Brisbane blogger Joanne Jacobs is campaigning for daylight saving in SE Queensland. Last year, Mark Bahnisch came out against, arguing that, in Brisbane’s summer weather it’s better to finish work after sunset. I thought this might be a good time to review the issue, which we discussed at length last year

I’m generally in favour as I tend to wake up with the sun. Because Brisbane is so far east (we’re not far from Byron Bay), sunrise in summer is very early – it’s light before 5am. In some ways, that’s good (it’s a great time to get work done), but not if you want to stay up past about 9pm. It starts getting dark pretty early, around 6:30.

I suspect that daylight saving here does little more than restore the time in Brisbane to what it would be under “God’s time”, without time zones or other fiddles.

The problem is, of course, that the state is big in both directions. The tropics have very little seasonal variation in the length of the day, which makes daylight saving in summer nonsensical while the west has the opposite problem to Brisbane. As various commentators noted, the idea that resistance to daylight saving in these regions is based on ignorant provincialism is itself ignorant and provincial, reflecting an assumption that the conditions of the temperate-zone eastern seaboard hold universally.

But if we have to have one time zone for the whole state , we should pick it to suit the majority. My guess is that a majority of people in SEQ would prefer daylight saving, and this would outweigh the majority against in other regions. But there are certainly sizeable minorities in both areas, so it’s hard to predict for sure.

Last time around, I dismissed as ludicrous the idea of an internal time zone border, but as commentators pointed out, NSW has one, with Broken Hill on Adelaide time. On reflection, I think the idea has a bit of appeal on general subsidiarity grounds.

Starting with the current situation, Queensland has to choose whether to go along with the southern states and get the benefits of consistency along with the benefits and costs of daylight savings. Clearly the benefits are larger in SEQ, so if we go that way, it would be reasonable to offer the same choice to the north and west. Those regions would then have the same choice between a more convenient time system, with the costs of inconsistency with the South-East, or a less convenient but consistent system.

Of course, anyone who really doesn’t like daylight saving could leave their watch unchanged, stick to their old schedules as far as possible, and just bear in mind that everyone else is using a different time. The reverse is true in the present situation if you really like daylight saving – you can just get up early.

A few days ago, cracks were discovered in the on-ramps to the Riverside Expressway, Brisbane’s main access route to the city. The decision was made to close the ramps and a large section of the freeway immediately and, not surprisingly, chaos ensued. The debacle was used to make the case that we need more freeways, tunnels, bridges and so on.

But three days later, the ramps are still closed and everything is working as smoothly as you could imagine. I took the ferry to Southbank at 8am yesterday to teach a course. It was full, but not overcrowded, and the traffic was zipping over the bridges as if it was Sunday. There’s been a big shift to public transport and people have been avoiding or rescheduling trips into the city. Obviously, the second of these is, in large part, a temporary adjustment that won’t be sustained indefinitely, but quite a few people have discovered that taking the train or bus into town is actually easier than driving.

Looking at this experience, it seems as if having the freeway closed for a while has done us some good. We should try it again some time.

The Holden blimp flew over my house at the weekend, close enough to see the screen.

I’ve been checking my publications and I’ve had 15 refereed journal articles published (in print or online) so far this year, which is the most ever for me (though I’ve read that Harry Johnson had 18 articles in press at the time of his death). There are a few more that have been accepted, and might make it through by the end of the year.

Thinking about there are a few factors that contribute to this happy outcome. One is random fluctuation. Last year was a little below average, and some papers that should have been published then slipped into 2006. Similarly, I expect 2007 to be a bit light.

Another is that, with the Federation Fellowship, I’ve tended to do more applied policy stuff, particularly on water. That’s easier to write and publish than theory pieces aimed at international journals (though I’m still doing those).

Finally, I’ve cut back on travel. While some travel is necessary, I think most academics would benefit from less time on the road and more in front of the computer.

What’s really good about this is that it allays the fear that blogging will have a bad long-term effect on my productivity. I think it probably takes time that I might otherwise have put into a book or two, but books are a high-effort, low-payoff exercise for economists, unless you have something you really need to say at book length.

Lots of people like goats. So a goat is a great gift idea, but as with other live gifts, there’s the problem of looking after it. Oxfam unwrapped solves the problem. They’ll give a goat, in the name of your gift recipient, to a poor community. At $39, tax deductible it’s a great choice. And there are other choices, including chickens, farmer training and food.
The big ticket gift is a rice bank for $12488. Maybe we could manage this for our next appeal. In the meantime, why not give a goat.

Today was People’s Day at the Ekka, and it seemed like all of Brisbane was there, except that we’d already seen half of them, dressed to the nines and headed for the races, on the train on the way there (and saw them again, much the worse for wear in many cases, on the way home).

On the TV news the head organiser was interviewed and said (imperfect recollection), ‘lots of people say the Ekka never changes, but actually there are lots of great innovations … but really it’s the same as ever’.

Put me in the ‘never changes and never should’ camp. I went as usual with my son, and, except that we missed the Silver Spike tracklaying competition, and tried out the Cliffhanger (you lie prone and it whirls around – well worth a go), it was exactly the same as last year – we watched the woodchopping and the stage hypnotist, lost our money on the laughing clowns and shooting gallery, rode the dodgems, Ferris wheel and Gravitron, checked out the cattle in the main arena, bought a showbag and reminisced about how they used to be really good value, then crammed onto the train for the trip home. Even this blog post is the same as last year’s.

I’ve been reading Steven Poole’s Unspeak and he observes that having introduced a five-level color coded terror alert, the government has never used the top level (red) or the bottom two levels (blue and green). The obvious reason is that a red alert would require some specific action, while a move to a blue or green level would imply that there was some prospect of the War on Terror actually ending.

I’ve noticed much the same phenomenon with 5-point grading scales for worker performance, such as those used in the Australian Public Service for a while. A top score suggests a requirement for some kind of substantial reward, so these are rare, while a score of 4 or 5 implies a need for counselling and a possibility of dismissal. So just about everyone gets a 2 or a 3, yielding, in effect, a two-point scale.

I imagine someone in psychometrics must have studied this kind of thing in general. Any pointers?

Update James Joyner at Outside the Beltway made the same point a couple of years ago.

Yet further update One day after I posted this, the Red Alert level has finally been used, but apparently only for commercial flights from Britain to the US, in response to the announcement by British authorities that they have detected a terrorist threat to blow up planes.

Today’s NYT runs an Associated Press story headed Farmers Use Bull Semen to Inseminate Cows, which reports, as news, the fact that dairy farmers use artificial insemination on a large scale.

Next they’ll be telling us that milkmaids face unemployment due to the introduction of milking machines.

Since I’ve given the setup, feel free to lower the tone in comments.

In my dialect of English, shared living arrangements (normally non-familial) can be described by three terms.
A housemate (or flatmate) is someone who shares your house (normally not your room, but this is open)
A roommate is someone who shares your room (normally not your bed)
A bedmate is self-explanatory.

In US English, “roommate” seems to cover all three, but US English speakers seem able to infer which is intended from the context. Can anyone help me with a usage guide?
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