The City With A Population Between 4950 and 5000

When I was looking at the special exemptions to Indiana's Sunday-only alcohol sale prohibition (a prohibition that will not survive the current session of the Indiana General Assembly -- or so all intelligent and decent people hope) that over the years have gradually been written into Indiana law, I found one exemption -- a limited one -- that only has effect in specific Indiana cities and counties.  The code section (IC 7.1-3-1-25(a)) that identifies the cities and counties that have the benefit of this exemption does not identify them by name, which would almost certainly violate the Indiana Constitution's prohibition of special and local laws (Article 4, Sections 22 and 23).  Instead of identifying the affected cities and counties by name, the code section (in a practice that has evidently managed to "pass" for constitutional, so far*) identifies nearly all of them by limiting its applicability to certain stated population ranges within which the communities to be affected happen to fall.

The code section specifies that it applies to counties falling within one of six listed population ranges, to any consolidated city and its county (which, for nearly fifty years, has described only Indianapolis - Marion County), to a Second class city (which itself is defined mainly by whether it falls within a particular population range), or to a city -- presumably no more than a single city, for reasons that you are about to see -- that the code section identifies using a population range ... a very peculiar population range.

I have been unable to determine which city the code section was even meant to identify and affect, but this is how the code section describes it: "A city having a population of more than four thousand nine hundred fifty (4,950) but less than five thousand (5,000)."

Considering the language used in expressing it, the actual range within which the city's population must fall runs from 4,951 through 4,999 -- within a window of forty-nine.  Of course, we can afford to be a little more accommodating than that, but even the most generous treatment of it can only expand the window to fifty-one.  So, while it is possible for a small Indiana city to enjoy the benefit of this special, limited exemption from Indiana's Sunday-only alcohol sale ban, the population of that city must be equal to one out of fifty-one possible numbers, ranging from 4,950 through 5,000 (inclusive).

I noticed that there were some things about the population ranges that the code section designated for the counties that did not make a lot of sense, either, but in this post, I choose to focus on the mystery city whose population is (unless somebody made a mistake!) equal to one of the fifty-one numbers between and including 4,950 and 5,000.  I am focusing on this because this decision that legislators made at some point (I do not know when it was done, but I do know that it was not done recently), that this legal provision should specifically target and apply to a lone city to be identified using a population range so narrow that it includes a mere fifty-one allowable population totals, provides an example (another example) of not only how absurd Indiana's alcohol laws have become but also an example of how population ranges can be abused in an attempt to evade the Indiana Constitution's prohibition of local and special laws (when general laws can be made applicable).

What conceivable characteristic possessed by a city with a population of 4,950 through 5,000 (inclusive) distinguishes it from other cities in such a way as would explain why it might be fit to have the benefit of an exemption from the Sunday-only alcohol sale ban while other cities are not?  There is none.  The population range, in this case, is nothing but an amusingly incompetent attempt to conceal the fact that the General Assembly was (many years ago, whenever it was that it actually did this) making a special rule for a single, specific city.

Depending on whether or not there is a better set of population figures for Indiana cities than I have managed to find, so far, the use of such a narrow population range in that code section might also be an amusingly incompetent attempt to apply that special rule to the single, specific city that the General Assembly of that time actually intended.  As I write this, I have not yet found a listing of the populations of Indiana cities that identifies any city as having 4,950 - 5,000 people.  Does anyone else know which city this was meant to target?  If so, does anyone know what legislators might have felt was so special about that city?


* Legitimate uses of population ranges to classify political subdivisions (in order to allow state law to be designed to account for their differences in characteristics and circumstances) do exist.  Of course, those classifications are at least somewhat arbitrary, in the same kind of way that it is arbitrary to establish a given age as the threshold for legal adulthood, but also in that same kind of way, it can serve a useful purpose.

You Can't Do That!

As I was looking through the Indiana Code, I found something unexpected.  It appears that it was added to the Indiana Code by the General Assembly in the late 1980s.  The code section is IC 1-1-5-2, which reads,

Sec. 2. Each general law of the state is enacted subject to the right of the general assembly to amend or repeal that law at any time, unless the general assembly waives this right in that law. Except as provided in:
    (1) IC 5-1-14-9; or
    (2) any other law containing a covenant that the general assembly will not amend or repeal that law;
the general assembly may not be construed to have waived its right to amend or repeal any general law at any time.

The first part of it is certainly true -- no legislature can pass a law that deprives subsequent legislatures of the power to repeal or amend it.  The latter legislature is the equal of the former.  This is ... pretty fundamental.  (If, instead of simply legislating, the legislature actually manages to make a contract, then it is of course forbidden to make any law impairing its obligation, but it can always pass a law to repeal a law.  I looked at IC 5-1-14-9, and it looks as though the General Assembly may have conceived of that as involving itself in a contract, but that was as far as I went in looking into that part of this.)  In this, the General Assembly was correct.

But then, the General Assembly expressed the opinion that it had the ability to waive the right of any future General Assembly to amend or repeal a particular law, and then it indicated that it could do so by passing a "law containing a covenant that the general assembly will not amend or repeal that law".  In that, the General Assembly was wrong.

I post this as a warning to any legislators who might stumble upon IC 1-1-5-2 and get the idea to write a bill "containing a covenant that the general assembly will not amend or repeal that law": Don't even bother.  You'll just be wasting everybody's time.

Murder Should Be Illegal

Those who think that the attention that I have been giving to the State of Indiana has been excessive may take comfort in this knowledge: I am preparing something important about the laws of the State of Ohio.

Specifically, it concerns those aspects of Ohio law which relate to the subject of murder.  Ultimately, it will be up to the people of Ohio (and their representatives) to consider what I have written, to decide for themselves (individually, and then as a state) how much merit there is to it, and then to decide what, if anything, to do in response to it.  However, I believe they will receive it well.

I do not think that it is acceptable for certain prosecutions for murder to fail due to the structure or the wording of laws that -- as unbelievable as this surely would sound -- leave it an open question whether a given murder (though the fact itself may have been proven) was actually prohibited by law.

I am sure that the people of Ohio won't be willing to tolerate that, either.

That's A Start

When I wrote about strange exceptions to Indiana's Sunday-only prohibition of the sale of alcohol (which is itself bizarre and unjustifiable, but to which a large number of exceptions now exist, and which it is hoped that the Indiana General Assembly will finally put an end to during its current session) a few years ago, I mentioned that this prohibition also extended (for whatever reason) to Christmas Day.

I am happy to report that the following year, the Indiana General Assembly did eliminate the Christmas Day-only selective prohibition of alcohol.

The General Assembly still needs to complete what it has already begun during its current session by eliminating the Sunday-only prohibition, but fixing Indiana law's closely related Christmas problem was nonetheless a good start.

Indiana should repeal the misleading Indiana Code article concerning United States Article V national conventions

The Indiana General Assembly is currently in session, so I urge it to (among other things) altogether repeal a profoundly deceptive article of the Indiana Code.

IC 2-8.2 pretends to establish an airtight statutory system to control the proceedings of any national constitutional convention which might, at some point in the future, be called pursuant to Article V of the United States Constitution.  Its design clearly relies on assumptions that advocates for an Article V national constitutional convention regularly assert and insist upon.  I have never come across such an advocate who was able to offer any basis for those assertions -- much less a sound basis.  (I do not find this surprising, because I am familiar enough with the writings, proceedings, and political and legal history from the decades prior to the 1787 Constitutional Convention through the years that followed its ratification, including all of the available information on the debates in the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the subsequent state ratification conventions, that I know that there is no basis for the assurances that present-day advocates for an Article V national constitutional convention give us concerning the full control that state governments would allegedly have over any such convention.)

IC 2-8.2 should be repealed because if people were to read it, they would mistakenly conclude that article 8.2 could ever have legal force.

Do we really want our laws to continue to make false promises (as IC 2-8.2 currently does) that lead people, in reliance on those promises, to advocate a "fast-track" path to proposing unknown amendments (with no way of knowing who would draft them or vote on them, either) to the United States Constitution?  I don't.

Additional Points About The Tree Falling In The Woods

The question-slash-riddle, "If a tree falls alone in the woods and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?", has been conclusively answered.  I provided that conclusive answer.  I did so late last month.

However, to the points that I made at the time in support of my answer, I have the following to add:

• Human beings cannot hear dog whistles, but dogs can.  Also, when a dog whistle is blown, I think we regard what it causes nearby dogs to hear as "sound".  So, if I blow a dog whistle in the woods (or anywhere else, I suppose) and no dog is close enough to me to hear the whistle, does the whistle make a sound?  (Remember, I would not hear it make a sound whether a dog happens to be present or not.)  If not, would the whistle have made a sound if a dog had been present?
• If one were to look through a telescope at a dying star millions of light-years away from Earth, that star probably would not have existed in a very long time; the light that the observer could now see would have left that dying star millions of years ago.  Depending on when the star finally did "die" (assuming that it did), it is possible that no human being ever saw the star prior to the time of its demise.  Would we say (for that reason) that the star did not have an appearance at all during its lifespan, insisting that nothing has any such property as an "appearance" until and unless light (from the visible part of the spectrum) has traveled from it to the eyes of a person who possesses the sense of sight and who then perceives that "appearance"?  If so, would we say that the star (which we will have just denied had an appearance while it was still in existence) now does have an appearance, even though the star no longer even exists?

In the time since I previously posted on this topic, I have also decided to acknowledge a fact that may have had something to do with the question/riddle's reputation for being impossible to conclusively answer.  That key fact is that the question/riddle was not originally posed in the English language.  I do not know in precisely which language it was initially posed, much less the state of that language at the time when it was posed or what the words used in expressing the question/riddle (whatever those words were) would have meant to users of that language at that point in history.  However, I do know that two corresponding words from two different languages do not necessarily have precisely the same meaning in all of the ways in which they can be used, in every conceivable context.  (Even within a single language, the very same word may vary in its meaning between two different points in time.  I do not think that it has escaped anyone's notice that major changes in a word's meaning can take place over time -- the change that has taken place in the meaning of the word "gay" is probably one of the most widely-known examples of this -- but subtle changes can more easily go unnoticed, which can confuse people when they attempt to read anything that was written a long enough time ago.  For example, in the present-day use of the English language, the word "either" would mean one out of two (and only two) given alternatives, but when the United States Constitution was written, the word "either" could be used even when there were more than two given alternatives.)  Without knowing more about the original language and wording of the question/riddle, I cannot rule out the possibility that the original wording in the original language of the question/riddle would have been more difficult to answer than the modern English rendering of it is.

Back Home Again In Indiana

To my national and international audience, I apologize for writing yet another post on a topic that 1) concerns only the State of Indiana and 2) does not relate to the United States Constitution in any conceivable way.  I promise that I will soon get back on topic, or, to put it more accurately, that I will soon devote myself and this site to a better-developed and more perfect version of this site's original focus -- to a focus that more directly attends to all that ails America right now, with a special emphasis on the aspects that most people have overlooked or misunderstood.  However, tonight, my topic is Indiana's official state song.

For over a century, "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away", by Paul Dresser, has been the state song of Indiana.  I see no need to change the state song, but for years it has bothered me that the song "Back Home Again In Indiana" does not have any similar type of official recognition by the State of Indiana.  This is not an urgent or serious problem, but it would be easy to solve, so we should solve it.

I used to tell people that the Indiana General Assembly should give formal recognition to "Back Home Again In Indiana" because in addition to being a good song, it is well-known.  It is the de facto state song of Indiana.  It is one of the most familiar symbols of our state, largely because it is famously performed each year immediately before the Indianapolis 500 begins.  Most Hoosiers probably believe that it already is our state song.

However, the death of Jim Nabors last week provides an additional reason to give formal recognition to this song.  Almost every year for over four decades, it was Nabors who performed "Back Home Again In Indiana" at the beginning of the Indy 500.  Granting the song an official status would be a fitting tribute to a man known so well to the people of Indiana for singing that song for so many years.

Some people may wonder how Indiana can formally recognize "Back Home Again In Indiana" without stripping "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away" of the recognition that it currently enjoys.  It is easier to do this than they think.  States can designate almost* anything they wish as their "official state _______" (fill in the blank with the category of your choosing).  A state is free to establish nearly* any category (and any number of categories) that it wishes.  If it desires to do so, a state may set up different categories that are completely synonymous (or, if they choose, that are nearly synonymous) and name a different "official state ________" for each of those categories.  They may even name several different "official state" things for a single category.  There are (almost*) no rules.

I can illustrate this with specific examples of how some of our fellow states have adopted multiple songs as songs representing those respective states.  Arkansas law (Arkansas Code of 1987, 1-4-116) identifies two state songs, one state anthem, and an "official historical song", for a total of four songs.  Florida (Florida Statutes 2017, Title IV, 15.0326 and 15.0327) has both an official state anthem and an official state song.  Georgia (Georgia Code 50-3-60 and 50-3-61) has a single official song, but there is a second song which it identifies as its "official waltz".  Finally, Tennessee has a grand total of seven state songs (Tennessee Code 4-1-302).  I want to make certain that no one overlooks that last point, so I repeat: Tennessee has seven state songs.

That kind of practice is not limited in its application to the designation of state songs, either.  Alabama deemed it worthwhile to have both a state freshwater fish and a state saltwater fish (The Code of Alabama 1975, Sections 1-2-8 and 1-2-9), a state flower and a state wildflower (Section 1-2-11), and two state butterflies (though only the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail is actually given that title, at Section 1-2-23; the Monarch Butterfly is instead dubbed the state's official insect, at Section 1-2-24).  I found plenty of additional examples of this in other states, but I have made my point.

In conclusion, I assure members of the Indiana General Assembly that they can easily grant some kind of official recognition to "Back Home Again In Indiana".  It could be declared the state anthem of Indiana (leaving "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away" as our state song), possibly, or it could simply be added to "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away" as a second state song.  I think any legislator who makes the attempt to do this would find it very difficult to mess it up.  Almost* any way of doing this would be perfectly acceptable.


* I wrote that a state is free to declare almost anything its "official state _______", and I repeatedly emphasized words indicating the existence of an exception to the general rule.  That exception, of course, is religion.  A state may not declare an official state religion.  Legislators, be sure to avoid accidentally establishing an official state religion.

The Answer Key, Item #1

I have an abundance of important points on issues of consequence to make in the posts to come on Ordain and Establish, but I take the present opportunity in order to conclusively answer a question that I think that people have been debating for far too long.*  Tonight, I give you The Answer Key.

This long-debated quarrel has been over the question: "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is close enough to hear it fall, does the falling tree make a sound?"  This question is reputedly difficult to answer.  However, the answer is "Yes"; assuming that the circumstances concerning the falling of the tree are such that a person would have been able to hear it if that person had been within earshot, the tree would make the same sound in the person's absence.

I am aware that many people will be skeptical of or will disagree with my answer (though probably only for the next one or two minutes).  I ask them: if audio recording equipment were left behind in the woods near the tree in question and that equipment were recording at the time of the falling of the tree: 1) Would the audio recording equipment record anything as a result of the falling of the tree, and 2) If so, what would the equipment record?  It is my privilege to supply the answers to these questions as well: Yes, the equipment would record something resulting from the falling of the tree.  Specifically, it would record the sound produced by the falling tree, which the falling of the tree will have produced even though no person was present to hear it.  Additionally, I will insist (and rightly so) that the equipment will have recorded that sound regardless of whether any human being ever listens to that recording and hears its reproduction of the sound that was recorded.

I am also aware that a number of people will attempt to contrive (and might even believe themselves to have succeeded in contriving) a response that will rescue themselves from the necessity of agreeing with what I have written.  For their benefit, I offer the following:

• If a tree falls somewhere in the woods but the only person within earshot happens to be deaf, does the tree make a sound?  Does the tree make a sound that the deaf person is simply unable to hear, or does the fact that the person is deaf prevent the sound from even existing?
  
• Would you say that deaf people can only fail to hear sound while in the company of one or more persons possessing an unimpaired sense of hearing, on the ground that a sound cannot exist unless it is actually heard by someone, which cannot happen when the only person within range to hear the sound lacks the sense of hearing?
  
• If a given tree in the woods does not fall at all, but a person a few yards away from the tree happens to experience auditory hallucinations that cause the person to perceive the sound of the tree falling, even though the tree did not fall and create the kind of vibrations that the human ear usually receives as "sound", did the tree nevertheless make a sound?  In the familiar, original scenario, some would deny that a falling tree does not make a sound (even though it makes vibrations of the very kind that register as sound) simply because no one actually would perceive the sound, but in this modified, hallucination scenario, sound is perceived, but this happens without the ear even needing to receive the vibrations which when processed by the ear and nervous system are what result in perception of such a sound.
  
• If no person is close enough to the falling tree to hear it make a sound, if we were to suppose that those circumstances prevent the vibrations created by the falling of the tree from qualifying as "sound", what word would we then use to describe what any animals in the vicinity happen to hear?  Is the availability of animal ear-witnesses sufficient to allow the vibrations to qualify as "sound", or would such animals hear something other than sound when a tree falls and no person (in possession of the sense of sound) is present to hear it create a sound?
  
• Before any human being had ever seen the far side of the Moon, did the far side of the Moon have an appearance?  Does the far side of the Moon have an appearance only intermittently, manifesting an appearance whenever a human being is positioned as needed in order to see that part of the Moon (and is, at that time, actually looking at the Moon)?
  
• When a person is alone in a room without any reflective surfaces in it, does most of the person's face become invisible?
  
• Given that I am not colorblind, if a colorblind person and I both look at a rainbow and then I close my eyes or look away from the rainbow, does my act cause the rainbow to have fewer colors than it had possessed only moments earlier?
  
• Is it possible for food to possess flavor before it has been tasted, or does its flavor exist solely while it is being tasted by someone?
  
• If a used (and fragrant) diaper is left in the woods and there is no one around to smell it, does it still possess an odor?
  
• (If the person (though I do not know who that person is) who was originally responsible for the current push for the Indiana General Assembly to raise Indiana's legal smoking age from eighteen to twenty-one years had simply kept that idea to him- or herself, would the idea still have been a noxious stain on the history and the reputation of human thought itself, embracing a plan of contemptuously thrusting the reach of legislative power (or attempting to do so) beyond the outermost bounds of what any honest and thinking person could countenance as conceivably being within the just and legitimate limits of the legislative power?  Of course it would!)

The answer to the original question has always depended on how we happen to use language and what meaning we have come to understand certain words to have.  If it were firmly established and widely known that the meaning of the word "sound" necessarily must either refer to (on the one hand) the vibrations that we may sense or else to (on the other hand) the way we perceive and experience those vibrations when and if they are received and processed by our ears and brains, no one would ever have found the "Tree falls in the woods" riddle either interesting or difficult.  However, though the meaning of that word has not been definitively established to that degree of precision, I think that considering how we use that word and certain analogous words that relate to other senses, the "Tree falls in the woods" question is not difficult to answer.


* Interestingly, though people have long been divided in the conclusions that they have reached concerning this ancient controversy, the partisans for the two opposing sides have not yet resorted to building up an ideological mythology for themselves, respectively, or to replacing rational arguments with far-fetched blanket accusations about the supposed motivations and intentions of the people on the "side" opposed to themselves.  Perhaps a little investigation and study of this phenomenon would be justified, with a view of finding ways to bring about the same state of things in relation to the plethora of highly divisive controversies that preoccupy large numbers of people with stimulating distractions having very little to do with the issues that they believe themselves to be fighting each other over.