Resolutions And Revolutions

Happy New Year!

I hope that everyone (else) made good use of the extra "leap second" last night. You didn't? Apparently, there have been 27 "leap seconds" added to our time since 1972 in order to keep the atomic clock time consistent with "Earth time" because the Earth's revolutions are not perfectly identical.

Why don't they take care of "leap seconds" every fourth year during a "leap year"? Would that not be sufficiently accurate for the time lord (Peter Whibberly) of Britain's National Physical Laboratory's time and frequency group?

In a recent issue of DISCOVER magazine, which this author recommends from time to time, there was an archaeological article about unearthing Philistine burial sites. Not much is known about the Philistines, apart from unfavorable propaganda.

History is generally written by winners. What your History teacher teaches you in school or college may not be the whole story, or it may be colored by the bias of the academics writing the officially sanctioned textbooks.

Which brings me to Hillsdale College. This author is currently taking the free online course in CONSTITUTION 101. If one writes science fiction, one may need to create a world with rules, conflict, and a genius founding document or two.

http://info.hillsdale.edu/constitution_101_enroll?utm_source=prospecting&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AE_CC1116H&utm_campaign=con101

Listening to a forty-minute YouTube lecture once a week for ten weeks is a resolution that might not be as hard to keep as the traditional New Year's resolutions.

Happy New Year.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry