An interesting article by Mary Beth Schneider in yesterday’s Indianapolis Star on Daniels agenda and the dynamics of the State House now that the Democrats control the House.
Gov. Daniels proposes full-day kindergarten, on which Democrats will likely be receptive, and privatization of the Medicaid delivery system, on which they probably will not. Also: health insurance for low income Hoosiers, a new public infrastructure proposal (the so-called “Commerce Connector” toll loop around Indy – more from stAllio!) , and a ceiling on state spending below incoming revenue.
“There’s been a lot said lately about blue states and red states,” Daniels said. “Well, I don’t know which we are and don’t much care. But we will not be a red-ink state again so long as I am governor.”
Daniels’ rhetoric about state austerity appeals to me. As always, however, I’m sure I’ll have differences of opinion about which spending is worthwhile and which is not. That’s just the nature of the beast.
Speaker, soon to be minority leader, Brian Bosma seems to blame his loss in status on Governor Daniels and the national anti-GOP tide. Significantly, he points to Daylight Saving Time, even over Toll Road privatization, as the toughest vote that made a difference in the election, even over Major Moves. To which I say good. That was a solution looking for a problem. I know the Chamber kept pointing to executives on the east coast who had trouble figuring out their day planners to coordinate meetings with Indiana colleagues, but for most Hoosiers, the time arrangement was working just fine. So, even if we never get Hoosier Standard Time back, at least there were significant consequences for that vote.
Now, we look forward to seeing the Once and Future Speaker, Pat Bauer and Governor Daniels try to get along. The irresistable force versus the immovable object. They’ve said some pretty tough things about each other. Bauer is a long-time politician, and probably understands that the heated rhetoric is part of the game — I think he can harbor a grudge when he feels it’s politically advantageous, but I don’t think he internalizes the grudges such that they’ll prevent him from seizing what he views as an opportunity. Though Daniels has been around politics for a long, long time; he’s relatively new to the elected office thing. We’ll see if he can let bygones be bygones when doing so will let him reach common ground on pieces of his agenda.
Man, Doug. I don’t get it why so many folks are still po’d over Daylight Savings Time. I always wondered why we didn’t observe it – it made us look like, well, Hoosiers. You know – too scared of change to actually make one – even if it was just moving to DST like the rest of the country did years ago. It seems like one more area where Hoosiers came in at the end of the pack. Rather like a hate crimes bill, where only two states don’t have one now – and guess who one of them is? Yeah, us.
I’m looking forward to what alternatives Bauer has to offer in regards to economic development. For better or worse, Daniels thinks infrastructure improvements will help drive economic development.
I do wonder about the legality of the proposed Commerce Connector; basically, it would be land taken by the government, with some of the proceeds going to a private firm, and the rest going to the state. Not sure how the eminent domain laws play into this. Does it have more public benefit than the Colts stadium? I’d say so.
And for those wondering how the middle of Indiana would feel about a toll road where the money goes elsewhere, well, now we’ll find out.
You can be certain that when Daniels speaks of austerity in government he is talking about cutting back on needed expenditures. Perks for government officials, unnecessary building projects, and the like will continue unabated while the cutbacks will come in terms of public employment, insurance for those who remain, welfare for the needy, schools, and other functions that make government run effectively.
This administration is not about effeciency and public service, but cronyism and privitization. The poor don’t vote; so who gives a shit?
I can’t speak authoritatively, but I think the reason Hoosiers get so pissed off about Daylight Saving Time is that it just doesn’t work very well for our geographic location. With Eastern Daylight Time, it’s too light too late in mid-summer and it’s too dark for too long in the mornings in the mid-spring and mid-fall. With Central Time, the darkness comes too early in the middle of the winter.
Eastern Standard Time for the entire year (or Central Daylight Time, if you prefer — it’s functionally the same thing) gets the balance just about as good as it’s going to get as far as allocating available daylight to appropriate portions of the day. Because it works well, there is a real question as to why, exactly, we need to mess with it. And all of the answers seem to have an element of “because people on the east coast are telling us to.” That doesn’t sit well with Hoosiers.
Add to that debate, the inevitable follow up debate to DST — which time zone? That tends to demand an answer to the question of whether Indiana is fundamentally an eastern state or fundamentally a midwestern state. We have a lot in common with, say, Ohio, but not so much with New York, Virginia, or Georgia. And we have a lot in common with Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Iowa, but maybe not so much with Kansas, Nebraska, or Oklahoma.
So, I don’t think there is a resistance to change itself, but there is a resistance to change that seems to be primarily for the benefit of others.
Bill,
I supported Indiana doing something stupid like DST in order to be a “team player” with the rest of the country. I still think DST in general stinks, and should be removed nationally.
Indiana very smartly went FROM CENTRAL TIME to Eastern as if to say “If moving more daylight to nighttime is good in the summer, it is good in the winter too”. I wish the rest of the country was wise enough to follow suit and move one hour closer to GMT RATHER THAN going to DST. Instead, they went to DST and ignored Indiana’s idea.
However, since we have gone to DST, we are now one of the only states (Alaska being excluded, but their daylight situation is so screwed up the clock really doesn’t matter) that observe DOUBLE DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME. We are TWO hours off of the normal time in the summer, and one in the winter. We should be in Central time so we really can be like everyone else.
Before we are compared to the rest of the country, lets really be like the rest of the country and observe DST in our natual time zone: Central.
I think that Indiana is particularly resistant to change, and I’m not entirely sure why. Take for example the “no package liquor sales on Sundays” restriction: Indiana is surrounded by states that allow (at least to some degree) such commerce, so Hoosiers (thanks to their obstinance) are leaking tax dollars to Ohio, Michigan et al like a sieve every weekend…and they are Hoosier dollars! I think that alone speaks volumes of the resistant nature of the “average” Hoosier, whatever that means. Of course, quantifying “average” really isn’t any more or less arbitrary or subjective than Doug’s assessment of “too early” or “too late” with respect to daylight hours…
As a resident of Ohio (and I do live right on the border of Indiana), I can honestly say that having Indiana waffling between time zones every year instead of just picking one and changing clocks has always been a joke for those of us who observe DST. I mean, seriously, is it any LESS ridiculous to switch time zones than to set your clocks twice a year? I think not. And yes, that’s exactly what you were doing: changing time zones, twice per year. Plus, it really screwed those of us that commuted to Indiana from places that observe DST. Half the year there was a one-hour rift, half the year there was not. Look at it from my point of view (and several thousand other Buckeyes that live along the border and commute into Indiana, plus the many, MANY Hoosiers that commute from the Dearborn County area to Cincy and Dayton), when Ohio was an hour ahead of Indiana, granted I got to leave an hour later for work, but when I got done working at 5pm Indiana time, then drove 20 minutes to get home, it was 6:30 by the time I got in my front door. Conversely, Hoosiers working in Ohio would have to leave at 6am (yes that means waking up at 4:30 or 5:00 for those who shower and clean up, eat breakfast etc.) to get to work 1hr away by 8am. It would be one thing if it was like that all year and you could get used to it, but Indiana’s resistance to DST disallowed such conditioning.
I just keep people repeating that the “way it was” in essence was a compromise between EST and CST, but I’m afraid that doing nothing is NOT a compromise…it’s just complacent.
We weren’t switching time zones twice a year. We were on Eastern Standard time all year, every year. We were the epitome of consistency.
Thanks Doug! :) And Andrew Kaduk: I live on the border with Ohio, as did Doug at one time. I know a fair number of people who work in Ohio. They dealt with it when we were on EST year round. I have a number of friends and acquaintances who routinely do business with Ohio and other states, including having to travel back and forth across the state line for appointments. They also dealt with the the the time zone/DST issue. Perhaps it wasn’t always easy, but they dealt with it as part of doing business across state and time zone boundaries. They weren’t clamoring for Indiana to go on DST. Go figure.
So are you both suggesting that it’s “business-friendly” to ignore DST, whereby forcing your neighbors to adjust to your odd schedule? Yes Doug, I understand that based on EST, you held fast, but by virtue of the fact Indiana is surrounded by states that observe DST, it most certainly created the appearance of switching time zones…but that’s really just semantics.
I’m not suggesting that I have any idea which time zone is better for Indiana, I’m just advocating uniformity in the observance of DST. Obviously I prefer Indiana to be eastern, but that’s selfish and I couldn’t make a better argument than could someone from Chicago, for example.
Oh and Pila, you said “Perhaps it wasn’t always easy…”
Can you give me a good reason why it shouldn’t be easy?
whereby forcing your neighbors to adjust to your odd schedule
You need to replace “your” with “their”. Indiana just highlighed the stupidity of DST to everyone else, and no one likes being called out like that.
However, like I said, we’re doing DST now to be nice. The battle about time zones is not over though, and you can thank both the Gov of Indiana and the USDOT for that. If you’re on the border with Indiana, they you should be in Central too! The line for Central goes between you and Columbus, OH. USDOT doesn’t seem to care too much about where the sun is though…
I suggest world-wide GMT. What could be more business friendly than that? 1500 hours would mean the same time everywhere in the world. As long as we don’t care about the relationship of the numbers on the clock to the position of the sun, why have time zones at all?
Andrew: Huh? I was simply saying that there may have been occasions when crossing time zones wasn’t easy, but for the most part people here dealt with it without problems. I’m not sure what you are driving at. Maybe I wasn’t clear. Unconfuse me, please. ;)
I’m with you, Doug.
As I’ve said before on your blog, this “business-friendly in the age of globalization” argument is a load of crap.
Look at a worldwide timezone map sometime, and it will be obvious that there are more crazy time zones and DST arrangements than anyone can keep in one’s head, and political decrees are changing the state of play every year.
The company where I work does business with firms from coast to coast and a few outside the U.S. When it’s time for us to plan meetings, we use UTC (the more formally correct name for GMT).
We and our counterparts around the world need neither know nor care about the vagaries of each other’s time zone and DST arrangements. (Moreover, some firms have employees or contractors who telecommute from a great distance, and themselves may be in yet another time zone).
It’s always the same time UTC everywhere. No responsible business person with a real need to coordinate scheduling on a worldwide basis does not know what time it is, UTC.
Yet somehow, I get the feeling, as with the politicians who talk up the virtues of the Ten Commandments yet cannot accurately recite them (h/t Stephen Colbert), many advocates of the recent Indiana DST change who claim to it’s a move to support a global business presence don’t actually have a grasp of this essential aspect of conducting global business.
This post brought to you by 2108Z. :)
Doug,
And I see the hosting site for your blog does not run NTP to keep its clock accurate. Tut, tut. ;-)
Bill–
The old time worked well for me. Dark at 5 p.m. sucks. Having one hour less to drive from Perry County east to Louisville, AND west to Evansville in the evening sucks. Having an hour less to drive NORTH to Bloomington or Indy sucks. The change has PROFOUNDLY impacted my life outside of work. Hearing you tell me to stop bitching about it does not change those facts. If the current system works for you, fantastic. You have nothing to bitch about. But I do. So you insist on bitching about my bitching. And what relevance does this have to hate crimes? Oh yeah, I’m so unhappy with 5 pm sunsets that I must be backward enough to like lynchings, too? Am I catching your drift? Because I just don’t see the connection…
Good day.
Doug: How very pragmatic of you to suggest GMT. Sure, why not :) I think the television networks would probably send snipers after you if the idea ever got traction.
Pila: All I am saying is simply that life is easily simpified, but stubbornness doesn’t simplify anything. Hoosiers can go on for hours about how their way was “better,” but unfortunately 47 other states disagree with you, and 47 other states aren’t having this conversation right now, they are discussing important things (ok, some of them are discussing stupid things too, just not this particular stupid thing). It’s not like the government broke into your home to barcode your forehead…so relax, stop complaining and “spring forward, fall back” with the rest of us. It’s not poisonous Kool Aid, and it’s not hurting anything but our discourse.
Branden: Please don’t misunderstand my comments here…I fully realize that international/global corporations are not even remotely affected by this. On the other hand, small regional businesses, freight companies, logistics firms, commuters from all walks of life, retailers etc. are heavily burdened by irreularities like the one the Indiana time-zone debacle presented for many years.
From Wikipedia: Although most portions of the state that were in the Eastern Time Zone did not observe (DST), some counties (including Floyd, Clark, Harrison, counties near Louisville, Kentucky, and Ohio and Dearborn, counties near Cincinnati, Ohio) observed it unofficially due to their proximity to major cities in other Eastern Time Zone states, and the ten Central time zone counties did observe DST.
Hmm, must’ve made sense to somebody else too…
I get the impression that I’m getting arguments just for the sake of arguing. So far, Doug is the only one who has presented a semi-reasonable complaint about DST, and it was completely subjective and arbitrary. Everyone else is just furthering my earlier observation that Hoosiers are particularly resistant to change, good or bad.
Andrew,
I’m not originally from Indiana, so I don’t rate as a “Hoosier”. I hated DST long before I moved to this state. :)
Andrew–
Informal survey of 9 of 9 coworkers just now. We all hate it. Most of us profoundly. For the reasons I gave. Seriously. It’s not just to argue. Go look at Perry County on a map. We somewhat geographically isolated. However, we could drive an hour to Louisville after work. We had an extra hour to drive to Evansville after work for dinner or to buy necessary items. Thanks to the change, we have an hour less than we used to have to drive to those places after work, and that drive will be an hour each way in the dark. Some people argue either side because they enjoy arguing. I’m arguing it because the before was profoundly better than the after, down here. If Perry County were on Eastern, that would be better for me personally. And it’s not that I’m somehow unable to deal with something as trivial as the act of changing a digital clock, as so many on the other side imply.
T:
Welcome to my life BEFORE Indiana adopted DST.
See my point? People are arguing to suit their own needs and wants, including me. However, I would be completely happy with Indiana being in either Eastern or Central, as long as they stick with one and observe DST so that it is consistently either “my time” or an hour earlier than “my time.” I really don’t care which as long as it doesn’t change.
Put a fork in me, I’m done. I guess if people don’t get the same thrill as I do from getting to fish or golf until 9:30 pm in the summer, then the the rest of the points are moot.
I know I’m just spitting in the wind, but why not have the entire country NOT observe DST?
Ah, Once again the intellectual prowess of hoosiers stretched to the breaking point amidst the life or death decisions here in BassAckwards USA.
I feel the same way, Andrew & Tim. This is going to be worse than class basketball; class basketball only come up once a year, DST will come up twice a year.
Tim Zank,
If I had to pick a single metric for measuring a person’s lack of intellect, it would probably their decision to pick a single metric to measuring a person’s intellect.
I know of many people whose “general intelligence” measures at least one standard deviation above the mean, and many of those share the distate for DST commonly expressed on this blog and elsewhere.
This is your cue to change pigeonholes, such that opposition to DST is a preoccuption of “elitists”, rather than the merely stupid.
There, I knew you could do it.
N.B., the second occurrence of “to measuring” should be “to measure”.
Doug, I’d still like to see a preview feature on your blog. ;-)
“I get the impression that I’m getting arguments just for the sake of arguing. So far, Doug is the only one who has presented a semi-reasonable complaint about DST, and it was completely subjective and arbitrary.”
OK, everybody you can quit blogging now since Andrew is the only reasonable blogger. Let’s just go to another blog and let Andrew fill these pages with his ruminations on how backward we are for complaining about DST.
Maybe we should start petitioning all those national economic studies that put Indiana in the bottom third of all states to re-evaluate their data. It obviously can’t be right, because the only issue Hoosiers want to talk about is DST.
“I feel the same way, Andrew & Tim. This is going to be worse than class basketball; class basketball only come up once a year, DST will come up twice a year.”
Joe, there are a lot of issues. Who is anybody to say which is more important to any other individual. There are people who would vote for a child molester as long as they were “pro-life”. Doesn’t make any sense to me. But who am I to judge. But I guarantee, you will always here “complaints” about DST(until somethings done-referendum) because it affects everyone 24/7/365 and the vast majority(ignored by MMM and his boys) wanted no part of eastern time for reasons that were pointed out by Doug,myself and others. . If placed in the rightful central timezone the “complaints” would sink like a stone.
Speaking of economics,since that’s the only issue Hoosiers want to talk about, wouldn’t it be interesting if Bait and Switch Mitch, instead of running around to these phony staged media events taking credit for every job that has come this states way, would instead take credit for manufacturing jobs lost due to outsourcing,cheap foreign labor etc. Maybe he could take his media circus to another empty plant and apologize for the loss. Seriously ,the guy has never met a camera that he hasn’t tried to make love to.
Concerning studies. I wonder what a study of Mitch’s brain would reveal? A Napolean complex? A need to be the center of attention? A need to please others(read special interest groups)? Hmmm.
Tim honey,
I know it’s easy to cite the backwardness of hoosiers in your arguments. I’ve done it a time or two myself. I suppose there are smarter people elsewhere. I keep hearing there are, anyway. But I’m confused about the role of intellect in determining whether or not the time changes we’ve instituted are better for me, or worse. And frankly it was better for me before. But you’re calling out the intellect of individuals on here, including me. I figure I’m a good example to talk about. I was born here, lived here my whole life, and received my entire education here. Despite those obvious handicaps, I somehow managed a 98th percentile on my medical boards. Of all the students of the Harvards, Yales, Stanfords, and Penns out there, some select very few individuals managed to eke out a better performance. Now I realize that that is only a two day, multi-hundred question measure of only four years of my post-graduate education–so it’s clearly not as good a measure of my intellect’s breaking point as, say, my preference for DST. And it was probably just luck. But I’m trying. And that’s really all you can ask of a backward hick like me, isn’t it?
A Richmond education is barely Indiana. Hell it’s practically Ohio. And they observe DST. So they’re smart. It probably rubbed off.
That and we were drinking Ohio beer.
Oh the glories of that 3.2 Ohio beer. Those were the days. It was almost a rite of passage to go the Triangle in Greenville or the Carousel Ballroom in Celina to get that first legal beer on your 18th birthday. I remember all of the kids who lived in Indiana who used to go there because they could get served legally. I graduated from high school in 1976 and haven’t lived in Union City for 30 years after starting college at Ball State, I think the drinking age in Ohio has since been raised to 21, I’m not sure if they even make 3.2 beer anymore. I’ll have to check with a buddy from high school I went to visit with last weekend who still lives in Ohio.
In my neck of the woods, seems like the place for 18 year old Hoosiers to get their first beer was the Lamp Post in New Paris, Ohio.
As for Greenville, seems like there was a nice little bar called Two Brothers that I enjoyed quite a bit.
Wow, T & Branden, my facetious remarks were intended to point out the silliness of the argument itself,(i.e. there are far more important issues facing us today than DST) not the intelligence (or lack thereof) of all hoosiers. I’ve known some brilliant people that had some really backward ideas.
T, congratulations on your test scores, I’m sure your family must be very proud.
Doug is right. If the relation of the clock and the sun doesn’t mean anything we should rid ourselves of the time zone system and go to GMT. But it does mean something because we are creatures of the sun and our daily activities are governed to a large extent by the position of the sun. I think we all would have trouble with noon coming at 16:00 in New York, 17:00 in Indiana, and 19:00 in California. The military uses UTC (GMT) when coordinating operations across time zones but uses local time for local matters.
I don’t have a problem with Daylight Saving Time but I am very troubled by Eastern Daylight Saving Time because it is the equivalent of Double Daylight Saving Time for us. Before this year Indianapolis had the latest sunrises of any city its size in the nation from the last Sunday in October to the first Sunday in April. By observing EDT most of Indiana will have the latest sunrises every day of the year. Last year all of Indiana’s clocks were legally set to the same time from April thru October. Now 18 counties are on CDT and 74 are on EDT during this period. The difference between EDT and CDT is the same as the difference between night and day for the people who have to be at work before 8:30.
We Hoosiers have never had a say about the time zone issue. The Eastern Zone was imposed on us by the ICC at the urging of a private lobbying organization, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce. Neither the ICC nor the Chamber is answerable to the voters and there is no appeal procedure available. There were some attempts in the General Assembly this year to have a referendum but each was killed in committee. This zonation without representation is the cause of much of the anger that many of us feel.
Andrew: I’m sorry, but I found your post to me to be offensive and incredibly rude. I’m not stupid nor stubborn.
I happen to agree with Branden. People who routinely do business across multiple time zones usually use UTC/GMT. I think that it is people who only occasionally have to do business with people outside their immediate vicinity who pushed for Indiana to adopt DST. Somehow, it is just too hard for them to figure out how to coordinate conference calls and appointments.
I previously pointed out that:
“Having the sun set at or before 5:00 pm just goes with the territory when you live near the 40th parallel from the equator, like we do in Indiana. When you only have 9 hours 21 minutes of daylight on December 21, as we do in Indianapolis, the natural sunrise and sunset are around 7:20 am and 4:40 pm. This has nothing to do with the time zone — it’s just simple geography. If you don’t like your days that short, the only solution is to move further south — closer to the equator. Don’t blame the time zone.”
https://www.masson.us/blog/?p=1743
If you you’re skeptical, just take a look at Denver. It is almost due west of Indianapolis, but very near the middle of its time zone. So the clock time there nearly matches “local mean” time (the clock time before there were time zones or DST). The sunset and sunrise on December 21 (winter solstice) in Denver are 7:17 am and 4:30 pm.
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.html
Bill Starr
Columbus, Indiana
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3770/
– e-mail link at the bottom of my page
Sun, 12 Nov 2006, 7:48 am EST
Doug, I remember the Lamp Post also, it was one of my parents favorite places to eat. My mom liked to go to Elizabeth Parker’s in Richmond to eat also. I liked your post on The Palladium-Item. That brought back some memories. My grandparents on my mom’s side took that paper. They were farmers who lived in Southern Randolph County between Winchester and Lynn. When I sometimes stayed at my grandparents during the summer to help bail hay and clean the chicken coop (YUCK!!), I read that paper.
I wish I could remember the name of the liquor store across the Ohio line that would essentially sell to any female, regardless of age, so long as she could see over the counter.
Bill– Point taken. It’s supposed to be dark at 4:40, apparently. I wasn’t meant to have that after-work winter daylight I enjoyed all those years. Just because it was a backward regional anomaly doesn’t mean I can’t miss it.
Tim– thanks for the congrats. It didn’t really garner much notice in the family. Such is life.
About the Ohio liquor stores– the drive-thru ones were handy. Talk about an encouragement for drunken driving. You didn’t even have to turn off the ignition to have a cold 40 handed to you thru the driver’s side window. I seem to remember one right across the state line called Carl’s Carryout, which was essentially a dude with a freezer in his garage.
It’s true, “T”. I was kind of surprised to find it out too over the last few months.
All those years of full-time eastern standard time (aka central daylight time) we effectively had 45 minutes of sunlight shifted from morning to evening year-round. Many people found that a pretty nice compromise.
Assuming we stay on DST for convenience of commerce, the only two choices are to keep the winters the way they used to be (eastern time) or to keep the summers the way they used to be (central time).
After posting my previous note above, I got to wondering how far south a person would have to go in order to have a reasonable expectation of having no sunsets earlier than 5:00 pm.
It’s a little complicated because of the earth’s elliptical orbit around the sun and the tilt of the earth’s axis, so the earliest sunset is not quite on the shortest day of the year.
But it simplifies the explanation if we assume they occur on the same day. This would correspond with the shortest day of the year having at least ten hours of sunlight (sunrise/set approximately 7 am and 5 pm).
To my surprise, heading south from Indianapolis (40 degrees latitude), you don’t start having sunlight for more than ten hours per day year-round until you get to about 32.8 degrees latitude. Cities near this latitude include Montgomery (Miss), Shreveport (La), Dallas (Texas), Tucson (Ariz), and San Diego (Calif) — quite a bit further south than I would have guessed.
A representative example is Jackson, Mississippi (32.3 degrees latitude). On the shortest day of the year, sunrise there is 6:58 am and sunset is 5:00 pm. Jackson is about 565 miles south of Indianapolis, as the crow flies.
If you live this far south, the odds are about 50/50 (depending on whether you’re in the east or west half of your time zone) that you’ll never have a sunset earlier than 5:00 pm. When we live as far north as Indiana, that’s just not a reasonable expectation, although with 45 minutes of sunlight shifted from morning to evening year-round, later sunrises and sunsets came to feel pretty normal to most of us in the state the last few decades.
If you you’re skeptical about what is “normal” for our latitude, Peoria is somewhat of a sister city to Indianapolis. It is almost due west of Indianapolis, and very near the middle of its time zone. So the clock time there nearly matches “local mean” time (the clock time before there were time zones or DST). The sunrise and sunset on December 21 (winter solstice) in Peoria are 7:19 am and 4:34 pm.
If Indianapolis were in the middle of our time zone like Peoria, our sunrise/set times on Dec 21 would be 7:18 am and 4:39 pm. This is a good baseline to use in determining whether a particular time zone is appropriate for Indiana. If it gives sunrise and sunset within 30 minutes either way from these figures, then that is the “natural” time zone for Indiana.
On central time, the sunrise and sunset in Indy on Dec 21 would be 7:02 and 4:23 — only about fifteen minutes from nominal for our latitude.
Bill Starr
Columbus, Indiana
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3770/
– e-mail link at the bottom of my page
Sun, 12 Nov 2006, 9:16 pm EST
Pila,
Terribly sorry if you interpreted my remarks as “Pila is a moron,” but after re-reading my posts I don’t see anything like that with my name attached. I suppose your perspective on this is somewhat like that of my wife at dinner, after she has cooked me a huge, delicious meal, and like clockwork, about halfway through the meal, something comes out of my mouth like “hey, next time you make this, try putting a tablespoon of cumin in there, and maybe some chopped garlic.” Naturally she interprets this as me making disparaging remarks about her cooking instead of just understanding that it isn’t within my power to just “leave well enough alone.”
I am not suggesting that Hoosiers, much less you particularly, are stupid…Simply resistant to change, which perfectly fits as the definition of “stubborn.” Nowhere does this indicate any opinion of intellect. The fact that I call the argument “stupid” is just me calling it like I see it. We have massive problems in virtually every facet of our region, many of which could be at least addressed if things like DST were not given such weight. It’s just not that big of a deal.
Perhaps if we were spending our time looking at the toilet-bowl public school systems instead…
Bill–
Instead of us all moving south, what if we (by “we”, I mean our entire country which as a whole is plagued by early sunsets) just didn’t observe daylight saving time? Or rather, I guess I am arguing for year-round observation of DST? I know this isn’t possible because everywhere else people think they’re doing something constructive by “falling back” in November. But from my perspective, the days were slowly but surely getting shorter, as one would expect in the winter. The sun was rising a bit later and setting a bit earlier each day and then, BAM!, it suddenly jumped even an hour earlier. I guess I just don’t see how daylight is being “saved” here. It appears that rather than have the sun rise a bit later and the sun set a bit earlier in the winter, we’ve decided to try to keep the sunrise unchanged, while causing a major shift in the sunset time. These clock-juggling monkeyshines result in some areas in Indiana having almost 11 pm sunsets in summer, and some having pre-5pm sunsets in the winter. Our sunrises within Indiana probably don’t vary more than 2 hours across the seasons now, while sunsets can vary about 6 hours (See the difference between summer sunset in Bloomington, and winter sunset 100 miles directly south in Tell City). The fact of us having two timezones creates some difference, but DST just exacerbates it. I guess I’m arguing that if daylight is worth saving in the summer, we should be saving it in the winter, too. I’m sure this has already been argued on here at length. I’m sure we’re doing it “for the kids”. But since Europe also observes this DST silliness, why not have the whole civilized world just spring forward an hour for the whole year and just give the kiddies some reflective clothing and flashlights?
It’s easier to just shut up and deal with it, isn’t it?
An aside about the kiddies–I just don’t recall anyone dying in my town of 38,000 due to walking to school in darkness. During my five years of walking to school, the weather conditions were a bigger irritant than the darkness.
Pila– We have a lot of problems, but I don’t think the DST discussion is the reason we aren’t solving the other problems, is it? They probably remain as problems because they’re hard to solve. Kentucky has worse public schools than us, and they’re not wasting a minute on DST. So what’s their excuse?
In my case, the purportedly crappy schools worked fine for me, but my 35 year internal clock’s messed up now. So I’m scratching that which itches me. I’m sure most people engaging in the discussion are doing likewise. But we can do more than one thing at once. And if spending a bunch of time on DST truly does prevent us from addressing other issues, then I would say that horse already left the barn. Better we should have spent that time on something else, rather than changing our time zone.
“T”, your suggestion that the entire U.S. consider doing DST year-round is interesting.
I’m sure you know, and most people do, that “daylight saving time” is really a misnomer — more of an advertising term than an accurate statement of fact.
No matter which time zone we are in, or whether the clocks are set ahead an hour for DST, the amount of daylight is the same, cycling throughout the year in Indianapolis from a minimum of 9 hours 21 minutes on December 21 to a maximum of 15 hours on June 21.
DST would be more accurately termed “daylight shifting time” — merely giving the appearance of shifting one hour of sunlight from our mornings to our evenings.
All that DST accomplishes is getting the vast majority of the world to do a massive, coordinated shift of almost all of their scheduled activities an hour earlier each spring and back to the regular time each fall. This provides the appearance of more evening daylight during the time of year when the daylight hours are more plentiful and the missing hour in the morning is less likely to be noticed or missed.
Of course the same thing could be accomplished without government involvement at all if everyone who prefers more sun in the evening just all agreed to shift school, business, church, etc. schedules ahead an hour for the summer months and back again in the fall. This voluntary approach is just held to be less practical by those who think government should make this sort of “one size fits all” lifestyle decision for all of its citizens.
As a small example of this, our city government in Columbus, Indiana had actually been observing earlier “summer” hours before Indiana ever officially went back on DST, giving city employees the benefit of more leisure time in the evening without actually having to change the clocks.
The interesting thing about your suggestion of year-round DST is that eastern Indiana essentially had that arrangement from the 1960’s until last year. Being on EST year-round (same clock time as CDT) had the effect of shifting about 45 minutes from morning to evening year-round in Indiana. That made for later than normal sunrises and sunsets year-round of course, but many people found it be a reasonable compromise between the “morning person” and the “night owl”.
What I, and many others, object to is observing eastern DST, whether year-round or only in the summer. Eastern DST shifts about 105 minutes of sunlight from morning to evening for Indiana, not just from early May through early August, when we have over 14 hours of sunlight per day, but now all the way from March 12 to November 3 in 2007, when we have as few as 10½ daylight hours. On 3 Nov 2007, being on central time versus eastern means the difference between sunrise at 7:15 am or 8:15 am.
Once you know that 6:31 am is the average sunrise that day for our latitude, it’s easy for a morning person to feel “cheated” by eastern daylight time, especially in the spring and fall ends of DST.
For those who like to participate in outdoor fitness or recreational activities before work, such as walking or golf (yes, there are some morning golfers where I work), shifting 105 minutes of sunlight from morning to evening year-round, and even just from March through November, really curtails the available time for that, and seems to shift the balance too much toward those who prefer excessively late sunsets.
If Indiana were all on central time, the morning people would have 4 months of the year when they get 15 minutes of sunlight shifted their way, in exchange for the other 8 months when the evening people get 45 minutes shifted their way. Doesn’t seem like an excessive thing to ask to me.
Bill Starr
Columbus, Indiana
I think Gary Varvel is a right-wing nut but I did find his latest cartoon applicable to this thread.
As far as Mr.Varvel and his cartoon are concerned try telling 3000 Crane workers who live in the Eastern time zone but work in the Central time zone the issue is not important or if the DOT shifts the time line again and a new group of people will be in the thousands that are forced to live in one time zone and work in another the oposite way that the time issue is not important.Maybe the feeling up in Indianapolis from people who love DST would be different if say they bordered several counties in a different time zone!
Ask Troy Woodruff how important the time issue is.He lost the election because of it in a big way.All over District 63 people are complaining to State Rep Dave Crooks to try to do something.Or you could ask his recent opositon in the election Ron Arnold who got blew out last Tuesday by Crooks how important he thought the time issue was or former Speaker Brian Bosma for that matter.
With all due respect this is a issue in some parts of the state.For some of us down South everything doesn`t revolve around the Indianapolis region.The issue will always be the time zone line and the problems and burdens it places on people and their families.
Bill-
Good commentary, but in the interest of full disclosure it might be mentioned that the earliest sunsets don’t occur on the solstice, but several days earlier in the month. The latest sunrises (excluding the EDT distorted November sunrises at our latitude) occur in early January.
Good point, Phillip, “The issue will always be the time zone line and the problems and burdens it places on people and their families.”
It seems like the time zone line can either follow Indiana’s western border, our eastern border, or we can continue to have it following county lines within our state.
It appears that, except for Indiana, the national government has generally tried to avoid unnecessarily dividing a single state into multiple time zones, and has even moved the line from its original location in some cases to help reunite split states into a single zone again.
A familiar and nearby example of this is Ohio, which is divided right down the middle by the natural boundary between the eastern and central zones — 82½ degrees longitude. Ohio long ago successfully petitioned to have the boundary moved to their western border, to avoid the exact sort of pain Hoosiers experience by having the boundary running between various counties within the state.
If it made sense to do this for Ohio, which is 4.3 degrees wide, surely it would make even more sense to reunite Indiana in a single zone for the same sorts of reasons. Most of Indiana is only 2.7 degrees wide — only about 60 percent as wide as Ohio. Besides Indiana, the narrowest state divided between two time zones is Idaho, at 6 degrees wide — over twice as wide as us.
I have voiced many reasons in various forums over the last several months why I think central is the best choice for the state, but I guess they mostly boil down to the entire state being about 3x further from the middle of the eastern zone (Philadelphia) than from the middle of the central zone (St. Louis).
If there were no limit to how far from the natural time people were willing to set their clocks, then we might as well put the whole country on eastern time and life would really be simple for interstate commerce. But you know that just about anyone west of Indiana would really let out a howl of protest.
That demonstrates that there are limits to just how far from the natural time most people are willing to set their clocks. That’s why the time zones are only one hour wide, on average. It puts the clock for most people at most 30 minutes from the natural time for their location during the winter, and at most 90 minutes during the summer.
One of the significant objections I have heard for putting our whole state back onto central time again is the hardship along the borders we share with the portions of Michigan and Kentucky that are on eastern time.
Since Michigan and Kentucky are already both divided between central and eastern time, I would expect that the national government would raise little objection if they also petitioned to have the time zone boundary in their states moved back wherever it was before Indiana got divided in the 1960’s — probably roughly in line with the western border of Ohio. That would be a simple solution to that issue.
Paul, thanks for pointing out that the extrema of the sunrise and sunset times do not quite occur at the solstices. I think I hinted at the analemma effect (due to the elliptical orbit and tilted axis of the earth) in one of my earlier comments. I find that it often makes the explanation a little clearer to ignore that bit of complexity most of the time.
Bill Starr
Columbus, Indiana
Mon, 13 Nov 2006, 10:40 pm EST
Bill Starr,
I have always supported Central time or Eastern Standard time and have been outspoken on the subject in letters to the editor and submissions to the DOT docket.Most people I know just want a uniform time zone and do not care about which time zone we are in.
I respect people who want Eastern time as long as it is a valid argument such as they want a extra hour of evening daylight or they do not like the early sunsets we are experiencing now in the Central time zone or if they live in the Central time zone and work in the Eastern or the opposite.
However the thing that makes myself and a few other Central time advocates mad is this bad for business argument.It is a rediculous argument with no basis!
For example Kimball International based in Dubois county has complained constantly about needing to be on Eastern time while they have gone on to have two of their best quarters in five years plus in a November 2nd article in the Indianapolis Star the article states:
Kimball International reports an 18 percent jump in sales in its fiscal first quarter compared to last year.The Jasper based furniture maker and electronics assembler says it earned $3.7 million in the period(Central time) compared to a loss of $6.6 million a year ago.(Eastern Standard time)
My point is with businesses doing just as well or better on Central time and with plenty of new economic developement going on in Southwest Indiana this Central time is bad for business argument has no basis or that Central time hampers the convenience of commerce in the region is rediculous.
The process by which the counties of Southwest Indiana decided to re-petition for Eastern time was shady to say the least.To say the most in the case of Dubois county there was coersion and threats directed at Dubois county commissioner John Burger and his family who by the way was a outspoken Central time advocate at the DOT Jasper hearing and in tv and print media and listened at the November DOT hearing to the same arguments the Chamber of Commerce and businesses are making now that he suddenly agrees with.
In Martin county only one of the commissioners was on the ballot this year. He lied to many of us saying he would not have new time meetings last February then cast the deciding vote to do just that.He was defeated in the primary.
Last month it was reported at the Martin county commissioners meeting by county attorney Lett that the Southwest counties were having to submit additional information to the DOT.Now I`m sure when all is said and done our five counties will be moved to Eastern time because of the influence of the Governor who paid(state fund) the law firm Ice Miller to write these poorly prepared and misleading petitions that Central time supporters found three lies in to date.The circular logic in these petitions is laughable.
Our counties are located in the Evansville commerce region.The circulation of the Evansville Courier in the five re-petitioning counties is over 12,000.The circ. of the Indy Star is around 5000.The petition states the Evansville Courier is not delivered in Martin county.Well it is delivered in Loogootee and has been for as long as I can remember and I have lived here all my life so thats that.
In the DOT ruling last January 17th it states the following:DOT is relocating for the convenience of commerce,the time zone boundary to move Knox,Pike,Daviess,Dubois,Martin and Perry counties to the Central time zone.As described above in the summary of the hearings and comments to the docket,these six counties have strong regional ties to each other and Central time zone counties.While Daviess,Dubois,Knox,Martin and Perry border other Indiana counties in the Eastern time zone,their ties to those counties is not as strong as they are to each other and counties to their south,which are currently in the Central time zone.Along with Pike,these counties are located in the same workforce,commerce,transportation,and education regions designated by Indiana.
And the DOT also states the following:
DOT has carefully reviewed this data and utilized it in reaching it`s decision.
DOT recognizes the importance of regional connections and benefits of similar time zones and regional ties among counties.Remaining in the same time zone and maintaining their regional ties better position counties to realize advantages in economic,cultural,social and civic activities thereby serving the CONVENIENCE OF COMMERCE.
Since everything seems to be going fine as far as convenience of commerce in Southwest Indiana and the area has not become a economic dust bowl as the Chamber of Commerce and some Eastern time advocates predicted I believe the above statements by the DOT are correct.
Thanks for the follow-up, Phillip.
I see you have been a prolific poster to the docket. I thought I had done a lot of posting until I counted yours up!
I agree with you that any “convenience of commerce” argument for eastern time rings pretty hollow.
I was surprised to discover recently that the state’s own figures really bear this out. I just haven’t seen anybody else pointing it out so far.
Repeating my earlier comments, by the state’s own figures (pdf page 7 of 44), Indiana’s per capita income was 106.4 percent of the national average in 1953 (when most or all of the state was on central time year-round, and had been for decades).
http://www.in.gov/iedc/pdfs/Strategic_Plan.pdf
By 2006 this figure had dropped to 91.4 percent. This is about four decades after beginning the unfortunate experiment of having a big chunk of the state move to eastern time for the cooler portion of the year.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the figures for the intermediate years to see when the periods of steepest decline were.
However, it’s hard to avoid noticing that the state economy really seemed to be “hitting on all cylinders” when the whole state was on central time and things have really come apart since most of the state started to flirt with eastern time.
Bill Starr
Columbus, Indiana
Tue, 14 Nov 2006, 7:05 am EST