Not a lot of new information for a lot of the folks here, but the Berry Street Beacon gives a nice Indiana history of Daylight Saving Time.

James Wensits, writing for the South Bend Tribune has an article entitled Central time push could be renewed. The back story is that, after the Southwestern Counties completed their request to get back on to Eastern time, the US Dept. of Transportation was a little sick of us, and they imposed a one year moratorium on further petitions if they were not filed before Sunday. St. Joseph County filed a request to extend the deadline which the USDOT is considering. I don’t think the USDOT had any idea about the potential for a renewed Central Time petition when they crafted the moratorium, and so it will be interesting to see how resolute the agency is on a moratorium as it effect St. Joseph County. To be clear, the law does not really put any significant restrictions on the Secretary of Transportation’s ability to put time zones wherever he or she wants whenever he or she wants. The time deadlines and convenience of commerce criteria are pretty much voluntary and a little arbitrary on the part of the USDOT.

The St. Joseph County commissioners are apparently reconsidering a petition to go to Central Time. As readers here will recall, the county petitioned for Central during the initial hearings after implementation of Daylight Saving Time. The USDOT gave the county preliminary approval only to withdraw it as Elkhart County raised a fuss over having the time line moved into its backyard and convincing Governor Daniels to break the law in order to oppose St. Joseph County’s request.

Of the three St. Joseph County commissioners, one strongly favors Central Time, one is on the fence – though leaning toward Central Time, and one is opposed. Central Time proponent, Steve Ross notes that the county’s future is tied to Chicago:

“The economic life and future of St. Joseph County is tied to the greater metropolitan area of Chicago,” Ross said Monday, arguing that there would be a long-term detrimental effect to remaining on Eastern time.

In the middle is Robert Kovach who says that he is personally in favor of Central Time and is “leaning toward” filing a petition that formally asks the DOT to move St. Joseph County into the central time zone. He wants local business leaders to make a case for the move so that he can support the petition.

County Commissioner Mark Dobson is opposed to Central Time and is grousing about partisanship in not being consulted with respect to the letter requesting the deadline extension. But, I can’t see any way he would have been persuaded to join in on the letter. From the initial round of debates, I seem to recall Dobson as loyal to the Governor and sympathetic to Elkhart County’s interests.

A renewed petition makes sense to me from an economic perspective. St. Joseph County would be much better served now and especially in the future by hitching its train (figuratively and literally) to Chicago. The Chicago metropolitan area has so much more to offer than Elkhart County or other counties to the east of St. Joseph.

Updated The South Bend Tribune story contains input from a few of the area businesses. Matt Edmonds, vice president of Tire Rack, sees Central Time as a great opportunity for local businesses, particularly those involved in distribution. Mark Lerman of Steel Warehouse sees being on Eastern Time as a detriment since his major suppliers and customers are on Central Time. Rob Bartels, owner of Martin’s Supermarkets seemed almost indignant about the prospects of discussing Central Time further, noting that it would cause difficulties for his business and employees to be on different time zones.

The e-mail is on a different machine so I don’t know who to credit for this, but they said that their life is ruled by the clock while their body is ruled by the sun. German researchers are reporting that our internal body clocks never really adjusts to Daylight Saving Time.

“When you change clocks to daylight savings time, you don’t change anything related to sun time,” explained lead researcher Till Roenneberg of Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. “This is one of those human arrogances — that we can do whatever we want as long as we are disciplined. We forget that there is a biological clock that is as old as living organisms, a clock that cannot be fooled. The pure social change of time cannot fool the clock.”

People’s circadian rhythm — the body’s internal clock — follows the sun and changes depending on where you live. It actually changes in four-minute intervals, exactly the time it takes for the sun to cross one line of longitude, Roenneberg explained.

“The circadian clock does not change to the social change,” Roenneberg said. “During the winter, there is a beautiful tracking of dawn in human sleep behavior, which is completely and immediately interrupted when daylight savings time is introduced in March,” he said. It returns to normal this year when standard time returns on Nov. 4, he added.

LeAnn Ralph, writing for the Dunn County (Wisconsin – I believe) News has an article entitled Daylight Saving Time actually results in no real savings.

The United States started using DST during World War I as a way to save fuel needed to produce electric power. But even though DST is intended to save electricity, the total savings is minimal, Reardon said.

“During the summer months is when we get the most benefit … If we can decrease the amount of the time from when the sun sets until the time we go to bed, we save electricity,” he said.

Since people tend to spend time outside in the evenings, DST saves on the use of electric lights, televisions, microwaves, computers and other electrical gadgets and appliances, Reardon ex-plained.

The article then explains that DST has now been extended well beyond the summer months, this year going from March 11 to November 4.

Implementing DST earlier in the spring and later in the fall when it remains dark longer in the morning produces virtually no benefit because people keep their lights on longer in the morning.

“The energy savings is minuscule,” Reardon said, noting that the statistics used to calculate the savings of DST are from the 1970s. Current studies are needed to provide more up-to-date information.

Since the 70s, the typical house is chock full of things that use power regardless of light or dark; e.g. DVD players and computers. So, the overall energy saving is that much less significant as a percentage of total power used. So, essentially, Indiana has apparently adopted DST after its actual usefulness, such as it was, has passed. Now we’re just doing it because everyone else does it — an excuse that didn’t much fly with my parents, if memory serves. Well, that and all the job creation, of course.

It’s 7:45 a.m. (Eastern Daylight Time) and it’s still dark at the Masson household in Lafayette. And we still have a week and a half until we finally return to “Standard” time. These dark mornings blow.