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Association’s condemnation of shifted time and the 1974 bill of the same kind that was passed and soon had to be rescinded.
__________
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.
Of course it’s only those who live on the center line of their time zone who will most experience the salutory benefit of a near equivalence between their local, Standard, clock time and sun (or sun dial) time.
If all time zones were bands of a strict 15° width at least no one would be more than half an hour off, one way or the other, between local Standard and sun time.
But look at the actual map of our time zones.
Eastern and Central are distorted and stretched way west of their respective 75th and 90th degree midlines. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the Eastern Time Zone?
I get that political borders are a determinative factor (as is a desire to be on the same clock time as Wall Street and D.C., if possible).
But then the kids are going to be waiting in the dark for their morning school bus in the winter.
Do you like your sunrises and sunsets an hour later than those just over the line in the next time zone west?
Pick your zone … but you can’t have it both ways.
Thank you for your vigilance and beautiful account. The July 14th date is likely purposefully chosen as, Biblically, ‘Bastille Day’ 1789 was the day the adversary amped up the changing of ‘times and laws’ in rebellion to God.
If you’re interested, I’ve analyzed this and next week’s heavenly signs (including the double conjunction of the Sun and Jupiter in Cancer and the Moon with Pluto in Capricorn) in Biblical light:
https://sabineshares.wordpress.com/2026/07/20/manhattans-expired-lease-and-satans-last-crescendo/
Many blessings,
Sabine
During the Second World War in Britain, between October 1940 and October 1945, Double Summer Time was introduced, with the intention of saving fuel, and helping reduce the time people needed to maintain their blackouts to prevent aerial observations of house lights, primarily during the otherwise long winter evenings. This meant that in October 1940, the clocks were not reset to Greenwich Mean Time (what we’d now call Universal Time, or UTC), but stayed an hour ahead. The following March of 1941, the clocks were put forward another hour, to be two hours ahead of GMT/UTC.
As with the later 1968-71 experiment of year-round one-hour ahead time in the UK, detailed by David Harper, this was particularly unpopular in Scotland and also northern England (parts of which are at the same latitudes as parts of southern Scotland), as well as having other disadvantages.
The wartime usage also explains something that rather puzzled me years ago, about the timings of the D-Day landings in Normandy by the Allied forces, which often seemed awfully late to me, as starting around 06:30, for early June’s dawn over southern England and northern France. Of course, Double Summer Time explains it, as that would have been around 04:30 by Sun time/GMT/UTC.
Thank you for this helpful suggestions. Wrote to both our senators.
This is not “about” what is rational or good for human beings. Rather, it is about the ego of politicians in general, and one in particular. He also did not like pennies, so they are gone.
We are now in an era where “what people think” — even experts — doesn’t matter, and the more uninformed the
politicians are, they more they believe that they know best. The penny-hater, like King Canute, actually believes that he can tell the sun when to appear. Or perhaps slap a tariff on it. What can you do?
The senate is where bills go to die. Republicans aren’t passing any bills. Though they have the majority, they can’t unite. So I think this bill is as good as dead. At least that’s my hope.
If the Republicans had any sense they could end the filibuster and pass some good bills such as the Save Act. But I don’t see that happening. So sad.
If the Democrats get the senate in November, they will surely end the filibuster and pass all kinds of bad bills that will stack the supreme court, create open borders and socialized medicine, make permanent one party rule, ensure one party rule by admitting Puerto Rico and D.C. as states, and other measures paving the road to communism.
If the Sunshine Protection Absurdity does pass, it will just be a matter of time until it is done away with, as in England and Russia when they tried it.
And to think that I have been castigated for a hint of partisanship!
Thank you Guy. I didn’t know that the House of Representatives was reviving this silly idea until I read that they had passed it. I immediately wrote to my senators and urged a no vote. I shared my miserable experience of winter daylight saving time in 1974-1975, and how quickly and unanimously we stopped doing that. I endorsed simply going back to year-round standard time, but said that changing the clocks twice a year is less bad than permanent daylight saving time.
By the way, each US state and tribal government has always had the option of following daylight saving time or staying on standard time year round. Arizona stays on standard time while the Navajo nation uses daylight saving time.
I should in my post have suggested urging senators not merely to vote no but to amend the bill to permanent standard time.
as a sleep professional, concur
Thank you for highlighting this silly legislation. Many people who hanker for year-round DST just want more sunshine after work or school and are clueless about it causing a misalignment between natural circadian rhythms and social clocks. I’m glad you included senators’ contact details.
The United Kingdom experimented with permanent summer time (daylight saving time) from February 1968 to October 1971. It was called British Standard Time. It was intended, among other things, to reduce deaths of children in road traffic accidents as they walked home from school on darker autumn/winter evenings. There was in fact a reduction, but a stricter drink-driving law had also recently been introduced, and this may also have been a factor. Alas, deaths in road traffic accidents on the morning school run increased slightly, as permanent summer time in mid-winter made the mornings darker for longer.
The general public in England was neutral when asked, but it was very unpopular in Scotland, where mid-winter sunrise is already much later than in southern England. It was also unpopular among farmers and postal workers, and also with construction workers, who had to delay the start of their working day in winter when the construction sites were still icy at 9 a.m.
The experiment has never been repeated.
Thanks, I add a paragraph to my “History”..