31 Oct – 1 Nov – USA: CHANGE YOUR CLOCKS – “Fall Back!” – POLL on Daylight Savings Time

Tonight we change our clocks.

According to our artificial imposition of clocks on the passage of time we “lose” an hour of sunlight.

We really don’t, but that is how it seems because we go by clocks and not by your planet’s yellow star.

Of course, at this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere our days are getting shorter anyway, because of the tilt of your planet.

So, as we go into Election Day it will be pretty dark as the polls close.  Coincidence?  Maybe not, this year.

However, it seems that, according to forecasts, the weather will be good in most places in these USA.   That means, GET FRIENDS and get out to the polls on Tuesday and VOTE.

Had things gone normally this year, today probably would have been my last day in Rome.

This is the 305th day of the year.  There are 62 days remaining.  Today, in Rome, the Aurora was at 6:13, Sunrise 6:40, Sundown 17:07.  The Lunar phase is full at 15:49.

And the Ave Maria bell is to ring at 17:30.

Let’s have a poll.

Pick your best answer.  Anyone can vote, but only registered users here can comment

Daylight savings time...

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About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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25 Comments

  1. Mary Jane says:

    Oh, the dreaded twice a year when we have to change our clocks. I hate it. I wish I could ignore it but who wants to be an hour early (or late) for everything? Changing the clocks throws me off and I always feel awful for days afterward, and I’m only in my 30s. I can’t imagine how it must affect older folks. The first part of the day of fall back is okay because it “feels” like we got an extra hour, but wait until that evening, or even the day afterward…it “feels like” 9 pm but it’s only 8 and the kids are still bouncing off the walls and begging to stay up because “mom, we gained an hour!”. Speaking of kids, we have 7 children ages 9 and under, and no matter how hard we try to explain it they don’t seem to understand when hubby and I tell them, “But, but…but you can go back to bed, we all get to sleep for an extra hour!!! We don’t have to get up yet!” They still just…get up. And the baby, sweet cutie pie, she understands it even less. Her clock is her tummy, not the thing clicking on the wall.

    Daylight savings time…it’s not for kids, it’s not for parents…it’s not for anyone. Except maybe, chickens? Maybe they somehow realize they should wait another hour to crow? But I don’t know because the rooster who lives at the house behind us, I call him Bob, he’s so mixed up as it is…he crows at all hours, 11pm, 3am, 5am, 12pm, 4pm…so he doesn’t seem to get it even without the clocks changing twice a year. Maybe The Masked Chicken can help him understand…daylight savings ended! Don’t crow for another hour, please.

  2. VARoman says:

    I wish we could get rid of standard time and make it DST year-round. Completely selfish reasoning, but I enjoy sun light at 9:30 in the summer and not drinking home in the dark at 4pm in the winter

  3. Speaking of FAKE, I’d love to see an end to this time-changing madness. If you want to get up/go to bed earlier or later, do so yourself.
    Let’s stay on STANDARD time, which is no longer actually the standard now that there are more weeks of DST. And uh, no DST doesn’t save any daylight.
    Standard time, yes, when ‘high noon’ is high noon and not faked. The devil likes fake: ignore nature and when the chickens wake up or go to bed. Fake electric light. Fake news.
    I’m so done okay?

  4. Charivari Rob says:

    I used to be somewhat indifferent to it. Two things have been pushing me to be less inclined to it.

    First, the change made some years ago where we are now on “altered” time more that half of the year, which makes it seem sillier.
    Second, years now of living further east and north (Boston) in the same time zone as where I was raised (NJ) seems to have amplified my perception of the impact of both the natural cycle and the non-natural alterations (or maybe I’m transitioning from younger curmudgeon to middle-aged curmudgeon).
    Selfishly, I don’t mind getting up and going to work in the dark so much as having it be dark when I leave the office.
    At this point, I’m in favor of the occasionally-discussed (but probably not likely) notion of Maine, NH, Eastern MA, & RI declaring a “move” from Eastern time zone to Atlantic time zone (year-round Standard, no Daylight Time). That way, I’d be in the far west of a time zone and get my later-in-the-day sunlight.

  5. Jacob says:

    I voted for eliminate.

    I wouldn’t mind going back to how it was before Bush 43’s energy bill. Under the current law, it’s just too late in the year. It’s already getting dark in the afternoon and now when we fall back, it is just so suddenly even darker. At least when we fell back earlier in the autumn, it wasn’t quite so jarring.

  6. The Masked Chicken says:

    Mary Jane wrote:

    “Maybe The Masked Chicken can help him understand…daylight savings ended! Don’t crow for another hour, please.”

    See, this is what happens to chickens when humans get involved. We are owed compensation, compensation, I tell ya. The rooster is merely exercising his right to protest. He is crowing it to the man.

    Ben Franklin did not propose Daylight Saving Time, but proposed a joke involving taxing candles while he was in Paris. DST was proposed by a German and adopted during WWI (the British beat them to it). Contrary to the usual arguments, farmers hate it, it does not save power (it just shifts electric light usage from night to morning), it screws up circadian rhythms (the body never completely adjusts), it is horrible for science (it makes no sense from an astronomy perspective), it ruins the purpose of Zulu time and the Greenwich meridian.

    Chickens have been secretly helping humanity for centuries. We were ahead of the curve on thwarting daylight savings time:

    Another mutation that resulted from selective breeding is in the TSHR (thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor) gene. In wild animals this gene coordinates reproduction with day length, confining breeding to specific seasons. The mutation disabling this gene enables chickens to breed—and lay eggs—all year long.

    Humans, rise up! You have nothing to lose, but bad timekeeping.

    The Chicken

  7. JPCahill says:

    I clicked on the “good thing” button. But my real answer is: “I don’t care which one you choose but choose one and stick with it. We’ll adjust to whatever it is. Just stop tricking around with the #$%! clock.”

    In the alternative, adding an hour at one or two in the morning in fine. But on the subtraction of an hour, when I was working I suggested 2 p.m. on a Monday afternoon. Never got an answer on that one. As an old retired guy, that plan is, shall we say, somewhat less urgent.

  8. Simon_GNR says:

    Interestingly, most of Europe, including the UK, ended its summer daylight saving time last weekend, so for one week only local time in Britain is only four hours ahead of New York/Washington local time.

    The debate about “should we put the clocks back in the autumn?” comes up every year in Britain and the alternative suggestion is to be on GMT plus one hour all year round. It was tried for a few years about 50 years ago but the experiment was ended after complaints from people in northern and western Scotland that it didn’t get light till after 10 a.m. I voted above to leave things as they are, but my vote relates to British Summer Time rather than American daylight saving time.

  9. Fr. Kelly says:

    Only a white man would think that you can cut a strip off the bottom of a blanket and sew it to the top of a blanket and have a longer blanket.

  10. xavier says:

    Wasn’t daylight savings enacted during the 1st world war? If do shouldn’t we rescind it as it’s been over for just over a century. And taxes too. The war’s been paid off enough times

    xavier

  11. ex seaxe says:

    Your view will depend on how much day length varies where you live. I am 54°N, we have only seven and a half hours between sunrise 0827 and sunset 1557 on Christmas day. That makes it quite difficult to start the mind into action. Contrariwise, on my birthday, 20th June, sunrise would be 0343 and sunset 2045. That makes it difficult to fit the few hour of darkness into sleep time without changing the clocks.

  12. Semper Gumby says:

    One hot day at 29 Stumps (29 Palms, California) there was a brief delay in training that lengthened into hours. A few of us lieutenants were stretched out on the ground in the shade of a Light Armored Vehicle, trying to take a nap. Eventually, someone stirred and uncorked this, “Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like fruit.”

    A few years later Lt. JokeMan, after he got his fill of sun, sand and whatnot overseas, became a lawyer. Go figure.

  13. NOCatholic says:

    I’m conflicted on DST. If I could stand it being dark at 7AM in winter, here in the western half of Eastern Time, I might go with VARoman and opt for DST year-round. If I could stand it getting dark before 5:30PM in winter, I would opt for year-round standard time and do away with DST. Being unable to decide on either, I probably prefer not to change the scheduled changeover dates again.

    One thing I know for sure. Daylight Savings Time saves no energy. The adjustment our politicians foisted on us in 2007, extending DST for “energy savings” was a scam.

  14. Chrisc says:

    Where was the option to choose Beijing time all the time?

  15. That option is found only in the Casa Santa Marta.

  16. hwriggles4 says:

    Years ago I was taught that one purpose of daylight savings time was to help farmers have some extra time in the fields. Currently, Arizona, Indiana, and Hawaii are the three states that do not utilize Daylight Savings Time, and I have heard Florida passed in their legislature to do away with it by 2022.

    Now the extended Daylight Savings Time in recent years is complicated. Several friends and coworkers who have children do not like the fact that the children are waiting for the school bus in the dark (by the way, this is common in the South where I live since the sun doesn’t come out until 0715 in April). However, I do like being able to mow the yard on a weeknight or go walking after work when the sun is still out at 2045 on a summer night. Besides, the South is more hot and humid, and it can be difficult to do some outside work in July and August on 95 degree days with 90% humidity. Those who live in Texas or Southern Louisiana can relate.

  17. Gab says:

    There isn’t enough space here to relate how and why I detest daylight “saving” time. Not sure exactly what is being saved. It’s an anachronism dating back to when fax machines where the height of technology.

    Don’t know how our forebears ever survived without daylight ”saving”.

  18. excalibur says:

    Please! Make it go away!!

  19. Mariana2 says:

    Bad thing. Eliminate it. How do I explain this to the dog? It takes a week to adjust dinner and walkies times.

    Not nice for old and/or confused people in hospitals.

  20. Mariana2 says:

    Mary Jane wrote
    “the rooster who lives at the house behind us, I call him Bob, he’s so mixed up as it is…he crows at all hours, 11pm, 3am, 5am, 12pm, 4pm”

    Maybe he is just protesting peacefully.

  21. grateful says:

    Now, that was a fun read (and informative-thanks Chicken).

  22. JonPatrick says:

    Here in very Eastern Maine where we can see New Brunswick which is on Altantic Time from our kitchen window, it already gets dark in the evening before the rest of the US so we would be better off staying on daylight savings time year round. Or changing to Atlantic time which would split the state into 2 time zones and has it’s own drawbacks.

  23. JonPatrick says:

    Arrgh auto correct substituted the wrong version of “its”. I hate it when that happens.

  24. The Masked Chicken says:

    Measured in hours, a 1 hour time change (Δt) is 1/24 of a day or .04167 of a day, which implies, according to the Special Theory of Relativity time dilation:

    Δt = t/√1-v2/c2,

    √1-v2/c2 = .04167

    or 1-(v2/c2) = .001736

    or √(1-.001736)* c2 = v

    solving,

    v = 299532065.269 meters/second

    So, DST is equivalent to speeding up the earths rotational speed from 460 m/s by a factor of 651,156.66 times.

    That is just wrong. No wonder everyone feels tired during DST.

    The Chicken

  25. The Masked Chicken says:

    Note: superscript tag does not seem to work.

    The Chicken

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