The Half-Year Pivot (again)

Once again we pivot into the dark half of the year. Here in the northern hemisphere, anyway. Folks below the equator are enjoying the opposite pivot, the good one into light.

The Autumnal Equinox is my least favorite Solar Occasion (today: 12:44 GMT, 7:44 AM CDT). It means winter is coming. I can deal with the cold, but the short days and long dark nights, that’s tougher.

This time of year, I’m conflicted. Winter is coming, with all that entails (most of it on the debit side of the ledger). But it’s my favorite time of year weatherwise, and I love the autumn leaves. It’s almost like a small gift before winter, a last round of summer.

September itself is a bit interesting. As month nine, it’s the last of the single-digit months. Name-wise, it’s the first of the -ber months, September, October, November, and December. First month of the last third of the year (last month of the third quarter — after September, the year is in its last quarter — final chance for the home team to score). The Equinox makes it kind of a gateway month (as March is the gateway to spring).

I’ve written before about how fast the day-night ratio is changing at the equinoxes [see Solar Derivative]. A while ago I got a simple app that mainly does one thing: tells me the sunrise and sunset times. It does a little bit more than just that:

Like tell me the total daylight time (along the bottom edge). There were three-and-a-half more hours of daylight at the Solstice than at the Equinox.  Come the winter solstice, the Sun is up only eight-and-three-quarter hours, and we get over 15 hours of night.

More to the point here, it also shows the time difference in the sunrise and sunset the previous and next week and previous and next month. As you can see on the left above, sunrise and sunset change by over 20 minutes in the course of the week. And over ninety minutes over the course of a month.

In contrast, at the Summer Solstice, A week changes by only one minute and a month by only 30. It’s a nice illustration of the difference.

Incidentally, I got the app mainly for when my little pal Bentley stays with me for a few days. There’s a local park we like to enjoy for an evening walk, and I like to get there with about 45 minutes of daylight left so we (well, I) can watch the sunset. There are many ways to get sunrise and sunset times, but the app makes it very convenient. Just open it, and there they are.

It’s also nice to know how early Bentley will decide it’s time to start the day. Daylight means breakfast and a morning walk!

Two close friends of mine have the COVID. Appparently going around again. Might be time to see about a booster. Being a retired isolated single introvert has its advantages, I guess. I’ve so far dodged the COVID bullet. I’m starting to wonder how long that luck will hold out.

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Tighten your seatbelts, sudden change of topic.

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Jon Stewart retired from The Daily Show in 2015. He’s been back on the air for a few years now, first on Apple+ (which I won’t subscribe to), and now apparently back on The Daily Show as producer and as the Monday guest host.

I stopped watching The Daily Show when he left. It’s a little bit because Trevor Noah never really grabbed me, and Stewart’s shoes were hard to fill by anyone. But it’s more because over time I got turned off to The Daily Show and all others of its ilk. I began to find them divisive — jesters with audience-pleasing jokes largely based on how awful the side is.

It’s also why I stopped watching MSNBC over four years ago. (I gave up on CNN long ago, and FNC isn’t in the running.)

Both these “news” channels and these comedy channels based on current events seem playing to ideological audiences — preaching to the choir, as they say. It’s possible John Oliver has done some good work beyond sharp comic commentary. I gave up HBO when I cut the cable and haven’t seen reason to subscribe to them as a feed.

[With Apple+ it’s because I’m too unhappy with Apple to ever willingly give them another dime. Because reasons. With HBO I just haven’t seen enough content I want there to make it worthwhile.]

In any event, after The Debate, I started watching a video of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show giving his analysis of the debate. I was hoping for the insightful Jon. But it started off with a screed about Dick Chaney’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. The joke Jon kept hammering on was his revulsion of Chaney — to the point of mock throwing up.

My editorial direction would have been to acknowledge and appreciate that even Dick Cheney — that old villain — sees the importance of Country over Party. Very welcome in the face of so many Republican appeasers and toadies. Or call them what they are: members of a cult.

But Stewart brought back memories of his personal attacks against perceived enemies on the Right. One example is Jon’s constant personal mocking of Mitch McConnell’s appearance, which his audiences lapped up with delight. Too much of his schtick was ad hominem for me to really enjoy.

Look, I hate what these people stand for as much as anyone, but you hate the sin, not the sinner. (People can always change.) I have a hard time seeing much difference between Stewart’s divisive comedy and some of the bullshit the Right gets up to.

[That said, the Right has been increasingly losing its soul since 2008 and the Tea Party. The GOP is no longer recognizable. They’ve gone far beyond the pale now.]

I’m just very damn tired of divisiveness on both sides. This isn’t what I signed up for. It’s childish and pointless. I have loved comedy all my life — my list of The Ten Most Important Things begins with laughter. And I have very broad taste in comedy, don’t get offended easily, and am pretty clear that there’s nothing you can’t joke about.

But I must admit I don’t find the parallels between today and early 1940s Germany at all funny. I don’t find the cult-like 40% support for an obvious wannabe dictator at all funny. And I certainly don’t think it’s a good idea to heap divisive hate on people who just might be thinking they may have hitched their wagon to the wrong horse.

That divisive disdain is a big part of what got us here in the first place. Many people support Trump because progressives hate him so much. That’s what they love about him. It’s about justified revenge for them.

And they have a point. Shooting their nose off to spite their face, but they do have a point. The country — the world — has paid more attention to these folks than it has in a long time. Their time in the Sun, and they’re grabbing it with both hands.

So, I blame Jon Stewart and many others for turning politics into a joke, making it into another form of entertainment. A team sport. Root for your team only. Disdain as entertainment is divisive.

[Is there a difference between disdain and mocking? Poking fun versus attacking? Reagan’s “There you go again.”]

Jon was once on Rachal Maddow and took her to task for fanning divisiveness on her show. But I’ve come to realize: pot, kettle. I suspect it has gotten worse, either with age (his and/or mine) or with how politics has changed. Yet I remember reacting to the divisiveness long before Trump.

To be clear, I’m not opposed to attacking things I think are wrong or evil, but the whole point of attacking those things is to not be those things.

In any event, ad hominem is an invalid argument, so its use is just posturing and often counterproductive. Probably always.

Suffice to say it all confirmed my sense that these comedy “news” shows aren’t for me. I liked the smattering of current events — some people get most of their news from shows such as these — but to me it’s not worth putting up with the personal sniping. More TV snark. Just what we don’t need.

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Okay, I’m done yelling at clouds now.

Actually, it’s a cloudless day and 66° out, so there’s an autumn chill in the air. We’ll get more warm weather, I’m sure, we always do, but it’s time to start wondering when the first snow will be and what kind of winter will it be.

Last winter was mild because of El Niño. Supposedly we’re headed for La Niña and a more typical winter. The thing about living on the 45° parallel is that we’re very sensitive to what the jet stream is doing. If it shifts north, we get warm air up the Mississippi valley. If it shifts south, we get Canadian air or Artic air. So, things could go either way.

We had an unusually warm February:

But kind of a cooler August:

Which might indicate a colder winter. So far, September has been on the warmer side, although it has been getting more autumn-like:

Who will win, La Niña or global warming? Stay tuned!

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One can wonder about the metaphorical darker days ahead, but if so, then one must also take in the metaphor of the light returning noticeably by around January 6th. Let’s hope that metaphor becomes reality.

Stay warm, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

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