New Year

Happy New Year! This is a time for spectacular firework display as people rush to countdown together. What am I doing on a cold night close to midnight? No, countdown is not for me. I rather watch the spectacular fireworks on TV. Chicago's fireworks are not quite as spectacular as other cities. That's another story. It must take astronomical amount of $ for all that firework displays. Could we be wiser if we spend that somewhere else? I am going to ask the same question for that money that political candidates are going to be spent on ads and negative ads this year.

This year starts with world unrest as the former prime minister of Pakistan was recently assainated and more unrest in elections in Kenya. Election simply do not work in some areas where people don't respect this process. Election works like this: you should support the winning candidate even if your favorite candidate didn't win. That is, minority respects the majority. You don't kill somebody if your favorite candidate don't win. This is not the perfect system in which everyone is happy, but 49% unhappy is better than 51% unhappy. As oil price approach a whooping $100 a barrel, people are saying $4.00 a gallon is coming. It is simply not look pretty ahead. Yet everyone is optimistic about New Year as we cheer: Happy New Year!

Mother Earth gives no good clue as to how many days in a year. It is fairly amazing to figure out that there are 365.25 days in a year. (How? I'd like to read some astronomy text about how people figure out things such as this and that 23 degree Earth tilt that we have which caused the seasons). Astronomy books I've seen merely gives you a chart on each planet on year length: Earth: 1 earth year (duh), Mercury: 88 days, the demoted Pluto: 200+ years.

Ancient Bablyonians thought there are 360 days in a year. It will take a fairly long time for them to figure out they are wrong when their alleged summer comes with bitter winter weather because they are off 5 days every year. The non-exact 365.25 days may disappoint some math purists, as 360 is a "nice" number with lots of whole number factors: 2, 3, 4, 6,...
When is new year? It is up to you. Any of the 365 days is a new start.
We are merely celebrating the earth returning to a particular position of its track around the sun.

A year is a good time to set goals and have accountants do some heavy duty work.
It is also a good time to try something new, like a new layout template in the blog.