The daylight savings debate

Hey,

I am in canada, in PEI. On the news they are asking the residents to send in our opinions to the premier of PEI on the debate of the daylight savings time change. they want to know whether we agree or disagree.
a little recap:
The U.S (?? i dunno who....congress? i dunno?) is wanting to change daylight savings time to start in march, and end in november.

I don't agree with this, it's a egotistical $$$$ isssue, and clearly it just a recipe for wrong.

I would like to know your thoughts on this. i know a bit about astrology, birth time, chinese zodiac, etc, but to you, the people who are passionate about this subject, what do you think?

thank you very much!

apolitically speaking

I keep charts handy for Sun & Moon rising-setting times,
and these follow through without recalculating for DST.
It works fine for me, just like 'adjusting' for time zones.

I thought it was a cost-savings issue...

http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/b.html

Perhaps it doesn't seem natural where you are? Supposedly most the European Union uses it and the U.S. suggestions--at least what I've seen--suggests it would be good for energy conservation.

If there are other things to be concerned about the change, I'd be glad to know.

Best regards,

Cerulean

So-called 'daylight' saving was started, aparently, in the UK during WWI when there weren't sufficient people working on the farms: by getting people up an hour earlier, they still worked until later hours, and hence more work was undertaken to make up the difference.

Since then, of course, many sub-tropical places have introduced the same - not because it means more work is obtained (there are significant social differences between then and now such that this aspect becomes irrelevant and is in fact not the case), but for two other reasons: on the one hand it actually saves substantial energy consumption, especially in terms of lights and television (ie, electricity); on the other, many report they actually enjoy finishing work and still feeling there are many hours of natural light to enjoy with one's family.

In some ways, this is therefore quite unrelated to Astrology (in my personal view), but about how one organises one's society.

If we were more honest, we would not have 'daylight saving' (that does not, of course, save any daylight) but rather simply state that 'in our society, during the longer hours of daylight, we begin work at 8 and finish at 4, whereas during the months of shorter hours, we begin at 9 and finish at 5' (or whatever times applies to the individuals concerned).

Personally, then, I do not like the lie of 'daylight saving' - call it by what we actually do (ie, change the working times and TV scheduling during longer daylight hours - which is what in fact occurs): something like 'Winter schedule' and 'Summer schedule'.

Better still, for someone like myself who prefers to not get up too early, get rid of the alterations between summer and winter scheduling!

hi jmd

You mean they change the times on the TV too?
I'll have to dig mine out of the closet and see...

Nahhh...

here is a cow's view to DST:

The farmers maintain there is no way to convince a cow that she must wait -an hour by the clock before she can be milked and fed.

Click to expand...

I actually heard cows give less milk when time changes

Energetically, all our energies are aligned with sun day/night cycle. Waking up with rays of sun and going to bed when it's dark, is our natural schedule. Any time management or abuse of this natural rhythm pulls us more and more from being part of the nature, and turing into machines

posh

jumptothemoonyea said:

Location: On the Moon

Click to expand...

You must be travelling Port out, Starboard home.

Fulgour said:

You must be travelling Port out, Starboard home.

Click to expand...

haha, mostly jumping up and down (now on DST schedule )

There are two issues here - the social/economic one and the Astrological one.

jmd has given an excellent answer to the first - he's quite right that no daylight is actually 'saved' it's simply a matter of working longer hours in Summer and shorter hours in Winter. Indeed that is a natural thing to do and in a mainly agrarian society, with no street lighting it always was the case by necessity.

Astrologically the issue is only important in determining 'when' events happen. The important thing, Astrologically, is that the event is recorded in Local Solar Time (LST) in order to cast the chart. The problem with this is that there are not sets of ephemerides for every concievable location, so in casting the chart it's necessary to use an ephemeris that is almost certainly set for a different longitude. Daylight saving would also mean that the clock time was a minimum of one hour wrong compared to LST, and most likely more than this as LST changes by 4 minutes for every 1 degrees East or West you move.

In the days when ephemerides were in book form, daylight saving was a real issue because there would be a one hour discrepency between the ephemeris and the clock, assuming that you were at the longitude that the ephemris was set for (usually 0 degrees). This introduced a source of error and of course if the event occured at some other location, it was also necessary to adjust the local time to the time zone of the ephemeris - usually Universal Time (UT).

Modern computer programs can easily make these adjustments - so as long as you set your computer clock correctly and enter the data correctly the calculations are done correctly - irrespective of where you are or where the event occured or whether there is or is not daylight savings.

Astrologically daylight savings is no longer a major issue if you are using a computer - but at the social/economic level I'd go along with jmd and simply admit that we're starting work an hour earlier for part of the year.

jumptothemoonyea said:

here is a cow's view to DST:



I actually heard cows give less milk when time changes

Energetically, all our energies are aligned with sun day/night cycle. Waking up with rays of sun and going to bed when it's dark, is our natural schedule. Any time management or abuse of this natural rhythm pulls us more and more from being part of the nature, and turing into machines

Click to expand...

I don't see how the cows will know - when did you last see one wearing a watch ? All the farmers I know (and I live in a farming area) DO adjust their own working hours. I think it's a good idea; it should save a lot of energy, and that is CRITICAL. OK, logically we should all say we start and finish work an hour earlier etc - but that would be far more of a headache to remember and would mean loads of other waste on printing things that have office/store/school hours on - much more sensible to change the clock. If people feel sensitive about it - then they can change their individual hours - I'm on flexi, for instance; I actually start at 8 all year, but if I minded the clocks changing, when they do so I could start at 9 their time (if I have this the right way around...) and stick with gut feeling (whch doesn't exist for me anyway !)

ANYTHING that will conserve energy has to be supported, I think - or there won't be any hours at all to change when our grandchildren grow up. The US should be encouraged with every step they take on this.