of the state. They don't really care what the clocks say... but they do care that you and me acquiesce to whatever whims and thoughts whistle between their ears. It's about subjecting you. When forced to do something stupid, it demoralizes and weakens your free will. But who's going to run around working on their own version of the clock? Nobody, so everyone submit's to the state. After that, the rest are easy, you're already supine.

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  5. What's not to like if changing time kills some people?
    Plenty of people around where the world would be FAR better off with them not alive!

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  6. I honestly meant to put a line or two about how horrible the election talk is but I guess being annoyed at the same old DST nonsense year after year took over.

    The MSM is such a Cumilla talking head that there isn't at thing they say that can't be be refuted with the most cursory look into the truth. I saw in the last few days that trust in the media is very low and one of them, maybe even Bezos, is saying "maybe we should be more careful."

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  7. posit:
    from time immemorial the media have never been aught but a propaganda machine

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    1. I'm old enough to remember Walter Cronkite and the Huntley Brinkley Report, so yeah.

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  8. Well sure, they want darkness, they need to keep is in the dark and in as many ways as possible, from physical darkness to darkness if the spirit and the heart, they feed on something out of darkness, its obvious as day light now, mushroom us literally, it is dark energy, peoples energy that is dark, they for effin' sure do not like any of the light, light of happiness or prosperity or friendship and love.
    Look all around, its the energy from people feeling fear and being afraid, it is a form of power and they are feeding off it. Its all about controlling us, so we all be good little slaves, good little batteries charged with fear and hate and uncertainty.
    It could not be any more obvious.
    Something, some entities on this planet have created wars and genocide since time immortal, all that death and suffering, they feast on it.

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  9. and those guys where all fake, another control, thats all,

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  10. I understand the annoyance that a lot of people feel about changing the clocks twice a year, but I'm amazed by the level of passion it seems to engender in some. DST was adopted in various places around the world for what the authorities at the time thought were good reasons (in our case, I believe, to save energy during wartime). Those reasons may seem illogical or obsolete today, but to say that DST exists only to permit our Evil Overlords to subjugate us is ridiculous. I think it would be equally ridiculous for each state to set its own policy; four time zones is plenty enough, thank you very much.

    Finally, imposing one universal version with no changes has its own drawbacks. We tried that in 1974 during the energy crisis and found that it meant sending kids to school in the dark, thus inviting potentially fatal accidents. The bottom line, I guess, is that there's no simple solution -- there are always tradeoffs.

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  11. I am a fan of Z time - UCT, GMT, whatever. You can learn your local "noon" in GMT. You can learn when the date rolls over in GMT. But for long distance travel, or ham radio, GMT time and DATE is the way to go.

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  12. Only Congress can f**k something up more reliably than an army of retards.

    Just kill DST as a stupid and pointless anachronism from a time when people where clodkickers.

    The farming population has gone from 80% of the pop. to <2%, and even they don't want DST.

    Kill it. Kill it with fire. Then drop the ashes into a live volcano.

    And if anyone ever again suggests it, even in jest or as a trial balloon, they should be dragged bodily out of the legislature, and have a stake driven through their heart while they're alive and screaming, in public, on the building steps, right then and there, pour encourager les autres. And just before the blow, let them know you're also going after their families.

    There is no amount of hate for this endless DST stupidity that is enough.

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  13. I likewise hate daylight savings time - it should be normal time year 'round. Let's just not spring forward, and call it good.

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