Posted 2 years, 9 months ago around lunchtime by oso
¡Happy Birthday César!
Today, the world will gain a second. As in one of the day’s 1440 minutes will have 61 seconds in it. Maybe this doesn’t mean much to you … but then you are obviously not light. If you were, one second is two-thirds the way to the moon. Here’s how AP journalist Hugo Kugiya poetically put it:
If life is often a matter of split seconds - the train door that closes in your face, the chance encounter with the love of your life, the near-collision with an oncoming SUV - then the universe is about to bestow upon us a generous gift: the leap second.
The science: our planet, that lethargic blue and white ball of corroding shit, is slowing down. That’s right. No longer the thoroughbred it once was, our “mighty earth” is actually getting slower because of the gravitational pull of the moon. The moon! That little moldy piece of cheese in the sky is slowing earth down.
Granted, it’s a slow process, but get this, in “hundreds of millions of years, the day will grow an hour longer.”
You may think I am happy about this. Me, the constant complainer of the 24 hour day. As a matter of fact, New Year’s resolution #34a was going to be adding on an extra hour to each day.
Well, I am not happy. I am sick of all the advantages that future generations get. First there is cranium size.
Not even mentioning poor Turkana Boy, the average cranium size of homo eructus, just 1.5 million years ago, was 1,000 ml. These days we’re at a full 1,500 ml. Now regardless of what Google has to say, I think this gives us a sizable advantage in adapting ways to steal music from the internet. But with this kind of growth, just imagine the brain size of our offspring millions of years down the road. It’s all so humiliating. What will my freckled little ositititititos think of me millions of years down the road when they read this? “Oh, well you can’t blame papa oso for his misguided path, he only had a 1.5 liter brain.”
And then, to top it off, they get an extra hour each day. Those pricks! Do they realize how good they’ve got it?
To conclude, rock out with your cock out tonight, take lots of pictures, and enjoy that extra second.
Resolutions for 2006:
- Write one post every two weeks in Spanish.
- Get five freelance articles published.
- Record three songs.
- Run the California Half Ironman.
- Do cartwheels in the streets of Buenos Aires after finishing off two bottles of wine.
Tomorrow, Oso’s Catalog of Pop, Volumen IV.
let’s talk more...
jejeje you said homo erectus
You’re already drunk aren’t you…
Bonne année!
I like it. I like you. I like life. right now, i’m like barefoot and screaming for socks.
Os, thanks for the shout out. I rocked out with my cock out last night and I had a blast. I own 2006.
Happy new year! Great resolutions… particularly the cartwheels in Buenos Aires!
if you want more brain power create more synapse, switch your keyboard layout and write notes with your non dominant hand
There are leap second abolitionists! Amen. (Via John)
Oso,
Please help spread the word.
http://www.fightgoliath.com/
Greetings Oso,
I/m collaborating on a radio project with global voices. could you please email me? chelsea@radioopensource.org. I would love to discuss in-depth what this latest endeavor is, which will involve many glbal voices bloggers.
best regards, chelsea
omg, one extra hour a day would mean, seven extra hours a week and an extra day a month. *sigh* such lucky offsprings they will be.
[...] Speaking of which, I’ve apparently caused quite the contraversy with my shamefully jealous fit towards future generations. They are now considering doing away with the leap second for good. It’s the computer geeks that are behind the movement, que Dios les bendiga. You see, there are two ways of telling time, that most wily of human inventions. In 1884, a bunch of grumpy white men proclaimed that global timekeeping would be synchronized from the site of the most precise chronometers and astronomical instruments then in existence and that it would be named after Bob Dylan’s favorite neighborhood. Hence, Greenwich Mean Time, which should rhyme with sandwich green slime, but does not. [...]
…two bottles of wine? I hope they are tinto anyway. Sulfites paradise