There have been a number of submissions to the USDOT Time Zone docket that have been posted recently. They include:

1. A September 28, 2006 letter to Mark Shublak, Ice Miller attorney for the petitioning southwestern counties requesting certain technical items, particularly signature pages from the Boards of Commissioners for Daviess, Dubois, Knox, Martin, and Pike Counties.

2. A November 13, 2006 response (via overnight delivery — you’re paying extra Southwestern Indiana!) from Mark Shublak to Judy Kaleta including the requested materials. The letter notes that Dubois County Commissioner Randall Fleck abstained on their resolution.

3. A November 14, 2006 letter from Judy Kaleta to Mark Shublak with comments and concerns regarding the original petition. There was some prior discussion on that subject here.

4. A December 6, 2006 response to the USDOT letter of November 14, 2006. (This response leads off by saying the Jasper Wal-mart is not open 24 hours per day. Phillip has noted that this is factually incorrect. There are about 23 pages of other stuff to pick over in their response.)

5. A 70 page supplement to the letter of December 6, 2006.

I’m a little curious as to why it took so long to get this stuff posted to the docket.

In a comment to a prior post, Jim B. said, “Almost everything we do is governed by the clock.” That’s something we take for granted nowadays, but worth thinking about.

In pertinent part, Jim said:

Perhaps the most under appreciated innovation of 19th century America was the time zone system. Originally used by the railroads for their scheduling purposes it soon became accepted world-wide. Almost everthing we do today is governed by the clock. Modern society would be impossible without a uniformed time system. The Super Bowl kick-off at 6:25 EST is a case in point.

The concept is very simple. 24 hours in a day and 24 time zones around the globe. The zone system was a compromise between practicality and sun time by which each location set their clocks to noon or 12 o’clock when the sun was at its highest. In theory everywhere inside a zone is no more than 30 minutes from sun time.

This reminds me of a part of a class I took under the very excellent IU Communications Professor, Harmeet Sawhney. We were discussing Lewis Mumford and his discussion of how profound an impact the clock had on society. A handy passage from another work:

The clock “dissociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences ” As Mumford goes on to explain:

When one thinks of the day as an abstract space of time, one does not go to bed with the chickens on a winter’s night: one invents wicks, chimneys, lamps, gaslights, electric lamps, so as to use all the hours belonging to the day. When one thinks of time, not as a sequence of experiences, but as a collection of hours, minutes, and seconds, the habits of adding time and saving time come into existence. Time took on the character of an enclosed space: it could be divided, it could be filled up, it could even be expanded by the invention of labor-saving instruments. Abstract time became the new medium of existence.

There is a fair amount of irony to the history of the clock. Apparently it was invented, or at least improved quite a bit by Benedictine monks who wanted a device that would help them more accurately keep their prayers. But, in the end, it created a less organic and more mechanical world view. It was hugely important to the advance of science, since the ability to measure time is critical to many types of empirical observation. The scientific world view, in turn, has greatly damaged the primacy of religious devotion in our society.

Back on the subject of time zones and Daylight Saving Time, when we further disassociate our activities and notions of time from the course of the sun — e.g. ignoring the position of the sun when designating “noon,” we continue the process of divorcing ourselves from being organic parts of the world.

The Washington Post has an article on extended Daylight Saving Time beginning this year entitled Clocks’ Early Spring Forward May Bring About a Few Falls. It mainly focuses on the technology related headaches caused by the change. For example, airline schedules will have to be revamped, particularly with international flights. And, in certain situations, failure to get the time right could have severe consequences — the focus again being on airlines. There is a brief mention at the end about the increased morning darkness the expansion will entail.

Daylight Saving Time will begin on March 11 this year. Last year it began on April 2.

H/t Paul O’Malley. No time to comment, but the
South Bend Tribune has a column by House Speaker Pat Bauer. Among other things, he says:

We also promise to give the people of Indiana a chance to decide once and for all if they want daylight-saving time and whether or not our state should be in the Eastern or Central time zone. If there had been a concerted effort to gauge public opinion on these issues the past two years, we could have set this thorny issue to rest once and for all.

The United States Department of Transportation, considering the joint petition of several southwestern counties to transfer from Central Time back to Eastern Time has sent a letter to the petitioning counties asking for more information. I don’t have time at the moment to provide much of an analysis, but I thought I’d post a link to the letter and let you all have at it.

I really hate the phrase “let’s move on” when used in the context of political debate. It almost always means, “my side won, now shut up.” The Lafayette Journal & Courier tells us to move on from the Daylight Saving Time debate because that debate “should be considered settled.” If there had been anything like a consensus supporting Daylight Saving Time bill in the House of Representatives in 2005, maybe I could agree. But the DST legislation died, by my count, 3 deaths during the course of that session only to be resurrected through various parliamentary tricks each time. And, even on its fourth chance, it only passed because the voting machine was held open while Troy “I’ll Never Vote For It” Woodruff’s arm could be twisted long enough for him to break his promise and cast the 51st and last vote in favor of passage.

Apparently the Journal & Courier thinks thats the sort of vote that settles a debate. Not likely.
[tags]Indiana, Daylight Saving Time, DST, politics[/tags]