As most of you know, I moved to Germany from Indiana. While living in Indiana, I was subject to the stupidity that was Indiana Time: It did not engage in Daylight Savings Time, something in common with only Arizona, among the contiguous 48 states.
Living without Daylight Savings Time (to Germans: Summer Time) was living in hell: Twice a year I would have to remind my mother that I was an hour closer/later than I was before. On random occasions I would have conversations with friends of above average intelligence and they would forget how exactly Indiana’s Time varied from the places they were located—even friends who had lived in Indiana and had since moved on got confused.
Never mind trying to explain Indiana’s lack of time change to people in Europe: They would get in the habit of calling at 11:30 expecting to reach somebody, only to discover that now they were calling during lunch time.
It was an ungodly confusing fucked up mess that cost Indiana not just fuel savings, but economic growth.
Well, My Man Mitch, the asshole Republican Governor of Indiana managed to pull off the one thing than had not been pulled off by any of the previous Democratic Governors: he got Daylight Savings Time through the legislature.
Now, as far as I am concerned, My Man Mitch is not a great governor. His biggest sin, in my book, is that he is so desperate to build the completely unnecessary I-69 that he is willing to outsource it as a Toll Road.
Now that said, Mitch is making himself a one-term governor of Indiana. Recent polls show him to have a 37% approval rating, barely better than his old boss, W—who is currently at a chilly 34%.
Anyhow, the long and short point of this blog entry is to announce a minor technical change to the blog. I’ve officially switched it to Eastern Time, instead of Central Time.
Now the entries will be time stamped six hours behind of my home instead of seven.
Has Germany switched to summer time already? I know we are changing on April 2 this year.
I believe that Germany either changes the same week as the States, or the week before, in the spring.
If I’m not mistaken, Europe and the States fall back at the same time in October.
Ah well … we’ve always done the forward/backward thing in Evansville since I’ve lived here. But then, we are on Central Time, not Eastern Time.
My Man Mitch: User friendly campaign; completely lame governor.
Indiana *still* has multiple time zones around Evansville, Louisville, Cincinatti, and Chicago. So there is still confusion surrounding Hoosier Time.
Next year the United States will begin Daylight Savings Time earlier in the year and end it later in the year. The various Canadian provinces will each have to decide whether or not to follow along with this scheme. So it is entirely possible that our clocks will be an hour behind Seattle and Bellingham, but just for 3 weeks in March and 3 weeks in November.
Say what you will, but there is absolutely no logical reason why the state should have one time zone.
Now at least you can reliably predict that Evansville and Gary will always be an hour behind Indianapolis–as they should be.
The earlier start to DST might be a problem, but at least Indiana is changing with the rest of the country.