Daylight Savings Time Ends Sunday: Let's End It Forever

I hate Daylight Savings Time. It's an asinine scheme with nonexistent benefits.  Enough already.  The idea of simplifying the continental US to two time zones is intriguing as well, though I'm not sure how well it would work in practice.

Jesus, why is it so damn hard to get rid of crap policy?

Time to Retire Daylight Savings

"It would seem to be more efficient to do away with the practice altogether. The actual energy savings are minimal, if they exist at all. Frequent and uncoordinated time changes cause confusion, undermining economic efficiency. There's evidence that regularly changing sleep cycles, associated with daylight saving, lowers productivity and increases heart attacks. Being out of sync with European time changes was projected to cost the airline industry $147 million a year in travel disruptions. But I propose we not only end Daylight Saving, but also take it one step further. "

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/11/time-to-retire-daylight-savings/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheBigPicture+%28The+Big+Picture%29

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Weekend Subway Service Advisories

The local:

From 11:15 p.m. Friday, November 1 to 5 a.m. Monday, November 4, Coney Island-bound F trains are rerouted via the M Line from Roosevelt Avenue to 47th-50th Sts due to station work at Lexington Avenue-63rd Street for the Second Avenue Subway Project.

From 11:45 p.m. Friday, November 1 to 5 a.m. Monday, November 4, Jamaica-bound F trains run express from West 4th Street to 34th Street-Herald Square due to track tie renewal at 23rd Street, 34th Street-Herald Square and 42nd Street-Bryant Park.

From 11:45 p.m. Friday, November 1 to 5 a.m. Monday, November 4, Coney Island-bound F trains skip Sutphin Blvd, Van Wyck Blvd and 75th Avenue due to signal modernization at Forest Hills-71st Street and Kew Gardens-Union Turnpike.

From 11:45 p.m. Friday, November 1 to 5 a.m. Monday, November 4, Coney Island-bound F trains skip 4th Avenue-9th Street, 15th Street-Prospect Park and Fort Hamilton Parkway due to work on the Church Avenue Interlocking.

From 11:45 p.m. Friday, November 1 to 5 a.m. Monday, November 4, Church Avenue-bound G trains skip 4th Avenue-9th Street, 15th Street-Prospect Park and Fort Hamilton Parkway due to work on the Church Avenue Interlocking.

And the big picture:

http://secondavenuesagas.com/2013/11/02/subway-signs-experiment-video-weekend-work-affecting-11-subway-lines/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SecondAveSagas+%28Second+Ave.+Sagas+%7C+Blogging+the+NYC+Subways%29

We Are Spied On By Incompetents

Single minded focus on access leads bumbling spymasters to ignore the bigger picture, weakening security for everyone.  We are paying these people a fortune every year to break our stuff and leave us easier prey for criminals.  Profit!

Robert Litt: Isn't Weakening Encryption Our Job?

"Nevertheless, he blithely dismisses any concerns about this activity by insisting that is the Intelligence Community's job. "But isn't cracking encryption exactly what we want an intelligence agency to be able to do?" This is why the defensive mandate needs to be broken off from NSA and put somewhere where people like Litt can't touch it. Because Litt isn't even aware that weakening encryption is, by its nature, an attack on "US citizens, or French citizens, or Belgians, etc." (And all that's before you get into the NSA keeping encrypted conversations of entirely innocent US and French and Belgian citizens indefinitely.) A General Counsel making legal decisions for the entire intelligence community who misunderstands this basic fact is a menace to all of us."

http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/11/01/robert-litt-isnt-weakening-encryption-our-job/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=robert-litt-isnt-weakening-encryption-our-job

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2nd Circuit Follies; deBlasio Denounces Decision

That fool Lhota thinks this a plus for him.  He doesn't realize he's desperately grabbing on to an anchor.

Maybe Lhota is a great manager - I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.  But he's got a tin ear for politics and policy.  A city isn't a Wendy's - we need a leader, not a manager.

De Blasio Denounces Stop-and-Frisk Decision by Second Circuit

"The Second Court has only granted a stay and has not yet evaluated whether Ms. Scheindlin was correct in her initial ruling. Today's decision was somewhat remarkable, however, in that it removed Ms. Scheindlin from the case as she "ran afoul" of the judicial code of conduct by showing an "appearance of partiality.""

http://politicker.com/2013/10/de-blasio-denounces-stop-and-frisk-decision-by-second-circuit/

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Light At The End Of The Tunnel For American Rail Systems

It's about time. Modern passenger rail in the US has been hamstrung by these outmoded regulations.

For decades, the Federal Railroad Administration had effectively banned modern European trains from American mainline rail networks. European and Asian manufacturers have been slimming down their rolling stock for years to improve performance — energy efficiency, braking and acceleration, even track and train maintenance — while U.S. transit agencies were stuck with bulked-up versions of sleek European cars, weighted down and otherwise modified to meet FRA regulations. The Acela, on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, was perhaps the most notorious victim of the old rules. David Gunn once called it a "high-velocity bank vault" for its bulky design, and many attributed its maintenance woes to its untested design, customized to meet U.S. safety regulations. But every commuter and intercity train has to comply with the rules, and most suffer, to one degree or another, from high costs and poor performance. But not for much longer. Beginning in 2015, regulators and manufacturers expect the FRA to allow modern European designs on tracks throughout the country, running side by side with heavy freight at all times of day. There will be no special signaling requirements for trains purchased under the new rules, although a separate requirement for more advancing anti-collision signaling, called positive train control, is set to kick in around the same time.

They do intercity rail much better in Europe.  

The Scandal of Racist Marijuana Arrests—and What To Do About It | The Nation

The insidious effects of marijuana criminalization.  Continuation of this policy in the face of all the facts and the damage done is evil. Full stop. 

It is long past time for the full legalization of marijuana.  End this wasteful, destructive and ultimately racist policy once and for all.  Regulate and tax it analogous to the far more harmful yet legal alcohol and tobacco categories.

 Most people arrested for marijuana possession were not smoking it: they typically had a small amount hidden in their clothing, vehicle or personal effects. The police found the marijuana by stopping and searching them (often illegally), or by tricking them into revealing it.Police departments concentrate their patrols only in certain neighborhoods, usually ones designated as "high crime." These are mainly places where low-income whites and people of color live. In these neighborhoods, police stop and search the most vehicles and individuals while looking for "contraband" of any type to make an arrest. The most common item that people in any neighborhood possess that will get them arrested—and the most common item that police find—is a small amount of marijuana.Police officers patrolling in middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods typically do not search the vehicles and pockets of white people, so most well-off whites enjoy a de facto legalization of marijuana possession. Free from the intense surveillance and frequent searches that occur in other neighborhoods, they have little reason to fear a humiliating arrest and incarceration. This produces patterns, as in Chicago, where whites constitute 45 percent of the population but only 5 percent of those arrested for possession. The result has been called "racism without racists." No individual officers need harbor racial animosity for the criminal justice system to produce jails and courts filled with black and brown faces. But the absence of hostile intent does not absolve policy-makers and law enforcement officials from responsibility or blame. As federal judge Shira Scheindlin recently determined in two prominent stop-and-frisk cases, New York City's top officials "adopted an attitude of willful blindness toward statistical evidence of racial disparities in stops and stop outcomes." She cited the legal doctrine of "deliberate indifference" to describe police and city officials who "willfully ignored overwhelming proof that the policy…is racially discriminatory and therefore violates the United States Constitution." 

Flying Gets A Little Less Intolerable

But only a little.  Wake me up when I can bring a damn bottle of water and a yogurt in my carry-on and retain a modicum of dignity during the pointless, wasteful theater that passes for security screening.

FAA Allows Portable Electronic Devices to Be Used During Entire Flight

The Federal Aviation Administration today made historic changes to its longstanding Portable Electronic Devices (PEDs) policy, officially allowing airlines to grant passengers permission to use PEDs "during all phases of flight." In its official press release, the FAA said implementation of the new policy among airlines will take time as carriers must prove that their fleets can handle the usage of multiple PEDs gate-to-gate, but the agency expects that by the end of this year, passengers will "be able to read e-books, play games, and watch videos on their devices during all phases of flight, with very limited exceptions."

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