Hey Britain, steel yourself for Double Summer Time.  This is the Coalition’s latest wheeze to boost tourism/save energy/cut road deaths by making our evenings lighter later.  More specifically they’re considering changing from GMT to GMT+1 in the winter, and from GMT+1 to GMT+2 in the summer.  This doesn’t increase the amount of daylight we have, that's physically impossible, but it does shift more of the available daylight past breakfast to a time when you're actually awake.  In June Double Summer Time would mean it’d stay light until roughly 11pm, but conversely in late December the sun wouldn’t rise anywhere in Britain before 9am.  [Links in original. -O.G.]

This is astronomically perverse. The sun takes precisely one hour to travel through 15 degrees of longitude, but the longitudes of Belfast and Warsaw are nearly 30 degrees apart.  We’d be joining a CET timezone that’s twice as wide as it ought to be, with the sun taking two hours to travel from one side to the other rather than just one.

•Sunrise (winter):  There’d be five (yes five) months of the year when the sun rises later than 8am, and two months when it rises later than 9am  (ugh, that’d be miserable)
•Sunrise (summer):  There’d only be one month of the year when the sun rises before 6am  (hurrah, this minimises the amount of wasted daylight while most people are asleep)
•Sunset (winter):  There’d be only three months of the year when the sun sets before 6pm, and just one when it sets before 5pm  (hurrah, that’d be great)
•Sunset (summer):  There’d be four months of the year when the sun sets later than 9pm, and two months when it sets later than 10pm  (hurrah if you're outdoors) (boo if you’re trying to get to sleep)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 17:30:22 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Daniels sure does seem to have to clarify a lot of things after-the-fact.
- Andy, in AOS sidebar

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 16:38:38 GMT | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Adams, Sandy, Florida, 24th
Aderholt, Robert, Alabama, 4th
Alexander, Rodney, Louisiana, 5th
Barletta, Lou, Pennsylvania, 11th
Bass, Charles, New Hampshire, 2nd
Berg, Rick, North Dakota, At-Large
Biggert, Judy, Illinois, 13th
Bilbray, Brian P., California, 50th
Bonner, Jo, Alabama, 1st • Chairman, Standards and Ethics
Calvert, Ken, California, 44th
Camp, Dave, Michigan, 4th • Chairman, Ways and Means
Cantor, Eric, Virginia, 7th • Majority Leader
Capito, Shelley Moore, West Virginia, 2nd
Carter, John, Texas, 31st
Cassidy, William "Bill", Louisiana, 6th
Cole, Tom, Oklahoma, 4th
Cravaack, Chip, Minnesota, 8th
Crawford, Rick, Arkansas, 1st
Crenshaw, Ander, Florida, 4th
Culberson, John, Texas, 7th
Denham, Jeff, California, 19th
Dent, Charles W., Pennsylvania, 15th
Diaz-Balart, Mario, Florida, 21st
Dold, Robert, Illinois, 10th
Dreier, David, California, 26th • Chairman, House Rules
Duffy, Sean P., Wisconsin, 7th
Emerson, Jo Ann, Missouri, 8th
Fortenberry, Jeff, Nebraska, 1st
Frelinghuysen, Rodney, New Jersey, 11th
Gibson, Chris, New York, 20th
Gingrey, Phil, Georgia, 11th
Granger, Kay, Texas, 12th
Grimm, Michael, New York, 13th
Hanna, Richard, New York, 24th
Harper, Gregg, Mississippi, 3rd
Hastings, Doc, Washington, 4th • Chairman, Natural Resources
Heck, Joe, Nevada, 3rd
Herrera Beutler, Jaime, Washington, 3rd
Issa, Darrell, California, 49th • Chairman, Oversight & Government Reform
Johnson, Timothy V., Illinois, 15th
Jones, Walter B., North Carolina, 3rd
King, Pete, New York, 3rd • Chairman, Homeland Security
Kingston, Jack, Georgia, 1st
Kinzinger, Adam, Illinois, 11th
Kline, John, Minnesota, 2nd• Chairman, Education and the Workforce
Lance, Leonard, New Jersey, 7th
Latham, Tom, Iowa, 4th
Lewis, Jerry, California, 41st
LoBiondo, Frank, New Jersey, 2nd
Lucas, Frank, Oklahoma, 3rd • Chairman, Agriculture
Lungren, Daniel E., California, 3rd • Chairman, House Administration
McCarthy, Kevin, California, 22nd • Majority Whip
McKeon, Buck, California, 25th • Chairman, Armed Services
McKinley, David, West Virginia, 1st
Meehan, Pat, Pennsylvania, 7th
Miller, Candice, Michigan, 10th
Noem, Kristi, South Dakota, At-Large
Nunes, Devin, California, 21st
Nunnelee, Alan, Mississippi, 1st
Olson, Pete, Texas, 22nd
Palazzo, Steven, Mississippi, 4th
Paulsen, Erik, Minnesota, 3rd
Petri, Thomas, Wisconsin, 6th
Posey, Bill, Florida, 15th
Reichert, David G., Washington, 8th
Rivera, David, Florida, 25th
Roby, Martha, Alabama, 2nd
Rogers, Mike, Alabama, 3rd
Rogers, Harold, Kentucky, 5th • Chairman, Appropriations
Rooney, Tom, Florida, 16th
Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana, Florida, 18th • Chairman, Foreign Affairs
Roskam, Peter J., Illinois, 6th
Runyan, Jon, New Jersey, 3rd
Schilling, Bobby, Illinois, 17th
Schock, Aaron, Illinois, 18th
Sensenbrenner, F. James, Wisconsin, 5th
Shuster, Bill, Pennsylvania, 9th
Simpson, Mike, Idaho, 2nd
Smith, Chris, New Jersey, 4th
Stivers, Steve, Ohio, 15th
Sullivan, John, Oklahoma, 1st
Terry, Lee, Nebraska, 2nd
Thompson, Glenn W., Pennsylvania, 5th
Tipton, Scott, Colorado, 3rd
Upton, Fred, Michigan, 6th • Chairman, Energy and Commerce
Walden, Greg, Oregon, 2nd
West, Allen, Florida, 22nd
Westmoreland, Lynn A., Georgia, 3rd
Wolf, Frank, Virginia, 10th
Womack, Steve, Arkansas, 3rd
Young, Don, Alaska, At-Large
Young, C.W. Bill, Florida, 10th

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 23:00:36 GMT | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Now it’s requiring cookies to read comments.

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LATER:  You can get around it by viewing the individual post pages, but whatta drag...

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It’s the time of the year when our local water utility cranks up the chlorine, making the experience of filling a pot for boiling some spaghetti (or for making coffee) akin to stepping into the locker room at the municipal swimming pool.

I don’t recall this happening years ago, back when the water operation was locally owned and managed.  Of course, in those days the board of directors  had to face their customers at the butcher’s, the baker’s, or the corner drugstore.  Or across the table at breakfast.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 22:50:21 GMT | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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