Voodoo Time Dot Com

The Earth rotates on its axis approximately once every 23 hours, 57 minutes. In the time the Earth takes to make a complete orbit around the sun, the Earth has turned 365.242 such rotations. We mark the occasion on an arbitrary day - the first of January. Ideally, on January 1st (and any other day for that matter) our planet should be in the exact same position relative to the sun as it was on that date in the previous year. But it isn’t. So because of a minor deficiency in our gregorian calendar, we add a day to every fourth year to catch up (except of course, for years which are divisible by 100 and not divisible by 400).

So once again, January 1st has come and gone - about a quarter of a day earlier than last time. Happy New Year, everyone. We all know the beginning of the new year is a time for reflection on the past, and plans for the future. It is a long-standing tradition that we make resolutions at the beginning of the year in order to better ourselves. Common examples are resolutions to lose weight, break a vice or a bad habit, save money, get organized, etc..

Personally, I’m not really one for resolutions. They involve too much conscious effort, and as I am a slave to inertia, that’s far more effort than I am comfortable with. Instead I think it would be much more convenient for me if everyone else modified their habits and personalities to accommodate me. To that end, I have come up with a list of New Year’s resolutions for everyone else.

Read more. Sports Illustrated and Cosmopolitan don’t count. People need to read more books and newspapers. Maybe we can all discuss something other than what was on television last night.

Stop watching sitcoms. See above.

Use your automobile’s turn signals. It’s only common courtesy to signal your intention to enter my lane before cutting me off with your gigantic SUV.

Register to vote. If you don’t vote, you’re not allowed to complain. Well… I guess you can still complain in you want, but the rest of us will just laugh at you. If you are already registered to vote, do it again - only this time, register as independent. Party politics makes people dumb.

Don’t believe everything you see or hear. If we have learned only one thing from the New York Times debacle, it is that mass media cannot be trusted. And that goes for those e-mails that are always getting forwarded around. Anti-perspirant does not cause breast cancer. No one is growing kittens in jars. And Bill Gates is not going to send you money for forwarding e-mail.

Actually, feel free to ignore all that. You don’t really want to be like me anyway (except for the part about turn signals - use your turn signals!). Besides, the Bible codes and the Mayan calendar say we’re all going to die in 2012 anyway. It’s true! I saw it on the Internet!

Happy New Year.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2004 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Soapbox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.