101–110 of 118 posts
Daylight Savings Time was first proposed to save candles, everything after is a forced retcon. This equally anachronistic law fits with that quite well. We are all very good at being modern humans.
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/TPRSNZ1895-28....
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This isn't a criticism of the practice but I did think it might be more effective to use something in safety green or orange, maybe with reflective surface, or maybe blinking lights. But I'm not an expert with this, and I can see how a straw bale might also catch your attention.
This is 100% pure speculation, but I wonder if, at the time that the bylaw was made, a straw bale was the happy medium of being relatively soft (in case someone passing under the bridge ran into it) but also relatively cheap.
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> I guess the US does use bylaw, but it seems to always be rules and regulations that companies make. In the USA we call local laws “ordinances”. In US English, “by-law” relates to a set of rules associated with a contractually-created body, like a homeowners association.
the state and local level can call them whatever they want, which is why a lot of older, eastern states in the US have definitions for things like hamlets. the Dillon Rule lets the states define that however they want, and the FedGov ain't setting local HOA rules.
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Probably because a clock is an easily changeable thing, but a schedule or an announcement is less so. Putting a "Opens at 8:00" on sign on your door involves a fair amount of effort of buying a physical piece of equipment. Changing an appointment may have required walking somewhere and talking to the right person. Before modern luxuries a million of such tiny adjustments would have required a lot of time and effort.
I wonder, what business/appointment would even need the extra hour of daylight? Not many. Many businesses already have seasonal hours that aren't affixed to the clocks changing. Compare this to the deaths due to the confusion, loss of sleep, deer not realizing way more cars are going to be on the road, etc. Changing the clocks has a serious price. The benefits are not apparent though.
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Is that done just at Christmas or all year round?
Year round. And it's just a pine tree. It's not decorated for Christmas or anything.
It's quite bizarre as when it's dark (and days are quite short in Scotland at Xmas) you can't see the crane just this lit up Xmas tree hanging in space above the town. It's very cool.
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They should visit our thousand (nearly) year old door: https://www.westminster-abbey.org/history/explore-our-histor... I'm a Brit and didn't realise until recently that England is one of the world's oldest countries (927 AD).
927 - 1066 doesn’t seem that old to me ;)
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927 - 1066 doesn’t seem that old to me ;)
1066 was just another guy coming to claim the throne. You wouldn't say a company was abolished when it gets a new CEO, and you shouldn't say a country is no more when someone claims the throne.
One of the linked articles is also pretty esoteric. The bale is hung because the bridge is being cleaned, as part of the cleaning project discarded chewing gum will be removed, a process objected to by an artist who paints tiny pictures on the gum [1] 1. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/05/artist-ben-w...
Daylight Savings Time was first proposed to save candles, everything after is a forced retcon. This equally anachronistic law fits with that quite well. We are all very good at being modern humans.
That came later. In 1895 a New Zealand entomologist first floated the idea to gain more insect collecting time after work . https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/TPRSNZ1895-28....
Source: He was long dead by 1895.
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> I guess the US does use bylaw, but it seems to always be rules and regulations that companies make. In the USA we call local laws “ordinances”. In US English, “by-law” relates to a set of rules associated with a contractually-created body, like a homeowners association.
In Canada, it's bylaws and not ordinances made by local government.