Hoosier lore

Great news for northeast Indiana. It looks like Fort Wayne's David Long is going to be the next president pro tem of the state Senate:

A few weeks ago, I did a post that mentioned, among other things, the "stubbornness of the people who live in Brown County's Nashville in wanting to keep their town a certain way." While I was on vacation, I got this e-mail in response:

I know we want our state colleges and universities to have better reputations and standards. I know they can be tools for economic development. But does this seem the right way to do it?

Students who might easily have made it into Indiana's public a few years ago are receiving rejection letters due to changing admissions standards.

I may not know the intricacies of high finance or the subtleties of government economic models or the ins and outs of bonds and taxation, but I surely know when I'm getting screwed:

My God. The most important thing to happen in Indiana in more than 30 years, and I missed it. When you went to bed Saturday night, you set your clock back an hour to finally participate in daylight-saving time (or else you got around to it sometime Sunday):

Before the clock change, sunrise Saturday in Indianapolis is projected at 8:09 a.m. and sunset at 6:47 p.m. Sunrise on Sunday will be 7:10 a.m., and sunset at 5:46 p.m.

Indiana's gambling attention isn't all focused on fine-tuning bingo rules and collecting casino taxes:

Twelve people were arrested Friday when police broke up an illegal high-stakes poker game in an apartment in East Chicago, Ind. Large amounts of cash and 19 cases of beer were also seized.

Everyone has been focusing on the three Indiana Republican congressmen who might lose their races, but one of the Democrats is in trouble, too:

Gov. Daniels does not get a very good grade on the Cato Institute's "fiscal policy report card" measuring performance in cutting and spending taxes. From the news release:

Congratulations, Hoosiers, you sneaked into the top half. The brain power of its citizens earns Indiana the rank of the 24th-smartest state. Vermont cheers, Arizona is not amused.

Common sense from an Indiana University geologist who led a study finding that, surprise, surprise, the world has been subjected to dramatic climate change even during eras when humankind was not present to screw things up: