About Damn Time

Good Stuff

I was going to sound off about this Daylight Savings idiocy for the billionth time, but I see I’ll only  have to do it twice more, maybe — if the House gets off its ass:

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday passed legislation that would make daylight saving time permanent starting in 2023, ending the twice-annual changing of clocks in a move promoted by supporters advocating brighter afternoons and more economic activity.

The Senate approved the measure, called the Sunshine Protection Act, unanimously by voice vote. The House of Representatives, which has held a committee hearing on the matter, still must pass the bill before it can go to President Joe Biden to sign. The White House has not said whether Biden supports it.

Of all the stupid shit our government has ever done, the time-switching thing is unquestionably the most pointless.

What am I thinking?  Biden will probably veto it, just for spite.

7 comments

  1. In other news the Senate passed a 10 billion dollar relief package for members of the International Brotherhood of Clock Changers (IBCC) who will be displaced from their jobs. Dewey Fleecem president of IBCC said that despite the perception that the members of his union only worked two days a year, extensive training and constant practice were required for his members to differentiate between “ahead” and “back”. He also recommended that an extensive study headed up by the experts in his union be conducted to determine the effect this proposal would have on sun dials and legacy analog timekeeping systems. ” You can’t just mess with time” he said in a prepared statement.

    1. Dave,
      when did you become a speech writer for creepy Joe? I can picture him reading this off of a teleprompter, if he’s having a good day, while vetoing this legislation

      JQ

  2. Semantics vs. your circadian rhythm, who really cares what you call it?
    The sun is up, get out of bed!
    Oh, yeah, our lawmakers and school boards.

    1. Because of the railroads.

      Before railroads nothing moved fast enough that you couldn’t just adjust your watch at the end of the journey so it didn’t matter that each town was slightly different than other towns. There was also no need to coordinate hours and minutes across vast distances, because day were close enough.

      With the railroads though you were moving fast enough, and schedules had to be kept–especially when east and west (or north and south) bound trains were running.

      Now, the railroads COULD have developed their own time. Pick the geographic middle of the continent, set a standard there, and call it “railroad time”. Would have worked, but it would have had people east and west of there having to map local time to railroad time, even for short distances or north south trips.

      So the railroads invented “time zones”. The US government, when it realized that it had to coordinate times over long distances simply enacted in law what the railroads had done. I don’t remember if they made some tweaks for political reasons, but not very much.

  4. What these pinheads don’t seem to realize is that permanent daylight saving time makes already-late winter sunrises one hour later .
    At my home in West Virginia it wouldn’t rise before 8 a.m. for almost four months, between November and the end of February.
    The farther north you live, the later it would rise.
    All for “Muh extra daylight in the evening.”

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