This is my first post since the end of Daylight Saving Time, when the clocks were set back an hour. And so this is my twice yearly post about the biannual time change.
It goes without saying that Congress hasn't acted yet on allowing states to adopt Year-Round DST. There have been much more urgent issues this year to act on, most notably the coronavirus. Then again, the two senators from Florida (the first state to attempt Year-Round DST) argue that it's exactly because there is a pandemic that DST should at least be Year-Round for this year only:
http://www.floridapoliticalreview.com/florida-senators-propose-daylight-saving-time-extension/
Obviously, the bill didn't pass, since we still had to set out clocks back last weekend. And so Year-Round DST in many states, including California (Proposition 7), must remain on hold.
Once again, I voted for Proposition 7 and favor Year-Round DST as my first preference. Keeping the biannual time change is my second preference, and Year-Round Standard Time is last. Since Year-Round DST is my top preference, I've been looking at a map of the continental US to see where in the country this clock will work. The assumption is that on the western edges of the current time zones, winter sunrise will be too late for Year-Round DST. If the biannual clock changes are to be dropped completely, then those areas would have to use Year-Round Standard Time instead.
I noticed that the continental US fits entirely between the 65th and 125th meridians West. This suggests that we can divide the 48 states into four time zones, corresponding to Year-Round DST in each of the four current time zones. Then the 80th, 95th, and 110th meridians become the new zone boundaries. (For the rest of this post, I'll use "Forward Time" to denote "Year-Round DST.")
As it turns out, the 110th meridian is convenient in Canada, where it already marks the border between the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The latter would be placed in Mountain Forward Time (which is equivalent to current time in that province, since it doesn't change its clocks), while Alberta would be placed in Pacific Forward Time (which is equivalent to Year-Round Standard Time now).
But the 110th meridian would split the states of Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Arizona, and so it's not clear whether these states would be Pacific Forward Time or Mountain Forward Time. At the very least, Arizona should be Pacific Forward Time (which is equivalent to current time in that state, since it doesn't change its clocks). It's likely that Utah would be Pacific Forward Time while Wyoming becomes Mountain Forward Time, but the 110th splits Montana almost in half.
The 95th meridian splits the states of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. So it's not clear whether these states would be Mountain Forward Time or Central Forward Time. It's possible that the first three of these would be Central Forward Time while the rest are Mountain Forward Time (but that would place Kansas City, MO and Kansas City, KS in different time zones).
The 80th meridian splits the states of Pennsylvania, the Virginias, and the Carolinas. It actually splits two major cities -- Pittsburgh and Charleston, SC. I wouldn't be surprised if Pittsburgh chose Eastern Forward Time (along with the rest of its state), but the Carolinas are unclear. Notice that Florida just barely avoids touching the 80th meridian, thus placing the entire state in Central Forward Time (the equivalent of Year-Round Standard Time) -- despite it being the home of the two senators promoting the Year-Round DST bill.
OK, that's enough for my biannual DST post -- let's get back to math. Since there was no school yesterday, there is no full distance learning day this week. So today I saw all my Tuesday classes in person -- and so I'll post about Math 7 today, as I do every Tuesday.
Originally, the department head announced that we might give the Unit 3 Test today. Instead, she tells me that we will cover Lesson 3.5.1 today (though not 3.4.1).
This lesson is "Using Operations on Rational Numbers to Solve Problems." It covers the order of operations, PEMDAS (or more like PMDAS, since there are no exponents in this lesson) as well as interpreting word problems (including the infamous "1 less than 6," which is 6 minus 1, not 1 minus 6).
Most students seem to understand the lesson. The only three students who don't pass today's quiz are the ones who are generally behind in APEX anyway.
There's one thing going on now that I've avoided mentioning until now -- the election. (Yes, I did mention the politics of Year-Round DST, but not the presidential election.) But I will mention it now, only because I finally sang the Election Day song in class today. (Recall that during the last presidential election, my car broke down, and I never made it to school on Election Day.)
Here is my Election Day song. It's a parody of "Do-Re-Mi," Sound of Music:
VOTE
If I could, I surely would,
Vote in this election.
Make my choice for president,
Choose the leaders of our land.
Have you registered to vote? No!
Then let's register today.
Soon we'll finally have our say.
So let's all go out and vote, vote, vote!
Let me discuss how to play this song on the guitar. Once again, there's a difference between playing it on my actual guitar -- tuned to EACGAE -- and playing it on a hypothetical 18EDL-fretted guitar.
I decided to sing this in the key of C major. Perhaps G major would be better, especially considering that chords related to G major are easily playable in EACGAE. But I chose C major instead of G for two reasons. The first is that the original song on which this is based, "Do-Re-Mi," has two "do" notes, low do and high do. But there is only one G that is in my comfortable singing range -- the G below Middle C, also known as G3 or lowercase g. G4 (or g') is just above my range, while G2 is just below, or perhaps at the very lowest end of, my range. (This is part of the reason why I'm not sure whether I count as a baritone or a true basso.) On the other hand, both C3 and C4 (Middle C) are in my range, and so C3 is "do" and C4 becomes my high "do."
The other is that I've always long associated "do" with C, "re" with D, "mi" with E, and so on. This is part of the fixed-do vs. movable-do debate -- in Europe, the notes "do-re-mi" are always C-D-E, while here in the US, "do-re-mi" are the first three notes of any major scale. Thus a European would sing the G major scale as "so-la-ti" (with F# as "fa-sharp") while an American would sing it as "do-re-mi." But even though I'm American, identifying "do-re-mi" with C-D-E is firmly ingrained in my mind (perhaps because as a young musician, I had perfect pitch), and so it's hard for me to sing "do-re-mi" in any other key (even if I change the lyrics to from "do-re-mi" to "vote").
Now that we've established the key as C major, let's seek out the guitar chords. I have some sheet music for this song (of course with "do-re-mi" as the lyrics, not "vote"). This version is also in the key of C major (a third reason why I chose this key), and it uses eight different chords. Here's how to play these chords in EACGAE tuning:
C: xx0030, G7: xx2021 (technically G7/D)
C7: xx0010, F: x00201 (technically F/A)
D7: xx2232, G: xx2023 (technically G/D)
E7: 022120, Am: x00200
But when I play these chords today, something sounds off. Recall that the original reason for the EACGAE tuning is that the the tuning knob on my D string is broken, and so the D string is about a whole tone flat, sounding like a C instead of D. The problem is that this string isn't exactly concert C, but is slightly sharp. Strangely enough, the C chord using this open string still sounds consonant, but when I fret it as D (in the G7/D chord above), it sounds slightly sharp, trending towards D#.
(Recall that last week, I played "Ghost of a Chance" using an Em7 chord, 022020. But due to the fretted D sounding sharp, this chord sounds almost like EmM7. In a song in the key of E harmonic minor -- with its raised seventh D# -- EmM7 isn't a terrible chord to play. But unfortunately, the melody from Square One TV is in E natural minor, with D rather than D#. The D note clashes with EmM7.)
There's not much I do about the D string until I finally get that tuning knob fixed. So instead, I decide to play the G7 chord as xxx021 -- yes, using just three strings. But not only does this chord avoid the broken D string, it also has G as the bass note instead (thus making it G7 rather than G7/D).
The D7 chord above also suffers from the D string problem. But that string has the only D in that chord, so we can't omit it -- xxx232 would be considered F#dim or Adim7 instead of D7. (Then again, with D sounding sharp, it still sounds like a dim7 chord even with all four strings.)
Meanwhile, the F chord listed above is written as F/A, x00201. Notice that it can also be made into a full F chord as 100201 -- unlike in standard tuning, this F chord does not require a barre. But the fingers are stretched, and so it's easier to transition from C7 (xx0010) to F/A than to the full F chord.
All of this is about EACGAE tuning in standard fretting. Notice that some of the chords listed above are illogical in 18EDL tuning as described on this blog (where C and G strings are "white" in Kite's colors, while the other strings are all "yellow"). Indeed, the Am chord at x00200 would combine white A (G fretted at the second fret) with yellow A (open).
And the F chord is even worse -- the E string fretted at the first fret isn't F, but "su E#," which is 18/17 above yellow E (rather than the expected 16/15). The resulting F chord would be dissonant (especially since it would pair su E# with white C as its "perfect fifth").
Instead, we'd need to write a true "do-re-mi" song using this alternate fretting from scratch. Recall that three years ago, I wrote a "do-re-mi" song using a Mocha scale, but this was a special scale that I haven't used since, and would be difficult to fret on the guitar. (That old version didn't even go from low "do" to high "do" -- instead, it went from "do" to "da.") If our guitar is fretted to 18EDL, then we'd need to write "do-re-mi" in 18EDL instead.
In 18EDL, the first note can still be "do," and Degree 16 can still be called "re" as it's exactly 9/8 above the root note. But Degree 15, a minor third above the root, would be called "me." And Degree 14 is a supermajor third (9/7) rather than a major third, and so it would be called "mo," not "mi." (Degree 17, between "do" and "re," would likely become "di.")
Since I don't play "do-re-mi" in 18EDL today, there's no reason to discuss this scale any further.
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