BobRingReflections

Recently, most people in United States moved their clocks an hour forward, observing Daylight Savings Time (DST).  I live in Arizona, which does not observe DST (even though my “smart a_ _” bedside clock moved the time one hour forward anyway).  While resetting that clock, I decided that the history of time zones and DST would be a good topic for a blog.     After a short introduction, I will cover the need for standard time, America’s first time zones, the idea of DST, U.S. Congressional actions defining time zones and DST observance, U.S. time zones today, DST controversies, and will finish with worldwide time zones and DST observance. My principal resources include “Time Zone,” “Daylight Savings Time,” and “International Date Line,” Wikipedia.com; “A Brief History of Time Zones,” geojango.com; “History of Time Zones,” bts.gov; “Daylight Savings Time,” crsreports.congress.gov; “U.S. Time Zones in 1918,” papershake.blogspot.com; “The History of and Use of Time...

It’s almost that time of year again - March Madness and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.  I watch a lot of college basketball on TV during the regular season, but the Tournament is special, and as a basketball fanatic, I try to watch as many games as possible.  (If you’re a fan, you know that, early in the Tournament, that amounts to 16 separate games in a single day - on successive days!)   Last year, I wrote about March Madness - haranguing about problems with the TV coverage, including scheduling, broadcast organization, sideline interviews, the length of games, repetitive TV commercials, studio-game sound differences, and aggressively pushing gambling on Tournament game broadcasts.                                   (See https://bobringreflections.blogspot.com/2022_04_11_archive.html ) This year, watching the final conference basketball games leading up to the Tournament,...

Once in a while, among numerous blog posts on history and science, I feel the need to get something off my chest.  This time the subject is how mainstream media news is declining before our eyes.    In this opinion piece, I will start with a discussion of where Americans get their news today, and follow that with a definition of mainstream media news.   Then, I will cover what I feel are the troubling problems of mainstream media news; the special cases of newspapers, television, and online news; and how social media amplifies all the negative aspects of mainstream media news.   I’ll conclude with some thoughts about how to get “better” news. My principal sources include my own aging, frustrated brain, “More than eight-in-ten Americans get news from digital devices,” supremecourt.gov; “Broad agreement in U.S. - even among partisans - on which news outlets are part of the mainstream media,” pewresearh.org; “What is Mainstream Media? Definition, Meaning, and...