Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Winter Solstice

I almost forgot. Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Normally that doesn't count for much, because it's also the longest night of the year and the whole day is still 24 hours. Go figure.

For those of us who keep track of weirdness, the winter solstice next year is when the Mayan calendar says that the world will end. Okay, then! We've got one more year, one more trip around the sun. I'm told that the Mayans have launched a celebration to commemorate the last year on their calendar. That's great, too. Nothing like a party to drum up tourism Hopefully, they won't go back to their quaint traditions of ripping the hearts from living sacrifices. But Hey! In Mexico, anything is possible.

Personally, I've seen their calendar, and I believe that the sculptor simply ran out of space on the rock. "What the hell" he figured, "I've carved until sometime in the next millennium. If they can't figure it out, they don't deserve a calendar."

Googling around while doing this posting, I learn that the solstice this year won't happen until December 22 at 0530 UTC.

1 comment:

Rivrdog said...

"UTC"...we don't use that time designation for what used to be known as "Greenwhich", because the Brits invented time zones and time-keeping for sea navigation.

Instead, we navigators refer to it as Co-ordinated Universal Navigation Time. You figure out the acronym...