[diggers350] lighter later campaign

[Simon Fairlie]

Why can't people adjust? In France, school starts at eight o clock,  
shops open at eight and most people start work at eight.  In the UK  
everything starts at nine. The government runs most of the schools in  
this country, if it wants people to get up earlier, it simply has to  
start school classes at eight and open government offices at eight,  
and (with the help of an advertising campaign), everyone else will  
follow suit.

The alternative, of pretending that midday is at 11 am or even 10  
am,  is a demeaning and confusing deceit, which shows how divorced  
most people are from natural diurnal rhythms. . The habit of changing  
to British summertime  also explains the complete absence of sundials  
in the modern built environment, which is sad because sundials not  
only tell the time, but also help to explain how time works,

Incidentally  I have heard that in medieval Italy an hour was a not a  
defined length of time, but a division of the sun's arc, so that  
there were always 12 hours in a day,  winter and summer. An hour in  
winter only lasted what we now call 40 minutes, whereas in summer an  
hour lasted about 90 minutes. Am I right in thinking that this made  
the construction of sundials very easy? Does anyone else know  
anything about this system,  or can point me towards someone who has  
written about it?

Apologies for the typos in the previous message. It must have been  
very late, I'm confused.

Simon



On 2 Apr 2010, at 09:25, Dan Olner wrote:

> "If the daylight doesn't work well for ypu at the mpment , then  
> just get up earlier."
>
> Except that most people can't just adjust their working time in the  
> way you suggest. You might not like that, but it's the reality for  
> the vast majority of people in the UK. If you are able to shift  
> your own life rhythms around, then that's great - but you're a  
> tiny, lucky minority.
>
> So, e.g. the carbon savings that can come from optimising the  
> "position of sun/what it says on my clock" relationship are very real.
>
> Dan
> ________________________________
> From: diggers350 at yahoogroups.com [diggers350 at yahoogroups.com] On  
> Behalf Of Simon Fairlie [chapter7 at tlio.org.uk]
> Sent: 02 April 2010 00:00
> To: Andrew Pratt
> Cc: diggers350 at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [diggers350] lighter later campaign
>
>
>
> This campaign is ridiculous and is based on an erroneous post- 
> modern assumption that time is a human construction and adjustable,  
> This is not so. Midday is when the sun reaches the apex of  its  
> journey around our sky  and it occurs at a certain moment of the  
> day in every place in the world. It makes sense to approxiate this  
> to the nearest hour, which in our case is  Greenwch Meantime. It  
> doesn;t make any sense at all to tinker with that and say that  
> midday by the clock is 11 o clock by the sun, it just causes  
> confusion.
>
> For exam[le France, whose nearest hourly approximate is Greenwich  
> meantime is aready one hour ahead of what it shpuld be, whioch  
> means that it is (newraly)  two hours ahead when it goes over to  
> summer time. The result is that vine workers in the Sout hof France  
> go out to wotrk at 8 am clock time (which by the sun is 6 am) and  
> finissh the morning's work at "midday" which is in fact 10 am by  
> the sun. They then have lunch, and a siesta for two hours (in order  
> to avpid the worst of the heat)  and go out to work in the  
> afternoon at 2 pm  by the clock, which by the sun is midday the  
> hottest part of the day. I did this for 10 years and belive me,   
> its  completey insane.
>
> Tinkering with the clocks is a way of marginalizing people's  
> relationship with the sun.  If the daylight doesn't work well for  
> ypu at the mpment , then just get up earlier, don't try and pretend  
> that you can alter the rhythm of of the sun.
> This email was sent atmidnoght, which seems a bit late, but  
> thankfully  it's on;y 11 pm.
>
> Cheers
>
> Simon
>
>
> Simon Fairlie
> Monkton Wyld Court
> Charmouth
> Bridport
> Dorset
> DT6 6DQ
> 01297 561359
> chapter7 at tlio.org.uk<mailto:chapter7 at tlio.org.uk>
>
> On 30 Mar 2010, at 13:58, Andrew Pratt wrote:
>
>
>
> Please let people know about this campaign to switch the clocks  
> forward to get more people outside, save carbon emissions etc - the  
> way we currently live I think it makes sense
> Cheers
>
> http://www.lighterlater.org/
>
>
> With thanks Andrew Pratt 07980 602088
>
>
>
> ________________________________
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> 

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