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“I only regret that I have but one face to palm for my country.”
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Just something to get half my readers all riled up...
I like DST so much that I think we should just stay on it.
Snip that hour of daylight off the front end of the day where it's only
useful to roosters and paperboys and stitch it on the other end where
decent human beings can use it.
WHAT DO YOU SAY TO EVERYONE ADOPTING GREENWICH MEAN TIME (GMT) ALSO KNOWNAS UNIVERSAL TIME (UT) OR ZULU TIME ZONE AS A UNIVERSAL WATCH TIME ?
THAT WAY IN THIS EVER SHRINKING WORLD EVERYONE WILL KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS EVERYWHERE WITHOUT THE TEDIOUS INTERPOLATION OF FIGURING THE WESTERLY OR EASTERLY LONGITUDE DIVIDED BY 60 MINUTES OF ARC ON A GREAT CIRCLE ETC ETC ON WOULD KNOW ITS 20 HOURS 6 MINUTES EVERYWHERE!
NAVIGATORS ASTRONOMERS RADIO OPERATORS AND THE MILITARY HAVE USED IT FOR CENTURIES ITS TIME TO LEARN THE ACCURATE WAY TO TELL TIME !
"Just move us to Central Time. That will fix most of the problem."
Eff that!
Back when I lived in Knoxville I used to hate it that, when I went to visit Oleg in the summer, the sun in Nashville went down not long after eight while back in K-town it was after nine before it dipped below the horizon in midsummer.
That's the difference between being on the trailing and leading edges of a time zone.
everybody should switch to UTC. It would solve a large number of software bugs.
While we are at it, the USA should conquer the whole world and make everyone use ASCII. This UTF clusterfuck is also a huge nightmare. Plus, UTF doesn't have codepoints for Klingon, Kzinti or Tengwar.
We could go to half hour time zone intervals instead of hour time zone intervals. That should give the same energy savings by better aligning people's lives with the patterns of sunlight without putting people into sleep debt for a month.
What I'd actually like is a single world time so that people can adjust to their own preferences naturally while still allowing time coordination across wide areas.
If I lived in the Midwest, every clock I owned would receive atomic time signals or lookup it's own time via NTP.
Lest we need yet another good example of incompetence in government, you can't even get WWVB here on the east coast without an antenna bigger than a bread box.
Why is this still a problem we need to keep solving twice a year, well into the 21st century?
We were on Central Time when I was a little kid. The only reason we went on Eastern was commercial in nature. But in a net-connected world, it makes no sense for us to be an hour ahead of Chicago just so we can be on New Yawk time. How am I supposed to tune into Cubs games if I don't know what time they come on? ;-)
But you try to tell the kids of today that, and they don't believe you.
Anon 5:56, you may want to read this article which discusses a study that found that there are no energy savings from DST.
You could always move further north. When I used to travel for my last job between the Puget Sound area and San Diego, I was always surprised by the fact that the days were about an hour longer(or shorter in the winter) in Washington. I've never really felt like I live 'up north' but that 1500 miles of curveture makes a difference.
Back when DST was coming and folks had their panties properly bunched up, one argument against was one farmer said his cows wouldn't know when to be milked...
Love DST and the change doesn't bother me, but I don't have to change all my livestock's watches.
Oh, I am among the half who are riled, you betcha. If you want to get up an hour earlier in the summer, well, just get up an hour earlier. They sell these alarm-clock thingies just about everywhere, you know.
It seems that high noon will occur here, tomorrow, at about 1:22 PM by the clock. That is just crazy. The time of day is defined, and has always been defined, by Sun angle.
I think I am just going to set my watch to Zulu. If I had one of those fancy watches which keep time in two places, I'd set one display to Zulu, and the other to Mean Solar Time for my longitude.
Time zones are bad enough, but the so-called Daylight Saving Time is an abomination, first promulgated by the Germans in the Great War, those being the same Germans who gave us poison war gas, flamethrowers, and the destruction of the library of the University of Louvain in Belgium.
Like Alvin York, I don't care for Germans, even when they are not being Nazis.
P.s. There is a woman here, in the Florida legislature, who introduces a bill every year to do away with the septuply-damned so-called Daylight Saving Time. She never gets more than a very few votes for that.
I honor her for her persistence and perseveration in the face of the silly doodahs in the majority. I am afraid, though, that she is just doing quixotic contraventile micturition, so to speak.
There is "time" as it is used by physicists, and then there is the social convention of "time" which we humans use to decide when our businesses will open and close and when the buses will stop running.
The former is very precise and has a literal definition. The latter could use colors or the names of fruits as easily as it could numbers.
With all this bile spewing, I'm amazed no one has shot at the railroads. Maybe someting like: "First we gave them the whole damned country, then they stole God's time from us."
The former is very precise and has a literal definition. The latter could use colors or the names of fruits as easily as it could numbers.
Well, so, that's why I wonder why you even care what number is attached to it. I mean, what does it matter if "when I went to visit Oleg in the summer, the sun in Nashville went down not long after eight while back in K-town it was after nine before it dipped below the horizon in midsummer"?
The sun is going to come up and go down as it will, no matter what number we tack on to it. I mean, heck, it's not like you even have a timeclock wage-grubber's job. I'm guessing the editors don't much care if the article you turn in was written by a person who was at their desk at 0800 on the dot, as long as it makes the deadline for the print run.
This round of DST has actually been really helpful to me. I had been waking up at stupid o'clock in the morning the last few weeks, for no real reason. With the time shift, now I'm sleeping until almost a reasonable time. I just hope it stays there. (Since I do have a timeclock job, it's annoying to wake up 4 hours before I have to be there.)
"Well, so, that's why I wonder why you even care what number is attached to it. I mean, what does it matter if "when I went to visit Oleg in the summer, the sun in Nashville went down not long after eight while back in K-town it was after nine before it dipped below the horizon in midsummer"?"
It's pretty simple, really: Social custom dictated that office workers got off at banana oclock, and mos retail workers got off at apple, which was four watermelons later.
Back in Knoxville, it was still light at apple o'clock, which made me happy, but in Nashville, it was already dark at apple, which made me sad, because then I couldn't go shoot or read outdoors after work.
(...and don't forget that I've worked off a clock before in the past, and likely will again in the future. Plus, the people I like to do things with also work on the clock. Thanks to DST, when my roomie gets home from work in the summer, we have about two hours of usable light to go riding our bikes or whatever. I like that.)
That daylight at the beginning of the day is useful for kids walking to school or the bus stop, especially in areas without sidewalks.
However, when the sun is rising earlier than 5 AM under Standard Time, it is convenient to force it to rise earlier than 6 AM under Daylight Savings Time and add that daylight to the end of the day. For those in the western ends of time zones, those times can be adjusted to 6 AM and 7 AM.
I had a brother-in-law that refused to adjust his watch or clocks for Daylight Savings Time. His argument was that cows did not pay attention to clocks, and needed to be milked at sunrise. I quickly learned not to ask him, as for most of the year he would not give you the right time of day. In more ways the one, he was in his own, different world.
Picking a nit, Kzinti is called The Heroes'(p?) Tongue. And Creamy v Crunchy is a non-starter, since they both have their place. Creamy works better with Nutella, while Crunchy is ideal for keeping Jelly from sliding off. Stay safe
Is it really that big of an inconvenience to adjust yourselves for ONE hour twice a year??! Geez, you'd think you are being restricted to ten round magazines. I for one, do not care for an 8:15 sunrise in December, nor a 7:30 sunset in July.
I have a solution, but it will only work if you own your own shop.
Say, your ordinary business hours are 9 to 5. When we "spring forward", just put up a sign saying something like "Summer Hours: 10 to 6."
I knew a guy who had an engineering solution (there is ALWAYS an engineering solution). He glued another hour hand of a different color on the hour hand of his clock, pointing an hour ahead.
What Tam said above about the social vs. the scientific point of view?
I plead guilty. Hell, I was a physics major at Ga. Tech.
Not only that, but I think I'm a bit strange. I never get less than an A- on those online autism tests. When the Sheriff's deppity was interviewing me after I got thwacked upside the head, she said, "You're really literal-minded, aren't you?"
I have the extra-flexy joints, the weird gut issues, the very sharp senses, the excessive earnestness and social awkwardness.
Yes, I think I am one, and will continue to resist you social monkeys and your messing with the clocks.
Really did prefer not doing the DST thing. MD put us on this mess when the kid started first grade. Try explaining to a first grader why you are changing clocks for the first time in their life. "This is really stupid, why are we doing this? It is so dumb!" Yup kid, here is a stamp for your letter to the governor, let me know when you want me to mail it.
The banned paperboys years ago and I think they cut the nads off roosters now so they won't make noise (the use artificial insemination for the hens). So nobody needs that light at the first part of the day, anymore.
I can see many advantages of getting started earlier to finish earlier. However, this is not something that should be mandated by law from upon high. That's my major beef with it.
Don't care as long as they pick one and stick with it. The transition is a pain.
ReplyDeleteDST - making decent people late for brunch for over 100 years.
ReplyDeleteRiled up? I couldn't agree more.
ReplyDeleteI hope to take full advantage of the after work daylight this year and get lots of range time.
Last year was kind of strange with the move away then move back and all the fallout from that.
Why don't you pick something REALLY controversial, like Creamy vs. Crunchy?
ReplyDeleteYES Ma'am . . . Right There With Ya!!!
ReplyDeleteI'd be riled up if I didn't think you were just playing. Even if you do think that.
ReplyDeletePassive aggressive much?
Just move us to Central Time. That will fix most of the problem.
ReplyDeleteTAMARA!
ReplyDeleteTIME DISTANCE SPEED POSITION ARE RELATIVE
WHAT DO YOU SAY TO EVERYONE ADOPTING GREENWICH MEAN TIME (GMT) ALSO KNOWNAS UNIVERSAL TIME (UT) OR ZULU TIME ZONE AS A UNIVERSAL WATCH TIME ?
THAT WAY IN THIS EVER SHRINKING WORLD EVERYONE WILL KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS EVERYWHERE WITHOUT THE TEDIOUS INTERPOLATION OF FIGURING THE WESTERLY OR EASTERLY LONGITUDE DIVIDED BY 60 MINUTES OF ARC ON A
GREAT CIRCLE ETC ETC ON WOULD KNOW ITS 20 HOURS 6 MINUTES EVERYWHERE!
NAVIGATORS ASTRONOMERS RADIO OPERATORS AND THE MILITARY HAVE USED IT FOR CENTURIES ITS TIME TO LEARN THE ACCURATE WAY TO TELL TIME !
There ought to be just GMT (or Zulu, or whatever non-English name they want to give it) all over the world.
ReplyDeleteFuzzy Curmudgeon,
ReplyDelete"Just move us to Central Time. That will fix most of the problem."
Eff that!
Back when I lived in Knoxville I used to hate it that, when I went to visit Oleg in the summer, the sun in Nashville went down not long after eight while back in K-town it was after nine before it dipped below the horizon in midsummer.
That's the difference between being on the trailing and leading edges of a time zone.
I'd be fine with staying at UTC-4 year round instead of switching. I could use that afternoon daylight a lot better in the winter than the summer.
ReplyDeleteeverybody should switch to UTC. It would solve a large number of software bugs.
ReplyDeleteWhile we are at it, the USA should conquer the whole world and make everyone use ASCII. This UTF clusterfuck is also a huge nightmare. Plus, UTF doesn't have codepoints for Klingon, Kzinti or Tengwar.
What kahr40 said. Just pick one!
ReplyDeleteCount me among the "...riled..." and I'm still pissed at Ditch Manuels for this nonsense...
ReplyDeleteAll The Best,
Frank W. James
(sent from Germany)
We could go to half hour time zone intervals instead of hour time zone intervals. That should give the same energy savings by better aligning people's lives with the patterns of sunlight without putting people into sleep debt for a month.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'd actually like is a single world time so that people can adjust to their own preferences naturally while still allowing time coordination across wide areas.
If I lived in the Midwest, every clock I owned would receive atomic time signals or lookup it's own time via NTP.
ReplyDeleteLest we need yet another good example of incompetence in government, you can't even get WWVB here on the east coast without an antenna bigger than a bread box.
Why is this still a problem we need to keep solving twice a year, well into the 21st century?
-SM
Sorry, I slept in today. Did I miss something?
ReplyDeleteLet's just split the difference.
ReplyDeleteSpring forward 30 minutes (instead of the 60 we did), and stick with that for the rest of time.
(But Tam, why are you complaining? Isn't IN one of the two states that does not observe DST?)
I don't care one way or the other, I just want it to STOP CHANGING. Arg
ReplyDeleteTam,
ReplyDeleteWe were on Central Time when I was a little kid. The only reason we went on Eastern was commercial in nature. But in a net-connected world, it makes no sense for us to be an hour ahead of Chicago just so we can be on New Yawk time. How am I supposed to tune into Cubs games if I don't know what time they come on? ;-)
But you try to tell the kids of today that, and they don't believe you.
Anon 5:56, you may want to read this article which discusses a study that found that there are no energy savings from DST.
I live in Arizona. We don't need no more stinkin' Daylight.
ReplyDeleteFuzzy Curmudgeon,
ReplyDelete"We were on Central Time when I was a little kid. The only reason we went on Eastern was commercial in nature."
Y'all were wrong then, but you're right now. ;)
(And we're not on New Yawk time; we're on Atlanta time. :D )
There should be double DST for the three months in the middle of the summer.
ReplyDeleteYou could always move further north. When I used to travel for my last job between the Puget Sound area and San Diego, I was always surprised by the fact that the days were about an hour longer(or shorter in the winter) in Washington. I've never really felt like I live 'up north' but that 1500 miles of curveture makes a difference.
ReplyDeleteI hear you, TinCan Assassin. It's nice to live in a state where we don't mess with Father Time.
ReplyDeleteBTW, where in Arizona do you live? I'm down near Fort We-Gotcha....
Back when DST was coming and folks had their panties properly bunched up, one argument against was one farmer said his cows wouldn't know when to be milked...
ReplyDeleteLove DST and the change doesn't bother me, but I don't have to change all my livestock's watches.
Greg ... Crunchy, DAMMIT!!
ReplyDeleteGet your smooth peanut butter the HELL outta my sammiches!
Oh, I am among the half who are riled, you betcha. If you want to get up an hour earlier in the summer, well, just get up an hour earlier. They sell these alarm-clock thingies just about everywhere, you know.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that high noon will occur here, tomorrow, at about 1:22 PM by the clock. That is just crazy. The time of day is defined, and has always been defined, by Sun angle.
I think I am just going to set my watch to Zulu. If I had one of those fancy watches which keep time in two places, I'd set one display to Zulu, and the other to Mean Solar Time for my longitude.
Time zones are bad enough, but the so-called Daylight Saving Time is an abomination, first promulgated by the Germans in the Great War, those being the same Germans who gave us poison war gas, flamethrowers, and the destruction of the library of the University of Louvain in Belgium.
Like Alvin York, I don't care for Germans, even when they are not being Nazis.
P.s. There is a woman here, in the Florida legislature, who introduces a bill every year to do away with the septuply-damned so-called Daylight Saving Time. She never gets more than a very few votes for that.
ReplyDeleteI honor her for her persistence and perseveration in the face of the silly doodahs in the majority. I am afraid, though, that she is just doing quixotic contraventile micturition, so to speak.
JTG,
ReplyDeleteThere is "time" as it is used by physicists, and then there is the social convention of "time" which we humans use to decide when our businesses will open and close and when the buses will stop running.
The former is very precise and has a literal definition. The latter could use colors or the names of fruits as easily as it could numbers.
NOT TO WORRY ABOUT "LOCAL APPARENT NOON" PHENOMENON MERIDIAN TRANSIT OBSERVATIONS R US
ReplyDeleteKaiser Wilhelm, Lloyd George, and Woodrow Wilson were the original proclaimers of Summer Time.
ReplyDeleteNeed more be said?
For all I know, the person who invented beer was a jackass too. ;)
ReplyDeleteWith all this bile spewing, I'm amazed no one has shot at the railroads. Maybe someting like: "First we gave them the whole damned country, then they stole God's time from us."
ReplyDeleteThe former is very precise and has a literal definition. The latter could use colors or the names of fruits as easily as it could numbers.
ReplyDeleteWell, so, that's why I wonder why you even care what number is attached to it. I mean, what does it matter if "when I went to visit Oleg in the summer, the sun in Nashville went down not long after eight while back in K-town it was after nine before it dipped below the horizon in midsummer"?
The sun is going to come up and go down as it will, no matter what number we tack on to it. I mean, heck, it's not like you even have a timeclock wage-grubber's job. I'm guessing the editors don't much care if the article you turn in was written by a person who was at their desk at 0800 on the dot, as long as it makes the deadline for the print run.
This round of DST has actually been really helpful to me. I had been waking up at stupid o'clock in the morning the last few weeks, for no real reason. With the time shift, now I'm sleeping until almost a reasonable time. I just hope it stays there. (Since I do have a timeclock job, it's annoying to wake up 4 hours before I have to be there.)
perlhaqr,
ReplyDelete"Well, so, that's why I wonder why you even care what number is attached to it. I mean, what does it matter if "when I went to visit Oleg in the summer, the sun in Nashville went down not long after eight while back in K-town it was after nine before it dipped below the horizon in midsummer"?"
It's pretty simple, really: Social custom dictated that office workers got off at banana oclock, and mos retail workers got off at apple, which was four watermelons later.
Back in Knoxville, it was still light at apple o'clock, which made me happy, but in Nashville, it was already dark at apple, which made me sad, because then I couldn't go shoot or read outdoors after work.
(...and don't forget that I've worked off a clock before in the past, and likely will again in the future. Plus, the people I like to do things with also work on the clock. Thanks to DST, when my roomie gets home from work in the summer, we have about two hours of usable light to go riding our bikes or whatever. I like that.)
ReplyDeletePerlhaqr, if I had that waking up early problem I'd spend it at the loading bench most likely.
ReplyDeleteI've looked resources with a friend and we have so many components there's always something to do.
He has 10k .223/5.56 brass he's been decapping, polishing and sizing.
We'll be on the hunt for projectiles soon.
I'm so using that next time stepson asks me what time it is because he can't be bothered to look at the clock behind him.
ReplyDelete"Quarter Water Melon past Apple" unless you are referring to Eastern time in which case it is "citron half past banana"
Then I will smile.
OF course when I am olde and decrepit he will probably send me to a cut rate old-folks home, but ya gotta have your fun when you are able.
I'm riled I tell you, I'm riled....
ReplyDeleteThat daylight at the beginning of the day is useful for kids walking to school or the bus stop, especially in areas without sidewalks.
ReplyDeleteHowever, when the sun is rising earlier than 5 AM under Standard Time, it is convenient to force it to rise earlier than 6 AM under Daylight Savings Time and add that daylight to the end of the day. For those in the western ends of time zones, those times can be adjusted to 6 AM and 7 AM.
I had a brother-in-law that refused to adjust his watch or clocks for Daylight Savings Time. His argument was that cows did not pay attention to clocks, and needed to be milked at sunrise. I quickly learned not to ask him, as for most of the year he would not give you the right time of day. In more ways the one, he was in his own, different world.
@zinger3006 said...
ReplyDeleteI'm riled I tell you, I'm riled....
I want a cookie!
@Jim said...
With all this bile spewing, I'm amazed no one has shot at the railroads.
Ask a recent vet about "GPS time."
Anyway, never forget that Ben Franklin cooked up the idea of Daylight Savings Time as a joke.
"Why don't you pick something REALLY controversial, like Creamy vs. Crunchy?"
ReplyDeleteThere is no crunchy. It's all extra crunch or superchunk or somesuch. I say less superlatives and more peanuts.
Agreed! I love those long, June/July days that last past 9:00 PM. I don't mind driving to work in the dark, but I hate coming home in the dark.
ReplyDeletePicking a nit, Kzinti is called The Heroes'(p?) Tongue.
ReplyDeleteAnd Creamy v Crunchy is a non-starter, since they both have their place. Creamy works better with Nutella, while Crunchy is ideal for keeping Jelly from sliding off.
Stay safe
I'm in. Let's do it.
ReplyDeleteIs it really that big of an inconvenience to adjust yourselves for ONE hour twice a year??! Geez, you'd think you are being restricted to ten round magazines. I for one, do not care for an 8:15 sunrise in December, nor a 7:30 sunset in July.
ReplyDeleteI have a solution, but it will only work if you own your own shop.
ReplyDeleteSay, your ordinary business hours are 9 to 5. When we "spring forward", just put up a sign saying something like "Summer Hours: 10 to 6."
I knew a guy who had an engineering solution (there is ALWAYS an engineering solution). He glued another hour hand of a different color on the hour hand of his clock, pointing an hour ahead.
What Tam said above about the social vs. the scientific point of view?
ReplyDeleteI plead guilty. Hell, I was a physics major at Ga. Tech.
Not only that, but I think I'm a bit strange. I never get less than an A- on those online autism tests. When the Sheriff's deppity was interviewing me after I got thwacked upside the head, she said, "You're really literal-minded, aren't you?"
I have the extra-flexy joints, the weird gut issues, the very sharp senses, the excessive earnestness and social awkwardness.
Yes, I think I am one, and will continue to resist you social monkeys and your messing with the clocks.
Really did prefer not doing the DST thing. MD put us on this mess when the kid started first grade. Try explaining to a first grader why you are changing clocks for the first time in their life. "This is really stupid, why are we doing this? It is so dumb!" Yup kid, here is a stamp for your letter to the governor, let me know when you want me to mail it.
ReplyDeleteThe banned paperboys years ago and I think they cut the nads off roosters now so they won't make noise (the use artificial insemination for the hens). So nobody needs that light at the first part of the day, anymore.
ReplyDeleteI can see many advantages of getting started earlier to finish earlier. However, this is not something that should be mandated by law from upon high. That's my major beef with it.
ReplyDelete