Tag: Enforcement

DST-CST? Why?

“I don’t really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.”

Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

Every time I have to change my clocks (whether it’s to fall back or spring forward) the blood pressure goes up a few points just contemplating Daylight Saving Time.

I’ve tried just ignoring it in the past, and that didn’t work out too well. Missed appointments, extremely early arrivals, whatever. Not really a solution. I’ve tried going to bed earlier in advance of the change, setting the clocks ahead early, also not very effective. You name it, I’ll bet you I’ve tried it. No matter what, this time change thing always turns into a nightmare.

Daylight Saving Time – How Is This Still A Thing?: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) Published on Mar 8, 2015

Thanks Kaiser Wilhelm! Well, truthfully it was our buddies in New Zealand who first suggested it,

Modern DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Hudson, whose shift work job gave him leisure time to collect insects and led him to value after-hours daylight. In 1895 he presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society proposing a two-hour daylight-saving shift, and after considerable interest was expressed in Christchurch, he followed up in an 1898 paper.

They were apparently smart enough to realize that this really didn’t change anything about when the sun comes up. Leave it to the ever efficient Germans to think that they can control the sun’s motion in the skies through legislation. They were the first ones to pass DST into law, so that much of the Last Week Tonight segment is true. The Germans were hoping to conserve coal for the war effort during World War One, but current studies show that there is no energy benefit for instituting DST,

The result of the study showed that electricity use went up in the counties adopting daylight saving time in 2006, costing $8.6 million more in household electricity bills. The conclusion reached by Kotchen and Grant was that while the lighting costs were reduced in the afternoons by daylight saving, the greater heating costs in the mornings, and more use of air-conditioners on hot afternoons more than offset these savings. Kotchen said the results were more “clear and unambiguous” than results in any other paper he had presented.

Kotchen and Grant’s work reinforces the findings of an Australian study in 2007 by economists Ryan Kellogg and Hendrik Wolff, who studied the extension of daylight saving time for two months in New South Wales and Victoria for the 2000 Summer Olympics. They also found an increase in energy use.

Study: Daylight saving time a waste of energy

I can clearly see why DST is cherished and loved by authoritarians everywhere. I’m sure the #MAGA are foursquare in favor of it. I can’t think of a better way to demonstrate the power and authority of government, that even the sun can be commanded by His Electoral Highness. Now that is a showcase of control on a grand scale (in China they only have Beijing time. Talk about authority) Trump can dictate what time the sun comes up and the sun will listen. Maybe he should tackle that Pi thing, try dictating that it will be 3.2 or something. I’m sure that will work just as well.

I can hear you laughing, dear reader, but I’ve had this argument several times with many different people. Inevitably the person who thinks DST is a good idea will exclaim,

Do you really want the sun to come up at 5:30 in the morning in the summer?

It still does come up at 5:30 in the morning, we just call it 6:30.

 I’m coming to the conclusion that there should just be UTC and local time. Local time can then be set according to the city authority or whatever the farmer in the field wants it to be. UTC is really the only relevant time anyway. The only time relevant aside from where the sun is in the sky on a given day. Local sunrise or sunset is the only metric that matters in the end. Timezones themselves have been rendered pointless by modern mechanisms. Not even trains rely on timezones anymore.

Imagine just for a few minutes, what it would be like for your GPS to calculate time variance based on degrees of longitude rather than twenty-four one hour timezones. In the same way your phone can change times for daylight savings, it can change time to keep up with your actual position on the globe. The device that you already rely on to tell you what time it is could just do the time calculation for your location and actually tell you what the local time is. The satellites that control GPS already perform these calculations just to be able to talk to each other and establish UTC for themselves.

Cities could assert their own authority and set time for the regions they control. That measure of standardization for a specific local area is understandable, but why would a farmer care what time it is in the city unless he is going there? Why does someone in Austin need to care what the time is in Denver, Washington D.C. or Los Angeles? If you need to know, ask your phone like you do for every other thing you need during the day already.

Why is this so hard to figure out?

It is entirely possible that my hostility to time and time change hinges on my long struggle with dysgraphia and sleep apnea. With Meniere’s. Even with the CPAP machine and amitriptyline (for migraines) I can still find myself staring at the ceiling at two AM wondering what did I do in a previous life to deserve this torment? Repent, Harlequin! I have always hated punching a clock. Getting up in the morning. I am a night owl. I can be more productive from midnight to two AM than most people are at any other point in the day. What I have always hated the most though was the silly notion that eight AM was starting time. There is absolutely nothing I hate more than sitting in traffic trying to get to the office in the morning, trying to get anywhere in the morning.

“he walks unhindered through the picket lines today, he doesn’t think to wonder why”

The Police – Synchronicity II (1983) from MTV The First Wave 1981 -1983 on Vimeo.

“packed like lemmings into tiny metal boxes, contestants in a suicidal race”

It is a stupid energy-wasting exercise, to be sitting idling on the freeway adding to the toxic funk that hangs over the city. It amuses me now, sitting in traffic in the EV. Finally I don’t have to worry about the pollution from sitting in traffic since I’m not adding any. But why eight AM? Why not 6:30? Why not 9:30?  If you are working in a downtown office like I did for many years (100 Congress, top floor of the building at one point. Fireworks were a blast to watch from up there) any time other than eight AM was a good time to start. Any time other than five PM was a good time to quit.

This topic is a frequent flyer around here because WE’RE STILL FUCKING DOING THIS STUPID SHIT. Posted here and here previously. Oh yeah and also in the Spring when we took the hour away that we now give back.

DST? Why?

“I don’t really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.”

Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

Every time I have to change my clocks (whether it’s to fall back or spring forward) the blood pressure goes up a few points just contemplating Daylight Saving Time.

I’ve tried just ignoring it in the past, and that didn’t work out too well. Missed appointments, extremely early arrivals, whatever. Not really a solution. I’ve tried going to bed earlier in advance of the change, setting the clocks ahead early, also not very effective. You name it, I’ll bet you I’ve tried it. No matter what, this time change thing always turns into a nightmare.


Daylight Saving Time – How Is This Still A Thing?: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) Published on Mar 8, 2015

Thanks Kaiser Wilhelm! Well, truthfully it was our buddies in New Zealand who first suggested it,

Modern DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Hudson, whose shift work job gave him leisure time to collect insects and led him to value after-hours daylight. In 1895 he presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society proposing a two-hour daylight-saving shift, and after considerable interest was expressed in Christchurch, he followed up in an 1898 paper.

They were apparently smart enough to realize that this really didn’t change anything about when the sun comes up. Leave it to the ever efficient Germans to think that they can control the sun’s motion in the skies through legislation. They were the first ones to pass DST into law, so that much of the Last Week Tonight segment is true. The Germans were hoping to conserve coal for the war effort during World War One, but current studies show that there is no energy benefit for instituting DST,

The result of the study showed that electricity use went up in the counties adopting daylight saving time in 2006, costing $8.6 million more in household electricity bills. The conclusion reached by Kotchen and Grant was that while the lighting costs were reduced in the afternoons by daylight saving, the greater heating costs in the mornings, and more use of air-conditioners on hot afternoons more than offset these savings. Kotchen said the results were more “clear and unambiguous” than results in any other paper he had presented.

Kotchen and Grant’s work reinforces the findings of an Australian study in 2007 by economists Ryan Kellogg and Hendrik Wolff, who studied the extension of daylight saving time for two months in New South Wales and Victoria for the 2000 Summer Olympics. They also found an increase in energy use.

Study: Daylight saving time a waste of energy

I just can’t wrap my head around how this ‘saves’ anything, and why this is a benefit.

Let’s Quit Daylight Saving Time! Rebecca Watson Published on Mar 13, 2016

I can clearly see why DST is cherished and loved by authoritarians everywhere. I’m sure the #MAGA are foursquare in favor of it. I can’t think of a better way to demonstrate the power and authority of government, that even the sun can be commanded by His Electoral Highness. Now that is a showcase of control on a grand scale (in China they only have Beijing time. Talk about authority) Trump can dictate what time the sun comes up and the sun will listen. Maybe he should tackle that Pi thing, try dictating that it will be 3.2 or something. I’m sure that will work just as well.

I can hear you laughing, dear reader. I’ve had this argument several times with many different people. Inevitably the person who thinks DST is a good idea will exclaim,

Do you really want the sun to come up at 5:30 in the morning in the summer?

It still does come up at 5:30 in the morning, we just call it 6:30.

Stitcher – The Economics of Sleep, Part 1 (Ep. 211) July 6, 2015 by Stephen J. Dubner

Stitcher – The Economics of Sleep, Part 2 (Ep. 212) July 16, 2015 by Freakonomics

 I’m coming to the conclusion that there should just be UTC and local time. Local time can then be set according to the city authority or whatever the farmer in the field wants it to be. UTC is really the only relevant time anyway. The only time relevant aside from where the sun is in the sky on a given day. Local sunrise or sunset is the only metric that matters in the end. Timezones themselves have been rendered pointless by modern mechanisms. Not even trains rely on timezones anymore.

Radiolab Time May 28, 2007

Imagine just for a few minutes, what it would be like for your GPS to calculate time variance based on degrees of longitude rather than twenty-four one hour timezones. In the same way your phone can change times for daylight savings, it can change time to keep up with your actual position on the globe. The device that you already rely on to tell you what time it is could just do the time calculation for your location and actually tell you what the local time is. The satellites that control GPS already perform these calculations just to be able to talk to each other and establish UTC for themselves.

Cities could assert their own authority and set time for the regions they control. That measure of standardization for a specific local area is understandable, but why would a farmer care what time it is in the city unless he is going there? Why does someone in Austin need to care what the time is in Denver, Washington D.C. or Los Angeles? If you need to know, ask your phone like you do for every other thing you need during the day already.

Why is this so hard to figure out?

This topic is a frequent flyer around here because WE’RE STILL FUCKING DOING THIS STUPID SHIT.

Spring Forward? Bugger off!

It’s That Time of Year again. It’s a Conspiracy. But we have Little Choice, because it’s Good For Us;

“I don’t really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.”

Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

So, don’t forget that you’ll wake up still drunk Sunday morning because you will have had an hour’s less sleep. And don’t forget to thank Benjamin Franklin for joking about the idea with people who thought he was serious…

Here’s some proof that DST is a bad idea.

The result of the study showed that electricity use went up in the counties adopting daylight saving time in 2006, costing $8.6 million more in household electricity bills. The conclusion reached by Kotchen and Grant was that while the lighting costs were reduced in the afternoons by daylight saving, the greater heating costs in the mornings, and more use of air-conditioners on hot afternoons more than offset these savings. Kotchen said the results were more “clear and unambiguous” than results in any other paper he had presented.

Kotchen and Grant’s work reinforces the findings of an Australian study in 2007 by economists Ryan Kellogg and Hendrik Wolff, who studied the extension of daylight saving time for two months in New South Wales and Victoria for the 2000 Summer Olympics. They also found an increase in energy use.

Study: Daylight saving time a waste of energy

Since it doesn’t save any energy, the only reason left for DST is the conclusion I came to before.

What glorious power is given to congress. They can dictate what time the sun comes up, and the sun will listen. Maybe they should tackle that Pi thing, try dictating that it will be 3.2 or something.

Daylight Saving Time

An oldie that never gets old, Because it happens again every year. The hour that never occurs. Can we stop the insanity, please?

Every time I have to change my clocks (whether it’s to fall back or spring forward) the blood pressure goes up a few points just contemplating Daylight Saving Time.

I’ve tried just ignoring it in the past, and that didn’t work out too well. Missed appointments, extremely early arrivals, whatever. Not really a solution. I’ve tried going to bed earlier in advance of the change, setting the clocks ahead early, also not very effective. You name it, I’ll bet you I’ve tried it. No matter what, this gov’t mandated time change always turns into a nightmare.

I just can’t wrap my head around how this ‘saves’ anything, and why this is a benefit. Farmers hate it. Merchants supposedly benefit, and traffic fatalities are said to be reduced. But these benefits argue more for just changing the hour permanently, rather than a seasonal change.

I can clearly see how DST is a benefit to government worshipers everywhere. I can’t think of a better way to demonstrate the power and authority of government; that even the sun can be commanded by congress. Now that is a showcase of control on a grand scale.

Don’t laugh. I’ve had this argument several times. Inevitably the person who thinks DST is a good idea will exclaim “Do you really want the sun to come up at 5:30 in the morning in the summer?” I’ve got news for you people, it still does come up at 5:30 in the morning, we just call it 6:30.

I have a compromise to offer. Let’s split the difference and call it 6:00; give up this whole notion that we can somehow save daylight by passing laws and changing clocks. My biorhythms (or circadian rhythm) will thank you for it.

What glorious power is given to congress. They can dictate what time the sun comes up, and the sun will listen. Maybe they should tackle that Pi thing, try dictating that it will be 3.2 or something…

Immigration Officials Detaining, Deporting American Citizens

The guy featured in the article is actually irrelevant to the story. This is the story:

An unpublished study by the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York nonprofit organization, in 2006 identified 125 people in immigration detention centers across the nation who immigration lawyers believed had valid U.S. citizenship claims.
Vera initially focused on six facilities where most of the cases surfaced. The organization later broadened its analysis to 12 sites and plans to track the outcome of all cases involving citizens.
Nina Siulc, the lead researcher, said she thinks that many more American citizens probably are being erroneously detained or deported every year because her assessment looked at only a small number of those in custody. Each year, about 280,000 people are held on immigration violations at 15 federal detention centers and more than 400 state and local contract facilities nationwide.

Mcclatchy via the Wayback Machine

I’ve often wondered how many Chicanos or Hispanics who are deported each year are actually American citizens. Who carries identification papers around with them every where they go? I don’t. If you just happen to have brown skin, and you’re out without ID, do you have to worry about getting picked up? What a pain in the ass.

I doubt the 125 number even includes those types of cases, and probably only considers the numbers of white people who don’t happen to have the right documentation to back up their claims of citizenship when immigration comes sniffing around during an arrest. People like me.

Perhaps I should start worrying about getting arrested; but then I always did want to visit the homeland. Not that Britain is much better, but at least the scenery is different.

What to do When Pulled Over

That’s the question that’s answered in the CATO Daily Podcast episode Free Riding featuring Timothy Lynch.

If you just want the information (especially since he’s not offering legal advice) it’s probably simpler to just go to this link to the ACLU and get their wallet card that covers the basics; such as:

IF YOU’RE STOPPED IN YOUR CAR

1. Upon request, show them your driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance. In certain cases, your car can be searched without a warrant as long as the police have probable cause. To protect yourself later, you should make it clear that you do not consent to a search. It is not lawful for police to arrest you simply for refusing to consent to a search.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a sob story involving someone consenting to a search when they just knew their vehicle was clean. The answer should always be “I’m sorry, but I do not consent to a search”.

If you want to go beyond “police encounters 101” then you might want to check out the video at Flex Your Rights called Busted. I haven’t seen it myself, but the blurb on the website sounds interesting.

Daylight Stressing Time

Every time I have to change the clocks I just fume over the whole subject of Daylight Savings Time. I’ve tried just ignoring it in the past, making a point to show up for things an hour earlier than the time stated, etc., didn’t work out well enough. I’ve tried going to bed earlier in advance of the change, setting the clocks ahead early, you name it. No matter what I try to get past this gov’t mandated time change, it always turns into a nightmare of insomnia and late wake-ups.

I just can’t wrap my head around how this ‘saves’ anything, and why this is a benefit. To anybody. Well, I take that last part back. I can clearly see how this is a benefit to statist types everywhere. I can’t think of a better way to demonstrate the power and authority of gov’t, that even the sun can be commanded by congress. Now that is a showcase of control on a grand scale.

Don’t laugh. I’ve had this argument several times. Inevitably the person who thinks DST is a good idea will exclaim “Do you really want the sun to come up at 5:30 in the morning?” I’ve got news for you people, it still does come up at 5:30 in the morning, we just call it 6:30.

How about we compromise, halve the difference and call it 6:00; give up this whole notion that we can somehow save daylight by passing laws and changing clocks. My biorhythms (or circadian rhythm) will thank you for it.

What glorious power is given to congress. They can dictate what time the sun comes up, and the sun will listen. Maybe they should tackle that Pi thing, try dictating that it will be 3.2 or something.

Might Doesn’t Make Right

Got into one of those discussions this weekend (I don’t know how I manage to do this so often) someone insisting that the use or threat of use of force is required routinely to provide a safe and secure society.

When I offered the counter observation that it was hardly the case, and that most people would rather do anything to avoid a fight it was scoffed at; never mind that day after day, time after time, events transpire to prove that people will tend to avoid confrontation if they can. One might even argue that it would be a better world if only more people felt there were things worth fighting for, but don’t get me started. It is a given fact in my book that there are people who only respect the threat of force.

The fact that some people will only respect the threat of force is the main reason that some form of government will always be necessary. Self government only works if you are intelligent enough to modify your own behavior when your desires drive you to take what isn’t yours or in some way transgress the normal code of conduct that is currently enforced as law. That there isn’t daily killings on the highway for transgressions of driving etiquette is all the proof that I need that most people are capable of self government.

If might made right, then anything achieved by force would be acceptable to the sensibilities of people in general. Logically; if the use of force made the results right or correct or just, then I’m not sure what business anyone has objecting to anything that is done to them. Obviously it’s right if it can be done, given that force is the only measurement of right (being what the word makes means) if you accept the statement as true. That people object, and that some people will respond with force (self defense) proves that might doesn’t make right. Not even right in the form of right now.

This is lucky for the rest of us in the world. I guess I’ll have to add a few more names to the book though. What book? The record of people that I keep; people that I will need to apply force to if I ever want anything out of them that they don’t think is right. People that won’t simply capitulate to a sound argument when one is presented. That’s another name for the list.

Postscript

It’s getting to be a really long list these days.