Wed, 16 Aug 2006

Time to Grow a Brain

Backwards Clock Oh, gimme a break! Here's some news and no mistake: there is no more daylight on any given day than there ever has been. Changing clocks did not reset the Sun or the rotation of the earth...

I'm in Boone County, now officially on EDT. I'm also a poultry producer, and can assure you that my flock still rises at dawn and roosts at sunset - same thing they did last year. Or the year before that. Moving a mechanical hand on a wall clock, or adding bits to a digital alarm, does nothing but that: it moves the hands or the counters in a clock. Nature cheerfully ignores clocks.

I despise DST and I wish we'd never made the switch. I deal with it by simply not changing the clock: I'm perfectly capable of adding 1 hour to the time shown on my pocket watch for appointments, etc. I keep the same schedule personally that I've always kept: it hasn't bothered me a bit, except for the fact that ice cream shops now close at 8 pm when there's still an hour and a half of daylight left. It'd bother me a lot more if I had to show up at work earlier - but then hey, I get up with the chickens these days anyway!

A better illustration of why folks want to be on Central Daylight Time (or no daylight time at all) is simple: tonight's sunset here will occur at 8:43 PM EDT, with nautical twilight (when the chickens roost) at 9:47 PM EDT. In New York those same numbers are 7:53 PM EDT and 8:57 PM EDT - a difference of fifty minutes. In Chicago actual sunset is at 7:51 PM CDT, and nautical twilight at 8:58 PM CDT. Subtracting an hour from those figures to account for the difference between central and eastern time zones give virtually no difference whatsoever.

In fact, Indianapolis has the latest by the clock sunset of nearly any major American city, except Louisville, KY. In Los Angles, sunset is at 7:40 PM PDT, in Denver it's at 7:56 PM MDT and in Atlanta it's 8:24 PM EDT.

Arguing that changing clocks makes daylight magically appear or disappear does the opposition to DST no good whatsoever - the whole scheme is insane, and should be repealed, but the fact remains that changing clocks doesn't extend days or shrink nights. It just changes clocks, and because of our geographic position and "choice" of time zones makes everything an hour later than it should be here. Argue that, and there's a chance we'll regain our senses.

The longer days during the summer heat brought on by Eastern Daylight Time could have a significant negative impact on the health of Dubois County’s poultry producers and also the health of the poultry flocks...

(Dubois County Petition to the USDOT)

via Masson's Blog

/Politics | 2 writebacks | permanent link

On 8/15/2006 16:18:33
Thorolf wrote

On 8/15/2006 20:42:32
Dave H wrote

Where in the world

comment...

 
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