Quotes from my Mom...

In an earlier post I mentioned that I will be going to Afghanistan. As a result of this, my mother was kind enough to come live with us while I'm gone to help out with the kids. It's a win win situation for both of us, we get a live in baby sitter (who cooks really well too!), and my mother gets to live without many bills for a year. She has been living in Hawaii, but wanted to move to the main land again because of the cheaper living expenses. Now she can move to Texas without worrying about a job or home for a bit. And of course she gets to play with her grand kids.

I'm making this blog post, and I assume many more, as a way of keeping the peace. We tend to argue because she has some pretty eccentric beliefs, and I'm pretty grounded in reality (at least I like to think so :). Instead of arguing with her when she says kind of out there things, I'll just blog about it and not take it too seriously. So, here are some Mom quotes. They aren't going to be exactly word for word, but my summary of what she said. I won't exaggerate or distort what she says one bit, I don't have to.

After I called her gullible for believing in astrology, she said :

I don't believe in Astrology. I do however believe that the sun, the planets, and the stars have an effect on us daily. They also imprinted certain characteristics on us the day we were born.

How is that not astrology?

The next one had me rolling with laughter. It hurt my sides. Don't worry, I did it in private so as not to offend. To help explain how the quote happened, you have to know a little background info. My mom has lived in Arizona and/or Hawaii for the last 25 years. Neither state has daylight saving time. Everyone else changes (well, not everyone, but you know what I mean), and they just do their own thing. My mother was talking about how she hasn't gotten used to it being light so late here in TX. She said..

I wish they didn't have daylight saving here. You would think that since it's so hot that they wouldn't want the extra hour of sunlight.

What?

Well, that's why they don't have daylight saving in HI and AZ. It's already so hot, if they added another hour it would be way to hot. A lot of people are mad that other hot states have daylight saving because it makes it hotter.

You know that daylight saving doesn't actually make the day longer right? It's just an arbitrary change that has no effect on the sun. The sun is "up" longer in the summer, and less in the winter, but not because of daylight savings time. All daylight savings time does is make the time "line up" with the rising sun. There is still as much sunlight in the day in AZ, as in TX (at the same lat of course) regardless of what time we say it is.

No, daylight saving time makes the day longer. Sunrise happens at the same time, but the sun sets later in the day. I can show you in my farmers almanac (which she uses for astrology, not farming) that the sun rises at roughly the same time, but stays up later.

Yes Mom, you're right. I didn't want to argue about it, and we can't have friendly debates. I could see why you would think what she thinks, regardless of how wrong it is.

Most of you should know this, but in case you don't, the earth is tilted at an angle to the sun. As the earth is spinning around it's axis, it is also going around the sun. One half of the year the northern part of the earth is tilted closer to the sun, while on the other half of the year the southern part is. The hemisphere that is tilted closer to the sun experiences summer, and the hemisphere farthest away from the sun experiences winter. The equator is basically season less, as it stays pointed toward the sun, just slightly higher or lower depending on the time of year. As you are pointed towards the sun, you have longer days, and away from the sun shorter days. The exaggeration of the length of days increases the farther you get away from the equator.

Our system of time is completely arbitrary. You can call 4 Oclock, 12 Oclock, or beer thirty, or 987 space-time units. It's irrelevant to the sun. If I call it one thing, and you call it another, the sun is still the same. Time is just a unit of measurement. Just as an inch is still as long whether it's called an inch, or it's called 2.54 centimeters, daylight is still the same regardless of what time you say it is. The day is longer in the summer, and daylight saving "springs forward". That just means that 7:00, is now 8:00, and the sun is "up" later, even though it rises at roughly the same time.

If I didn't explain it well or you want to know a lot more about it, check out wiki.