Just Another Wizard's Tower

As I post this we have less than a day to go until the Equinox, when the Sun will cross from the sign of Virgo (Tropical horoscope system) to Libra. This will happen Saturday, September 22, 2018 at about 6:54 pm California time. This is 9:54 pm on the US East Coast, 1:54 am Sunday (September 23) UTC ("Greenwich"), and so on into Sunday in Asia and Australia).

The Sun also crosses the Equator from North to South at this time.

As usual, Wikipedia has something to say:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox

The figure at

http://www.plergb.com/Analemma/Analemma.shtml

shows the Sun's position on its journey through the signs of the Zodiac. It's updated hourly (but not on the hour). You can look at it year-round even if I only post about it at Equinoxes and Solstices.

We're getting close to the 2018 Northern Hemisphere Summer Solstice: 3:07 am California time on Thursday, June 21. That'll be 6:07 am in the eastern portions of the US, then later in the day Thursday in Europe and Asia. It'll be just barely Thursday morning in Alaska and Hawaii.

This year's Solstice is a little unusual in happening on Thursday for almost the whole planet, with a few people on some Pacific islands seeing it come on Wednesday.

While the Northern Hemisphere gets Summer, the Southern gets Winter,

Whether Summer or Winter, at that time the Sun will be rounding the turn on the Analemma.

You can see it at

http://www.plergb.com/Analemma/Analemma.shtml

which is updated hourly year-round.

At the Solstice the Sun will transition from Gemini to Cancer (Tropical Zodiac) and the Sun's longitude will pass 90 degrees.

At this time (give or take an hour or so to give the program time to update the image) you can see the dot in the center of the Sun image change from yellow to gray as it passes from one sign to the other. You will need to reload the image periodically to see any changes.

In the coming months the Northern Hemisphere days will start getting shorter. You may want to check this site now and then during the course of the year.

The page also has links to more detailed explanations of what an analemma is.

Please feel free to pass the URL on to others.

Happy Solstice!

As of the morning paper's deadline the federal government shutdown had not been resolved. That led me to thoughts of what if this impasse, or perhaps some future version of it, never gets settled? Well, maybe not never, but several centuries at least. What do the people involved do?

Does the nation-state formerly known as the United States of America split up for lack of funding authority?

Perhaps the states will go their separate ways, on their own or in league with other entities. Some military units might be able to survive by hiring themselves out as mercenaries while others may resort to plunder. But would such efforts succeed? Military supplies and equipment are pretty tricky to make nowadays. The village blacksmith's efforts probably won't get very far.

But the former Feds may not give up that easily. A few centuries hence we hear that their descendants have set up a sort of hereditary ruling body to eventually take back the reins of authority. They've been building up their numbers and are rumored to be getting close to having a quorum of members in their so-called "Congress", as well as an heir apparent to the Presidential throne.

One question: How many of the rulers of the former United States will be willing to return to the old ways, or whatever semblance of the old ways the Federation can claim to have successfully reconstructed?

I noticed something odd in the IEEE Computer Society ad on the back cover of the July 2017 issue of Computing Edge.

The image shows five people sitting in a row. The spacing between their chairs isn't uniform. In particular, the rather dark-looking man on our right is at least a couple of inches farther from his neighbor than any other person is from his or her neighbor.

Now was this spacing someone's conscious decision, or was it random happenstance, or subconscious bias, or what? Should we be concerned about it?

Inquiring minds want to know.

As I post this we're a few hours away from the Equinox, when the Sun will cross from the sign of Pisces (Tropical horoscope system) to Aries. This will happen Monday at about 3:28 am California time (6;28 am Monday on the US East Coast, 10:28 am Monday UTC ("Greenwich")).

The Sun also crosses the Equator from South to North at this time.

As usual, Wikipedia has something to say:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox

The figure at

http://www.plergb.com/Analemma/Analemma.shtml

shows the Sun's position on its journey through the signs of the Zodiac. It's updated hourly (but not on the hour). You can look at it year-round even if I only post about it at Equinoxes and Solstices.

Northern Hemisphere winter arrives on Wednesday, December 21 2016, at 2:44 am California time.


Some holiday-season poetry:

http://www.well.com/~bubbles/Poetry/BirthdayOfTheLight.txt

http://www.well.com/~bubbles/Poetry/ChristmasCat.txt



See the Sun getting close to the moment of Solstice:

http://www.plergb.com/Analemma/Analemma.shtml

The yellow dot near the bottom of the figure 8 represents the Sun on its yearly journey. Notice the little dot in its center. You can think of this as a hole through which to see the part of the figure 8 the dot is passing over. Each astrological sign (Tropical system) is marked by a different color.

Notice the item labeled "Sun's longitude" in the bunch of numbers and such just above the image. This starts at zero at the March Equinox and increases until it gets to 360 degrees at the next March Equinox, whereupon it starts over at zero. Every thirty degrees (0, 30, 60, 90, etc.) the Sun enters a new sign.

At the December Solstice the Sun's longitude will pass 270 degrees as it crosses into the sign of Capricorn (Tropical system). At that time the little dot in the center of the big dot will change color. (The page updates approximately hourly, so you may not see anything happen at the actual moment of alignment.)

This page is here year-round, so you can watch the Sun's entire journey through the seasons.

Feel free to share all this with your friends.

We're getting close to the 2016 Northern Hemisphere Summer Solstice: 3:34 pm California time, on Monday, June 20. It'll be evening in the eastern portions of the US, Monday night in Europe, Tuesday morning in Asia, and so on.

At that time the Sun will be rounding the turn on the Analemma.

You can see it at

http://www.plergb.com/Analemma/Analemma.shtml

which is updated hourly year-round.

At the Solstice the Sun will transition from Gemini to Cancer (Tropical Zodiac) and the Sun's longitude will pass 90 degrees.

At this time (give or take an hour or so to give the program time to update the image) you can see the dot in the center of the Sun image change from yellow to gray as it passes from one sign to the other. You will need to reload the image periodically to see any changes.

In the coming months the days will start getting shorter. You may want to check this site now and then during the course of the year.

The page also has links to more detailed explanations of what an analemma is.

Please feel free to pass the URL on to others.

Happy Solstice!

As I post this we're about a day away from the Equinox, when the Sun will cross from the sign of Pisces (Tropical horoscope system) to Aries. This will happen Saturday at about 9:30 pm California time (12:30 am Sunday on the US East Coast, 4:30 am Sunday UTC ("Greenwich")).

The Sun also crosses the Equator from South to North at this time.

As usual, Wikipedia has something to say:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox

The figure at

http://www.plergb.com/Analemma/Analemma.shtml

shows the Sun's position on its journey through the signs of the Zodiac. It's updated hourly (but not on the hour). You can look at it year-round even if I only post about it at Equinoxes and Solstices.

I should explain why I haven't been doing much of anything here lately. Basically it's that I've moved. It was only a few miles across town, but in the process I had to let go of about sixteen years' worth of clutter. That took much of my energy for the past month or so. And now I'm faced with having to decide how to arrange my part of the new place, which is shared with others.

It's no surprise that this has been a stressful time, even if the stress is mostly "good" stress rather than distress.

Not only have I had to shed physical clutter, but I've let go of various and sundry habits as well. Not all of these were things I wanted to rid myself of, so I'll be making an effort to reinstate some of them. This is likely to take even more time, since there's a fair amount of soul-searching and decision-making involved.

I hope to have more stuff to post soon.

We're coming up on the Fourth of July, and that reminds me of fireworks. It's traditional, at least in this country, for people to set off fireworks on the Fourth of July.

This practice is rather dangerous, and the authorities have tried to put an end to it, but people keep doing it. ( Read more... )