A Parable

[gfish]

Once upon a time there was an ant and a greenwich. The ant saved sunlight all summer (except while in Arizona) and generally had no fun at all. On the other hand, the greenwich wasted the long summer hours away painting a giant stripe around the world, which was a very arrogant move at the time because Britatin wasn't nearly the naval power that the countries with other meridian candidates were.

The winter finally came and the ant carefully used the sunlight it had hoarded. Soon it was the only creature in the land with a decent tan. Around this time the greenwich finally completed drawing its great circle . Over the long winter nights it slowly lost all semblance of a tan and was soon mistaken for an albino. Despite this handicap the greenwich went on to house the original Harrison chronometers and many other important achievements.

Comments

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

The summer solstice year length is likely to be stable over the next few centuries, even perhaps for longer than the vernal equinox year. But the VE year length in days has a nice rational approximation of 365+8/33. If one were to use this approximation in an 8/33 leap year rule, one could make sure that the vernal equinox would not jitter more than 24 hours. That period of time would be in one day, say March 20th, as measured on a particular meridian.

That meridian is 77°W. I don't know if Eastern Standard Time of 75°W is close enough.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

*Such* a geek I married. :)

[shandryl.livejournal.com]

Be happy you weren't MOOing when we were actually having this conversation. =)