This evening’s sky.
The Moon at first quarter crossed our orbit outward behind us. The point marked “antapex of Earth’s way” is the direction back along our orbit.
Making a loony idea even worse
The US House of Representatives on July 14 passed, by 308 to 117, a bill, called the “Sunshine Protection Act,” to make “Daylight Saving Time” permanent. It now goes to the Senate.
Our web page on “Clock shifting times” summarizes the history and geography of this government interference with time and the many reasons against it.
The twice-a-year shifting has been an utter nuisance, and abolishing it is the good part of the bill.
But settling on the shifted time is exactly the wrong choice. Standard time is more true to the sun.
This bill introduces an extra messiness by providing that individual states can opt out of it
We suggest that you write to a senator, urging a vote against the absurdly named Sunshine Protection Act (better called the Sunshine Ignoring Act). Contact information for senators is at https://www.270towin.com/elected-officials/contact-us-senators/
You can quote our website. The essential part is “Making it Even Worse.”
If emailing, you can copy and paste in the below, which I think will preserve the links to the American Medical Association’s condemnation of shifted time and the 1974 bill of the same kind that was passed and soon had to be rescinded.
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Making it even worse
Almost every year, politicians or others propose that we cease the twice-a-year clock changing ordeal – but in exactly the wrong way: keep the whole year on the displaced time, an hour wrong by the sun!
This would cancel any supposed benefit of pushing 8 o’clock back to 7 for part of the year, but no benefit would be achieved – only the gross and educationally confusing misfit to natural sun time.
Medical professionals overwhelmingly recommend permanent standard time (as reported in a 2023 Journal of the American Medical Association article). They say our bodies’ circadian clocks are out of step with daylight throughout the clock-shifted months, increasing poor sleep, vehicle crashes, depression, and stroke.
The U.S. tried the change to permanent shifted time in 1974. It rapidly became so unpopular that it had to be undone. Russia tried it in 2011 and abandoned it in 2014.