Thoughts That Come Unbidden Department

You are here: Home / Archives for Thought That Came Unbidden

Thought That Came Unbidden

Not so standard time

In places that follow it, the U.S. switched from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time this morning. Practically this means 1) we get an “extra” hour today (yay for manipulating time through philosophy of knowledge principles) and 2) it means it will be lighter in the morning and pitch black when I leave the office at 5pm on Monday evening. Based on when we switch back, however, Standard time isn’t really standard any more.

Image from standardtime.com
While I think we need to stop this spring forward/fall back nonsense, this proposal from standardtime.com for mainland timezones is just as nuts.

Daylight Saving Time applied in the U.S. for 237 days in 2015. That means will only have been on so-called Standard time for 128 days out of the 365 in 2015. For 2016 we’ll be on DST for 239 out of 366 days (Thanks, Gregorian calendar!).

So how can something be “standard” if it’s the smaller portion of the division?

Random things I ponder as I reset the 23 clocks I have in my house.

If you want to read more, check out this great article on how the U.S. Navy master clock keeps time for the world or CNN’s annual piece on the myths behind Daylight Saving Time.

Love wins. We’ve still got work to do.

So…this was pretty much my day Friday

There were sparkly unicorns too.
There were sparkly unicorns too.

United States vs. Windsor, the case that partially defeated DOMA, pushed the ball down the hill. Obergefell v. Hodges, already being called the lesbian and gay community’s Loving vs. Virginia, kicked it into the goal.

Parties! Rejoicing! Singing in the streets! Marriages! Even the White House got its rainbow swag on.

But we still have work to do.

 

In 29 states you can still be fired for being LGBT. Of the 21 states that offer protection three of those don’t offer protection on the basis of gender identity. And those regulations only cover employment discrimination. They don’t address housing at all.

I freely admit I wept openly when I heard the decision Friday, just as I did with the Windsor decision. But after the joy had passed there was anger and the base, existential question: Just because I’m different why does the majority get to decide my humanity and my worth?

It’s About The Privilege

My high school friend T. posts a lot of inspirational memes to her Facebook wall. I usually glide right by because many of them hook into the “let go and let God” or “God never gives us more than we can handle” schools of thought. I’m not a big fan of God perse. Too much contradiction in the PR. Occasionally, though, she posts something I find interesting. A couple of weeks ago it was this. It is not necessary to react to everything you notice.

This speaks to me not just as an introvert but also as someone who finds thoughtful analysis valuable and largely lacking in our increasingly noisy world. These days it’s not thoughtfulness that matters but speed to publishing and how loud you say what you say. Access to multiple channels – think Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Blogs, reblogs – or channels with lots of followers that will repurpose your content as their own virtually guarantees that no matter how shitty or ill-thought your conclusions someone will read them.

I’ve been doing my part for months to up the signal-to-noise ratio in the world. Silence here doesn’t mean I don’t notice things. It means I’ve been doubting whether or not my opinion matters at all. Every now and then, though, something happens, some meme, some incredible piece of cultural effluvia ranks so high on the bullshit scale I just can’t let it go by.

Unless your head has been under a rock for the past month there is no way you have missed two of the biggest cultural bombshells in years: Caitlyn Jenner’s coming out and Rachel Dolezal’s exposure. In case you have been under a rock, or are the next unibomber, or maybe have a different filter bubble than I do I will recap.

The ABC News magazine 20/20 aired an interview with Caitlyn Jenner, still then publicly using Bruce and male pronouns, which dragged the transgender community into the public spotlight far quicker than Laverne Cox’s quiet elegance and dignity ever could. Loathsome as it is, we are a celebrity oriented country that often needs that celebrity push to do the right thing that was already in front of us. Once celebrities start saying something is OK or acceptable, values begin to change and a lot of ground gets covered rapidly. In this case, the change in values, much the same as the way Ellen Degeneres’ coming out pushed forward acceptance for gay and lesbian people, is a good thing.

In this interview, which can be viewed in its entirety, Jenner stated that she first knew the outside, the boy she saw in the mirror, didn’t match the girl she felt like on the inside when she was about 8 or 9 years-old. Eight or nine years-old. I’m sure that seems unbelievable to a lot of gender-conforming people who take their gender identities, gender expression, sex, and sexual orientation for granted. My friend J.’s 6 year-old son is already insisting on nail polish and dresses in public. He’s fortunate; his parents want him to be who he is.

Rachel Dolezal, the now former head of the Spokane, WA NAACP, spent nearly a decade presenting herself as a black woman both in public and professionally.  At least she did until her estranged parents outed her as a white woman.

These stories aren’t related in the slightest, except they are. They’re about cultural appropriation and privilege. [Read more…] about It’s About The Privilege

Special Relativity

by Snoron.comEinstein’s Special Theory of Relativity in part states that a moving clock ticks slower than a stationary clock. The theory goes that as a clock’s velocity increases it continues to measure time at a slower and slower rate until it reaches the speed of light at which point it stops altogther. I hold that Einstein didn’t have to do a lot of complicated math to figure this out. All he had to do was talk with a four year-old and someone middle aged.

Remember how important that half year was before you got to school? You were never going on three, or four. No, you were four and a half. That half became crucial at some point in early childhood. It separated you from the younger kids, the babies, who weren’t as grown up as you and didn’t get to do as many things. That half was important probably from when you were old enough to answer the question about your age until you were about nine or ten. [Read more…] about Special Relativity