Rob Seaman scripsit:
> Folks keep mentioning Indiana as a special case.
What makes Indiana a special case is that it has seven different
sets of time-zone rules, and that's only true if you ignore variations
prior to the Epoch (1970-01-01T00:00:00Z).
1) Gibson, Jasper, Lake, LaPorte, Newton, Porter, Posey, Spencer,
Vandenburgh, and Warrick counties are in the Central Time Zone and
observe DST accordingly.
2) Dearborn and Ohio counties are in the Eastern Time Zone and observe
DST accordingly.
3) Clark, Floyd, and Harrison counties are in the Eastern Time Zone,
except that they did not observe DST in 1974.
4) Part of Crawford county was in the Eastern Time Zone (except for
not observing DST in 1974) until 1976; now it is in the Indiana Time Zone.
5) Starke county was in the Central Time Zone until 1991; it is now in
the Indiana Time Zone.
6) Switzerland county was in the Eastern Time Zone until 1973; it is now
in the Indiana Time Zone.
7) The remaining 74 counties are in the unofficial Indiana Time Zone;
that is, they are in the Eastern Time Zone but do not observe DST.
As of the next DST transition in April 2006, the entire state will be
on DST; however, the exact details of which counties will be Eastern
and which Central have not yet been worked out.
> Again, this confuses secular effects with periodic effects. Even the
> most extreme "nuke the leap second" position that has been expressed
> has assumed that civil time corresponds to a high level of precision
> with solar time.
I have repeatedly expressed my position that LMT is a matter for specialists,
and that as long as the clock doesn't say noon when it's midnight, most
casual users of LCT will not care at all how large the discrepancy is
(especially given that it's now 2h56m in Kashi).
All this can be achieved easily and in accordance with subsidiarity, by
fixing the world's time on TAI (or something with a constant offset)
and leaving it to local jurisdictions to change their timezone offsets
as needed to cope with uncomfortably large LMT - LCT.
> [B]ut we already agree on a common
> position that civil time needs to mimic solar time for most purposes.
Kashi, Kashi, Kashi.
--
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
--Arthur C. Clarke, "The Nine Billion Names of God"
John Cowan <jcowan_at_reutershealth.com>
Received on Tue Aug 30 2005 - 07:24:25 PDT