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BREAKING: The House has passed legislation to make Daylight Saving Time permanent nationwide, ending the twice-a-year clock changes by a 308-117 vote. Backed by President Trump, the bill now heads to the Senate. If approved and signed into law, Americans would no longer have to… pic.twitter.com/6iy9O9ZWYf
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 14, 2026
Black to move. Mate in 4.
NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.
Also, I note with interest the pastoral letters issued by some bishops about the SSPX situation. I mentioned the other day that I was please that a bishop openly said that he would be willing to talk to any SSPX priest who would approach him. Some one sent me a note with letters from other bishops. Caggiano of Bridgeport makes an inviting appeal. Burbidge of Arlington refers to his “brother priests” though he doesn’t explicit invite them. Lucia of Syracuse, on the other hand, wrote a rather harsh letter, and seems to go a bit beyond what the Holy See so ineptly indicated about frequenting SSPX chapels. He suggests that going to a SSPX chapel after reading his letter – even once – would be formal adherence to schism. That can’t be, of course, but that’s the take away. Moreover, they all repeat the claim the SSPX absolutions are now invalid. They get that from the “Explanatory Note”. The problem I see with that is that there is no clear legitimate statement that Leo XIV removed the faculty. The Dicastery can’t do it without Leo.
And from my friend Fr. McTeigue:
They could have waited till after Fall. I like that extra hour of sleep…
I am very hopeful. My concern is they are using all of the centuries old laws and procedures, everything we consider true.
problem is the Vatican doesn’t hold these beliefs.
Regarding the SSPX “appeal”, of course they can not know the answer first, but at this point do they really have anything to lose? Perhaps, the goal is to get Pope Leo to really pay attention and to get directly involved?
~1325 years old book, and the person is holding it? Yeesh !
Sorry, I left out “… In their bare hands” .
Daylight Saving is the Novus Ordo of time.
More light for reading or less? Depends if you read in the morning (I do) or in the evening. It will be less light in the morning for me.
Considering the fact that 8 LED equivalents draw the same power as one incandescent light bulb, it’s about time to end this pointless biannual chronographic ritual.
Always keeping White’s King in check, because its Rook is a threat:
1. . . . . . . . R-d2+
If
2. K-c5 . . . R-c1+
3. K-d6 . . . N-b6# (discovered)
So
2. K-c4 . . R-c1+
3. K-b3 . . R-d3+
Then if
4. K-a2 . . N-b4#
Or if
4. K-a4 . . R-a1#
Black to move and mate in 4
1. … Rd2+
2. Kc4 {or Kc5} Rc1+
3. Kb3 Rd3+
4. Whether Ka2 or Ka4 Nb4#
If
2. Kc5 Rc1+
3. Kd6 Nb6#
I think Father Z’s readers will find this post on Rorate by an elderly Argentine Archbishop very moving.
https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/07/facing-god-rooted-in-christ-latin-mass.html
He closes with this paragraph:
“In this twilight of my life, one of the greatest satisfactions remaining to me is that of having ordained, as Archbishop of La Plata, forty-nine priests and three deacons on their way to the priesthood. Several of them — young and courageous, zealous guardians of sound doctrine — are today serving in growing communities characterized by careful liturgy, patient pastoral attention, and missionary zeal. From these communities vocations are emerging for the whole Church: for marriage and family, for the priesthood and religious life. They and their spiritual children constitute a great part of the consolation and hope of this elderly bishop. “
I have just discovered Father McTeigue and he’s great. He can be humurous and hopeful while talking about the state of things.
Stupid Congress!! Except for a few people who like the extra daylight during summer to sell stuff, this is one of the dumbest things the House has ever done.
1. Benjamin Franklin suggested DST as a joke. There were no electric lights back then. They used candles.
2. It doesn’t save energy. Energy usage just sifts to the morning.
3. Farmers hate it (to help the farmers was the main excuse for keeping it after WW I, when the crazy idea was first suggested, but they hated it, even back then, and DST was abolished, only to be brought back during WW II, only to be abolished a second time, and brought back during the 1970’s).
4. Every medical society hates it. It screws up circadian rhythms and increases the likelihood of heart attacks, strokes, and accidents.
5. It goes against the whole idea of why time zones were invented, which was to have a uniform travel time, worldwide, so that each 15 degrees of rotation corresponded, roughly, to a new time zone.
6. It screws up astronomy because now European and American observatories will have different historical records.
7. With regular EST, calibrated to Greenwich Mean Time, the Mass propagates around the world at a rate of 277.7 Masses per minute that sweep the world in three continuous pulses. More accurately, 16, 667 Masses per hour are said, which, since each Mass takes about 40 minutes, averaging weekdays and Sundays, is about 11,111 Masses per 40 minutes. If this were converted to length, it would be equivalent to Mach 14.5, or roughly the speed of the space shuttle. DST will produce gaps in the waves of Masses.
8. There is a reason that every time DST is implemented, it is abandoned in a few years – people come to their senses, but this is the season for nonsense.
9. It implies that the earth is not a continuous surface for the purposes of celestial navigation and gps, because clocks cannot be precisely synchronized by adding a digit change on some clocks.
10. We are being robbed of sleep and health for the sake of a few bucks.
KEEP THE TIME ZONES PURE. ROOSTERS ARE PEOPLE, TOO. WE DON’T ADJUST OUR CROWING FOR STUPID HUMANS!
The Chicken
P. S. For those interested, a priest in a homily said that there were 6,000 Masses being said, per day, and he wondered how many per minute that was. I took that as a challenge. The e-mail I sent him is reproduced, below, in case anyone is interested.
At Mass on Wednesday, you mentioned that there are 6,000 Masses being said, every day, and you challenged us to figure out how many were bring said per
minute. You should never pose such a challenge to a theorist, especially at Mass!
Anyway, a high school student might reason that there are 6000 Masses per day and 1440 minutes per day, so there are 4.167 Masses per minute, but that
answer is very suspicious.
Let us reason, further. There are approximately 270,125 parishes in the world. Not all of them have full-time priests, so there is not a 1:1 Mass per parish, but, in
addition to parishes, there are monasteries, shrines, and other priests groups that partially compensate, so a conservative estimate of the number of places that
can offer Mass per day is approximately 200,000. Now, of those, the majority have a fixed Mass schedule during the week (Sunday is a separate case) that fall
into three time bands: Band A = 6-8 am, Band B = 11-1pm, and Band C = 5-7 pm, with the highest density being in and Bands A and B. Let us assume a density
profile of Masses said per Band of 100:70:30 percent.
Now, there are 24 standard hour offset time zones (40 time zones, in all, but this distinction amounts to a phase lag), so that 6-8 am, 11-1 pm, etc., propagates
across from time zone to time zone. Thus, Mass starts at, say, 7:00 am in Greenwich, UK (UT1 = Universal Time Zone 1) and then starts an hour later in the next
time zone, UT2 (UT1 + 1 hour), etc. The result is a propagating, “wave,” of Masses that occur in the three time bands, which are, technically, called, “Solitary
Waves of Translation,” or Solitons, for short. Because the Earth is a sphere, the pulse circles the Earth and starts again each day at UT1, so the three soliton
pulses are modular. Thus, the Masses are propagated as temporally-banded modular solitons. An approximation to this is to use a standard traveling wave, Y =
A sin Wn sin(n pi x/L) with periodic boundary conditions.
In addition, there are sporadic, random Masses for special events, so the Bands are a little fuzzy.
Now, assuming a rough Mass density per Band as above, of 100:70:30 percent per Band, this corresponds to 200,000:140,000:60,000 per Band or a total of
400,000 Masses per day. Quite a far cry from 6,000.
A website estimated 350,000 Masses per day, so my calculations seem plausible.
http://forcatholicholymass.blogspot.com/2010/08/now-this-is-communion.html
Now, assuming that there are 200,000, 140,000, and 60,000 Masses per Band and assuming a uniform distribution of parishes per Band (not really a permissible
assumption), there would be 138.8, 97.2, and 41.7 Masses per minute in each Band. In reality, since the density of parishes varies with geographic location, the
numbers fluctuate about these means. In other words, the pulse of Masses changes height as they moves around the world, like the signal reception on an old tv
getting stronger and weaker at different times of the day.
Now, these Bands interact, because they are separated by a phase lag of 0, 75, and 165 degrees, so, for the first time around, when Mass in Band A is being
said in UT5, Mass in Band B is starting, so the number of Masses being said at any given time depends on the convolution (overlap) of the three Bands, A*B*C =
a complex combination of integral and summation equations (which I can’t reproduce in this e-mail). One can approximate this by making a table:
Time Zone A B C
1. X
2. X
3. X
4. X
5. X
6. X .7X
7. X X
8. X X
9. X X
10. X X
11. X X
12. X X .3X
13. X X X
14. X X X
15. X X X
16. X X X
17. X X X
18. X X X
19. X X X
20. X X X
21. X X X
22. X X X
23. X X X
24. X X X
Of course, after one cycle, the entire chart is filled with Xs as the cycles begin to overlap with themselves, but the density of each X is not uniform, so I have
modified it to represent the density per Band in the above. Thus, the total number of Masses being said per minute is the total, 400,000/1440 = about 277.7
Masses per minute.
Now, the concept of Masses per minute makes no sense, since Masses don’t take a minute and the Masses in each Band are synchronized, so, it is better to
speak in terms of Masses per hour, since, after the first cycle, Masses are going on in each Band, continuously, so, at any given hour, on average, there are
16,667 Masses bring said. This can be made more specific by considering each sub-Band within each major Band, calculating the density of Masses from 6-7
am, 7-8 am, and 8-9 am, etc. This higher-order resolution, however, adds little to the overall analysis because, after one complete cycle of the Lowest Common
Multiple, mod 24, each hour will be occupied, as above, although with different densities of Masses.
Hope that helps.
I used to be in favor of locking the clock with Daylight Savings Time but I have changed my thoughts about it. Instead, I think it is smarter to lock the clock on Standard Time as I want the clock to match closer with the position of the sun in the sky, giving everyone a better sense of reality.
We tried permanent daylight savings time in the 1970s. It failed.
https://washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-permanent-daylight-saving-time-in-the-70s-people-hated-it/
Syracuse has not just one but TWO rabidly homosexual parishes. They are celebrating Bishop Lucia’s attack on the SSPX.
https://www.allsaintssyracuse.org/new-page-2