Is Standard Time real?

We may be about to have year-round Daylight Saving Time, and I'm fielding some questions about it, and hearing misconceptions. So let me try to clear a few things up. Refer your confused friends to this blog entry.

First: The earth is round, and that causes two things:

(1) The local time is different in different places. When the sun is setting in New York it will not set for about three hours yet in California. You can confirm this with a phone call. This is because the earth is round and is not man-made.

(2) The days are longer in the summer and shorter in the winter. That is true at all temperate latitudes and is not caused by setting our clocks. Let me say that again: We don't get more daylight in the summer because the clocks change. Nature does it by itself.

Now then. The most interesting question I've gotten is, Why don't we set the clocks to the time it "really" is, rather than Eastern Standard or Eastern Daylight?

Well, I'd have to ask what you mean by "really." You might mean local solar time, which is what you'd have if you set your clock to 12 noon at the exact moment the sun was highest in the sky in your location, every day.

That would give you an immediate problem — your days wouldn't be exactly 24 hours. The sun runs a few minutes fast or slow at different times of year because the earth's orbit is not a perfect circle.

You can solve that problem by using local mean time, which averages out those variations so every day is exactly 24 hours. That sounds ideal, doesn't it?

You still have another problem — no two towns would set their clocks alike! Go about 12 miles east or west at mid-temperate latitudes, and you have a minute of difference. Athens and Atlanta would be five minutes apart. And so on.

The railroads noticed that problem, and that's why we have time zones. The basic idea is that Eastern Standard Time is local mean time at longitude 75 west; Central is 90 west; Mountain is 105 west; and Pacific is 120 west. These are each an hour apart. Each locality is supposed to use the one that is nearest.

But we haven't implemented that perfectly. Much of the East wanted to be in the same time zone as New York, and that's why Atlanta is in the Eastern zone even though its longitude is 84 west and its time zone ought to be Central.

So... Local mean time is not an option. Standard time would be very appealing if the zones worked as intended.

As it is, we've simply decided that we don't want the sun to be highest at 12 noon. With year-round Daylight Saving Time, we're opting for it to be highest at 1 p.m. (typically) or more like 1:36 in Atlanta.

Our work day is not centered on noon anyhow. People work 8 to 5 (centered on 12:30) or 9 to 5 (centered on 1:00). So it's not unreasonable for the middle of the solar day to be 1 p.m. And that's what we're getting.

One last concern: What about schoolchildren having to wait for the bus in the dark? With year-round Daylight Saving Time, the latest winter sunrise in Atlanta is around 8:45 a.m. I don't know how early they have to wait for the bus, but we might do either of two things: (1) move Georgia into the correct Central time zone, moving that sunrise to 7:45; or (2) consider starting school later, rather than tying the whole nation's clocks to it.

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Separation of church and state

We usually think of separation of church and state as a way to keep religious groups from taking over the government, but it also works the other way. It keeps the government from controlling religion.

I happen to be a Presbyterian. Would I want Presbyterianism to be made the official religion? Not for a moment, because then, some politically approved version of Presbyterianism would be imposed on our churches in place of letting us think for ourselves.

In a conversation about this on Facebook, someone pointed out a reason why some strong advocates of private education and homeschooling don't advocate school vouchers: As soon as the government gets involved in funding something, it has control over it. In fact, right from the beginning the government, issuing vouchers, has to decide what is and is not a school. Of course, compulsory-education laws already do that, but they only set minimum standards, not kinds of organizations that can deliver schooling.

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250 years

Today we mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. We set up a democratic republic, and it lasted. Our founders made the right mix of democracy (voice of the people) and republic (explicit constitution and laws), and after 250 years, it still hasn't been overthrown or tossed out.

Very few countries can boast anything comparable. Ours is the oldest written constitution in the world. The United Kingdom has had a stable system of government, but without a written constitution, for more than 300 years. That makes them and us the two oldest, arguably two branches of a single tradition. Despite the acrimonious language in the Declaration of Independence and the hard-fought Revolutionary War, neither side ever hated the other. I think many, even at the time, understood that the Americans were rejecting a persistent mistake made by the British, seen as Parliament failing to live up to its own principles, not rejecting the British nation itself or its values.

Some stable governments, such as that of Iceland, are very old but have spent part of their history as territories of other countries. Japan's monarchy is ancient, but the written constitution dates only from 1947. San Marino, a tiny enclave in Italy, claims to go back to before the fall of the Roman Empire, but whether it has been independent all that time depends on who's telling the story.

The question is whether we can make it for another 250. Today finds the United States rather unhappy, quite unlike the upbeat bicentennial in 1976.

Today, America is divided, and a remarkable number of citizens see other citizens as enemies. Many think they're supposed to despise (not merely disagree with) "liberals" or "foreigners" or "immigrants" or, on the other side, "MAGAs," and politics is a matter of keeping the country from falling into the hands of the wrong half of its own citizenry. Bringing us all together as one nation is no longer the goal; instead, each side wants to get 51% of the vote and smash the other.

Culturally, we have an ongoing problem with "Christian nationalism," an attempt to equate right-wing politics (often with considerable moral hypocrisy) with Christian faith. It's easier to be right-wing than to be godly, and too many now think that if you're right-wing, you are ipso facto godly. And if you reject this, people start expecting you to toe the line of the left wing, whatever unpopular cause it may be chasing at any particular moment.

In 1976 the nation came together to celebrate in various dignified ways, including a procession of tall sailing ships, and I don't recall President Ford trying to take a prominent role in it, although naturally he did his part.

The celebrations this year are widely seen as showmanship and campaigning conducted by our unpopular president, Donald Trump, who is widely believed to be suffering from dementia. We've had a martial arts event on the White House grounds, causing massive damage to the lawns, and a "national state fair" that has been very poorly attended. Extreme weather is also a problem — yesterday the fair closed for several hours due to dangerously hot conditions, and today the heat index (the "feels like" temperature) is forecast to hit 110 F (43 C), which is about 100 F with about 80% humidity.

I hope America will return to its senses. We should thank God for our country without mixing up which is which, and love our country in the proper way, without placing it above everything else. Perhaps the most important American principle is that our country doesn't own us, we own it, and it's ours to improve.

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