Tomorrow is the time to change our clocks back to double fast time.[*] Not much to say that I haven’t already. Here is the archive.
Still, I was beginning to enjoy the morning light. Oh, and studies show it might cause heart attacks.
[*]So called because you get +1 fast time for moving from Central Standard Time to Eastern Standard Time and +2 fast time for moving from Standard Time to Daylight Time.
No dawn’s early light for several weeks again! :(
Welcome back, usable evening light, to the easternmost outpost of Central Time in Indiana. The 4:30 pm darkness was a bitch.
Give ye thanks to the 89th Congress, controlled by Democrats, and LBJ, who signed the Uniform Time Act into law in 1966, and with it, DST.
I certainly can’t argue against the Uniform Time act.I remember personally the chaos with DST being observed for differing periods of time state by state,or not at all.But then we have special-case Indiana which has to not only deal with DST,but also TZ placement.Indiana’s surrounding states,Ohio , Illinois and Michigan have long been settled into a time routine,so that Hoosiers seem maybe a little neurotic to outsiders about time ( no offense intended).
But the one lesson I got out of the Indiana time wars was that uniformity trumps chaos,even if chaos is perceived and cannot be defined. No matter what legislation is passed or not passed some people will live only a few minutes from where the time is an hour different,and that makes every other time issue a cause celebre..But even I, just passing through Indiana frequently, am shocked by how late the sunsets are in summer and how late in winter.
How come Columbus, Ohio seems just fine to me with ETZ,but Indianapolis seems out of sync? Is it all ‘just in our heads?It’s only really a few minutes different.
In France June sunset is about 10 pm with twilight bright enough to read without lighting until about 11 pm.The Polish-Russian border to western France all observe the same Central European TZ .It would be like Washington DC to Denver all in one time zone. Seems OK when I’m there traveling,and all EU countries want to observe the same time,at least on an official level.It will be interesting if Turkey changes TZ if they are admitted to EU.
Just how contrived is all this time stuff? People in Europe just don’t seem to care about sunrise and sunset times.Is time an american- made issue?Maybe a states rights’ issue? 3:30 am(DST) summer sunrises in E.Poland and 9:30 winter sunrises in western France. No problem.
But it does seem a cultural trait for the Poles to get up early and for the French to get up late.
As I reset the clocks, I thought of Masson’s Blog! — also thought about Indiana’s history of time changes. In the past, in some towns there would be official time and unofficial time. I kinda loved that there was a distinct and quirky space right here in Midwest USA, Indiana, in its own time zone.
Put everyone on the same time and let businesses adjust their hours for local sunlight. To even have time zones is silly..
Prior to the advance of the railroads in the US, time was set locally, by local governments. That didn’t help facilitate schedules for transcontinental or other long-haul trains, so the railroads worked to standardize time. Especially as we can all communicate more widely than ever, can you imagine the chaos caused by non-standardization of time?
The time zones aren’t perfect. But it does create uniformity. Hey, I’d like to only pay taxes on a voluntary basis, but there isn’t uniformity in funding, so I’m regularly told to suck it up.
So, suck it up. :-)
Doug –
I’ve raised this point before – you have to remember the incredible economic benefits we have all gotten from this change.
Personally, I had to buy two new mattresses to store all of my additional money – and the state as a whole is at LEAST a skillion dollars to the good.
Lou: Interesting points. For me, and a lot of people I’ve talked to, it was having more sunlight in the morning, when it is cooler and when it is possible to perhaps work on the yard or go on a walk before work. Now, that’s nearly impossible to do anything before work, even in June and July, because the sun comes up too late to allow for doing much of anything outside.I also have to run the air conditioner more, because the sun is up later, meaning that the heat of the day lingers until later in the evening. Maybe if I could go to work an hour later during DST, there would be no difference in how much I run the air conditioner. Maybe I’m weird, but I’m not out shopping or eating dinner or working in my garden at 9:30 or 10:00 p.m., so having the sun up late doesn’t benefit me. Supposedly Dairy Queen is allegedly doing bang-up business, however, so maybe that’s all that matters. :)
I personally have beefs with all the so-called reasons for going on DST, particularly EDT. None of them that I’ve heard–reduced crime, being able to do business across time zones (as if that weren’t possible before), being able to schedule conference calls, energy savings, etc.–stands up to any real scrutiny. Certainly the energy savings claim has been shown to be false. If you couldn’t do business across time zones before most of Indiana was on EDT, I have to wonder how successful your business was to begin with.
Someone passed this along:
And that’s why we have been free of time-zone and time-change hassles for these past 50 years.
(Emphasis added.) I’m sure glad
Pila,
I hate DST, but must point out that for most people outside of Indiana, not knowing if we were GMT – 5 or GMT-4 was a pain. People get used to you being on the same time as them, then you’re an hour off. It is just an easy mistake to make, and it was made frequently. It happened more often the farther you got away form Indiana, and dealing with International was even worse. I have missed many meetings because the idiots on the other end of the line didn’t understand our time zone oddity.
That said, DST still needs to die nationally, there are still other issues. For example, Europe doesn’t change time at the same dates as us, so there are days that we’re out of sync. As you pointed out, DST wastes energy.
Most importantly for Indiana, people outside the state LOGICALLY assume we’re on the same time as Chicago, since we’re geographically in the central time zone.
If we care about business and changed to DST to avoid confusion, shouldn’t we be on the same time as the top 5 city that is under 200 miles away rather than the city that is over 700 miles away?
Pila really explained well why Indiana time was a problem for casual out-of-staters..I mentioned before that my family, who mostly live in Champaign-Urbana Il area, use Indianapolis as their preferred airport because they can go most places non stop,and the 90 miles ride to Indianapolis is worth the non-change convenience. The confusion was before that you knew that Indiana didn’t change clocks when Illinois did,but then you forget if you have to figure in the time change or if its already been figured into your schedule,so you risked adding or subtracting 2 hours instead of one,so, you had to keep checking,’just to make sure’..Call people a ‘bunch of (time) dummies’,but it’s just that some people always know exactly what time it is,both where they are and where they’re going, but for others it is no concern until there’s a reason to know.Now there’s no issue whatsoever what time it is in Indianapolis: its always one hour ahead,no exceptions,ever.
Last time my sister flew she sat next to an insurance adjuster who told her he was from La Porte County.She mentioned that she had a brother who really was into the Indiana time debate,so he explained to her that even though they live in CTZ they keep their clocks at home on ETZ because of the schools,just across the county line.That just shows that even those who live on the time border have figured out a solution that now ‘always works’.
DST is finally stabilized,so I personally dont see any change,which would please certain constituencies, but cause general chaos for many more.
Mike Kole,
What would create uniformity is that if everyone was simply on the same times and businesses adjust their calendar for the sunlight in the area. The world is a much smaler place than it was 200-300 years ago.
The trouble is people can’t even visualize how universal time would work. The idea of time zones is so ingrained in people’s minds they can’t see any other way.
.
Using T’s term, this after 700h sunrise is a bitch. Goodbye to usable morning light.
It will be on April 21 when the sun rises before 700h again. This DST is wrong. I have watched the comments to this blog and since the time change, many folks wish that the DST switch should go back to at the first Sunday of April. The last Sunday of April would be better and abolishing DST would be the best solution. Arizona does not have a problem by staying on year-round standard/daylight time. The surrounding states change and there are no major problems.
So, Robert, you’d be willing to forgo the incredible economic benefits of DST?
I can’t count the number of people who have become rich under the new regime!
When I say that I don’t believe that being on standard time year round makes problems for business, I say that from personal experience. I actually live on a border with another state, and my county was out-of-sync with that state part of the year and on the same time as that state for part of the year for *decades.* Most people here had no problem with that. Yes, a few did, but as far as I can tell, it was only a few people, and they weren’t exactly business leaders and executives. As an aside, I always thought that the state Chamber of Commerce and other DST boosters proclaiming to the world that we couldn’t add and subtract 1, 2, 3, etc., would not exactly encourage businesses to come to Hoosierland. :)
I have family members who have businesses that have to work with clients and suppliers in multiple time zones. They had no problems. In my previous job I dealt with people across time zones. Again, no problems. Maybe this is a your-mileage-may-vary-situation, but I think that if you want to make year round standard time into some huge problem, it is a problem. Perhaps being on a time zone border and a state border made being on standard time all the time just a part of life in this neck of the woods for most people. We were used to Ohio being an hour ahead of us for most of the year, and it was no big deal for most of us. We just lived with it.
I have ran into the issues with many people in business. It wasn’t the people in Ohio or Illinois that were the problem, it was the people in New York, LA, Denver, UK, France, etc…
The issue was not that people couldn’t add and subtract, it was they didn’t know how much they should add or subtract because their own clocks changed while theirs did not. People in LA that deal with Chicago would always add 2, but when dealing with Indiana it was sometimes 2, sometimes 3. From what I could tell, it wasn’t that people in Indiana couldn’t figure it out, it is just that the less you dealt with Indiana, the more likely you were to screw up the time.
Again, I say this as someone opposed to DST nationally, and someone that knows that Indiana is completely in the Central time zone regardless what the DOT says.
You got that right Parker. Those DST economic benefits, WOW, have made Hoosier land #1. NOT. The CC and DOT love to spew their brainwashing DST propaganda.
I know Arizona businesses always knew that Indianapolis was two hours apart from Phoenix. Same goes with Honolulu being a five hour difference. Now, it is a mess.
Jason: I’ve been round and round about DST issues with you before. Quite frankly, I’m not going to continue any “conversation” with you on the subject. At no time have I said that my family, friends, and associates *only* dealt with people in Ohio and other border states. However, living on a border made dealing with the EST/EDT difference a normal part of life.
Alas, DST starting the second Sunday in March is a bitch. Growing up in Union City, Ohio I was used to living in a split town for half the year, moved away for college. I still have relatives in Union City on both sides of the state line. They like being on the same time all the time, but has been posted in previous discussions, no matter where the time line is drawn it’s going to be a hassle for people at the split. Our office has been working seven days a week since the first of March for tax season and we were all bitching about going to DST on a weekend that was already shortened. At least tax season is over, our office was closed Friday, and will be closed tomorrow (Monday). Don’t have to be back to work until Tuesday. Here in Louisville with the lengthened DST not reverting back to ST until the first Sunday in November the sunrise here will not occur until 8:14 a.m. on November 6, the Saturday before DST ends, which is 14 minutes later than the 8:00 a.m. sunrise at the winter solstice. I wanted to congratulate the Butler Bulldogs on a great run also. If that ball had went in at the buzzer, it’d have been a shot for the ages. I remember my dad and mom talking about the 1954 state finals, when Milan upset mighty Muncie Central to win the state championship. We almost had a sequel to Hoosiers. It was great seeing Bobby Plump at the game, I’m sure that brought back great memories.
I think EDT is fine, but the start and stop dates of the current law are way out of whack. Suggestion: Revert the dates to what they were before 1987: The LAST SUNDAY in APRIL to the LAST SUNDAY in OCTOBER. This way, when the switch is made, we still have daylight in the morning when DST kicks in. The conversion in the fall needs to revert back to October. To have it go as late as November 7th is crazy. By November 6th,, the day before we converted back to Standard Time last fall, the sunrises were even later than they were in late December and early January. To extend this past halloween, just so that trick-or-treaters can do so in the name of “safety” is patently ridiculous.