TODAY IS LEAP DAY

Today is February 29, leap day.  Why do we have this?  

• Through the course of a whole year, to keep our season stable, you would need to add nearly 6 hours.  
• In other words, over the course of 120 years, the world would gain a month, and if this continued, agriculture, for one, would be affected.

• 
  So you make this up every four years.  
• Actually, the gain is 5 hours, 48 minutes and 20 seconds.
• Note that the world skipped leap years in 1700, 1800 and 1900, but not 2000.  The next leap year to be skipped will be in 2100.

• 
  Leap year was recognized by the Egyptians more than 5000 years ago, but it took them 2700 years to establish a new calendar.
• In time Hebrew, Chinese and Buddhist time-keepers added a full month every 120 years.

• 
  However, Rome in 46 BC, then ruled by Julius Caesar, added an extra day at the end of February every four years, which for them was the last month of the year.  Thus the Julian Calendar.

• 
  Pope Gregory XIII in 1586 decreed that 10 days be skipped, creating the Gregorian Calendar.  Only a few countries complied.

• 
  The USA and many other countries embraced the Gregorian Calendar in 1752, where the legal new year was moved from March 25 to January 1.  
• To do this, the month of September only had 19 days that year.
• But Japan did this in 1872 and shortened that year by 12 days, and countries like Russia, Greece and Turkey switched to the Gregorian Calendar in the 20th century, omitting 13 days.
• 
  It took more than 300 years for all countries to use the calendar of today.
• The gap in the Julian and Gregorian Calendars will go up to 14 in the year 2100.

• 
  What if you were born on February 29?  Do you need to skip getting a birthday three out of four years?  Not really, for leaplings mostly do this on March 1 in non-leap years.
• 
  Oh, one more.  Heard of the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar?
• Proposed by two Johns Hopkins University professors, Steve Hanke and Richard Henry.
• There were previous attempts to do this in the 1930's when the League of Nations met, and again in the 1950s by the United Nations.  Both failed.
• Hanke and Henry said they would have convinced then president Donald Trump to do this, but couldn't get 30 minutes with him.  If they had succeeded, Donald Trump would have been up their with Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory, for the U.S. would have initiated the Trumpian Calendar, with the extra week at the end of December Trump Week.
• January 1 will always be on a Monday, and your birthday always on the same day of the week, forever.
• The year is 364 days long, divided into four three-month quarters.
• Each month will begin and end on the same day every year.
• The first two months of each quarter are 30 days long, while the third has 31 days.
• Or 364 days across 52 seven-day weeks.
• To account for calendrical drift, the world will have an extra week at the end of December every five or six years.

• All federal holidays would fall on a Monday, except for the fourth of July and Thanksgiving.
• There would be no leap year.
• You can just paint the calendar on a wall, for it won't change, save for that extra week in December.
• According to the professors, their permanent calendar would simplify life in general.

From the New York Times: 

• The Supreme Court agreed to hear Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution, delaying a federal criminal case involving his actions on Jan 6. The court scheduled arguments for late April.

• The court’s decision to hear the case reduces the chances of a verdict in the criminal trial before Election Day. Trump’s actions suggest he wants to delay the trial. Read Alan Feuer’s analysis.
• SCOTUS has not yet ruled on whether states can disqualify Donald Trump.  Chances are that he will be made eligible, but he will not be immune from prosecution.

Other U.S. and international developments.

• The CDC recommended that older Americans should get a dose of the latest Covid vaccine now.
• About Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell decision to step down at the end of this year, and he has held that position for 17 years, three Johns are at the top of the list to replace him:  Thune, Cornyn and Barrasso.

• 
  Apparently, the meeting with President Biden was effective, for the House today did vote on and pass another short-term measure to keep federal agencies operating some departments until March 8, and the rest through March 22.  Amazingly enough, the vote was 320-99.  The Senate will do the same later today for signature by Biden tomorow.
• About those 100,000 uncommitted Michigan votes showing the effectiveness of Muslim protestation of Biden's role in the Gaza Strip humanitarian disaster, this will be final primary backlash.  In any case, the situation should improve in the 250 days to the presidential election.  Plus, protest is one thing, but the decision to actually vote for Trump is another.  Thus, this bad blip should not be a major concern to Biden's campaign.
• Numbers are difficult to confirm, but, according to the Gazan health ministry, more than 30,000 people have been killed there in the Hamas-Israel War.
• Russia continues to move westward in the Ukraine War.  No sign of help from the U.S. House.

Star943 says these are the best five Leap Day songs, with Van Halen's Jump at #1.  Gioachino Rossini was born on 29February1792.  He wrote 39 operas, so why not William Tell Overture, but by Spike Jones and his City Slickers.  Sometimes known as Beetle Bomb.  

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THE BRIGHTEST OBJECT IN THE SKY

Today, no politics, no wars, no Trump.  All space science, for astronomers found what may be the Universe's brightest object in the sky, J0529-4351, and it's humongous.

• Out there 12 billion light-years away is a quasar with a black hole at its heart, growing so fast that it swallows the equivalent of a Sun a day.
• A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.
• From your early science courses you must remember that the Sun is 92 million miles from us.
• A light year (which is a unit of length) is equivalent to doing 31,500 round trips to the sun.
• Thus, you would need to do that 12 billion times to get to J0529-4351.
• This quasar shines 500 trillion times brighter than our Sun.  
• 
  That black hole powering that quasar is more than 17 billion times more immense than our Sun.  But there are bigger ones, for at the center of the galaxy cluster Abell 1201 is a black hole equivalent to 30 billion Suns.
• This is the most violent place in our Universe.
• Age?  Began to form not long after the Big Bang.

So what is a quasar, you ask?  

• It is in a subclass of active galactic nuclei, where gas and dust falls into a supermassive black hole.
• Still confused?  Well, a quasar is just a gigantic black hole.
• Can you see a quasar?
• Lots of them.

• 
  The closest one, 3C 273 (to the right), is visible with an 8-inch telescope.  
• It shines at magnitude 12.9 in the constellation Virgo.  
• Is about 25 trillion times more luminous than our Sun.
• Take our entire Milky Way Galaxy.  Quasars can shine between 10 and 100,000 times brighter than our entire Milky Way.

• 
  And you must know that our Milky Way is average as galaxies go, but light would take from 100,000 to 200,000 years to travel from one end of our galaxy to the other.  You'd think astronomers would have known this way back in time, but I used that range because only recently have they determined that this diameter is double the size previously thought to be correct.  The largest galaxy is IC 1101 with a diameter perhaps of 550,000 light years.
• 
  The Hubble Space Telescope has recorded images of many.  These are mostly billions of light years away.
• These numbers are a lot more mind-boggling than the mere quadrillion I wrote about in the Huffington Post 15 years ago.

But what really is brightness?  I look up into the sky and our Sun is the brightest, at least to me.  The top ten can be found in this article.

But astronomers use absolute magnitude, defined as the apparent magnitude that an object would have if it were observed from a distance of 10 parsecs (1.9x10 to the fourteenth power miles).  This is the field of stellar astrophysics.  Observational astronomy, of stargazing from Earth, uses apparent magnitude, using illuminance such as lux.

Well, enough of that.  What about something more understandable?  What about catching a flight to follow a solar eclipse?

• The sky will darken over a band of the USA on 8April2024, beginning from Mexico, through Texas, up to Detroit, into upstate New York, passing through Maine into Canada.  This one will be twice as long as the 2017 eclipse, with a path nearly twice as wide.  The next time this awesome natural display will occur in the U.S. is in years 20 years.
• 
  Dallas:  partial eclipse begins at 12:23 PM CDT, totality begins 1:40, maximum 1:42, totality ends 1:44 and partial ends 3:02.
• Note that daylight savings time begins at 2AM on March 10.

• 
  Cleveland:  partial eclipse begins at 1:50 PM EDT and maximum 3:15 EDT.
• Caribou, Maine:  partial eclipse begins 2:22 PM EDT and maximum 3:33 EDT.
• Astro tourism is a new hot travel trend.

• 
  Delta has two special solar eclipse flights.
• Delta 1218, an Airbus A220-300, will leave with 130 passenger from Austin at just past noon and arrive in Detroit at 4:20PM ET.
• Delta 1010, an Airbus 321neo, will depart with 194 passengers from Dallas-Fort Worth Airport at 12:30PM CT, and arrive in Detroit at 4:20PM ET.

• 
  Delta says other flights will also have prime eclipse-viewing opportunities.

Those include flight 5699 from Detroit to New York’s Westchester leaving at 2:59 p.m local time on a ERJ-175, flight 924 from Los Angeles to Dallas Fort Worth departing at 8:40 a.m. on an A320, flight 2869 from Los Angeles to San Antonio taking off at 9 a.m. on an A319, flight 1001 from Salt Lake City to San Antonio leaving at 10:08 a.m. on a A220-300, and flight 1683 from Salt Lake City to Austin departing at 9:55 a.m on a A320.

• If you go, bring protective viewing glasses.

I did say no politics today, so sorry, but:

• Yesterday, Congressional leaders met with President Joe Biden, and seemed satisfied.  House Speaker Mike Johnson said he was optimistic.
• Today, the longest serving Senate leader of all  time, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that he will step down from his position.  Who will replace him?

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PAST AND FUTURE GLOBAL JOURNEYS

First, some news summaries:

• Looks like the U.S. Congress, mostly the fault of the House, will not by Friday provide stopgap funding for some of our Federal agencies, thus partially shutting down certain departments.

• 
  Big deal?  Not particularly, as this has happened 10 times since 1981.
• Also, the offices affected are not so crucial.  The important ones need funding by March 8.  But even then, "essential" employees, including the president and the Congress, will continue to work and be paid under any circumstance.
• The longest shutdown was during Trump's reign, when functions stopped for more than a month.
• Chances are that something will happen next week to again, temporarily, re-open our government.
• 
  By the time you read this, moon lander Odysseus might not be working, a few days earlier than planned.  
• Not a great mission, for the lander tipped over on landing, preventing full use of the solar panels.
• Watch a video of what happened.
• Sent a few great photos.

• 
  About that Georgia RICO case of Trump and cronies vs Fani Willis, there was testimony today that still leaves this matter up in the air, awaiting a decision from Judge Scott McAfee disqualifying Willis or not. A decision could come on Friday.  Note the cartoon at the end of this posting.

We will be off on an around the world trip in three weeks, so I will have several upcoming travel postings to build momentum.  Today, a retrospective on my global adventures covered in this blog.  

In fact, I'll first start by going all the way back to 7December1941 when PanAm 7 began the first commercial around the world flight, with no passengers.  This was an unscheduled emergency.  The plane was to fly from Auckland to Honolulu, but because of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, forced them to fly back to the U.S. west to New York.

Instead of heading home by going east, they took the massive Boeing 314 in the opposite direction, flying blind with no charts and no support from the airline. They were shot at twice, narrowly escaped getting blown up and otherwise avoided disaster while piloting the first commercial flight to circumnavigate the globe. They flew more than 30,000 miles over vast expanses of empty oceans and remote landscapes on five continents while crossing the equator four times.

The Boeing 314 was a flying boat and about as large as a Boeing 747.   Jet fuel?  They had to find any fuel possible and used gasoline for portions of the journey.  Incidentally, commercial jets today use kerosene because the velocity is low at low temperatures, and it is cheaper than gasoline.

Fortunately, the plane only had to look for calm waters to land, and one stop was a river in the Congo.   From there, they flew more than 3500 miles to Brazil.  Took 20 hours for that leg.  Made it to La Guardia on January 6.  And, by the way, a flight on this plane between Hong Kong and San Francisco in those days cost an equivalent today of $15,000.

In the 80s my wife and I also went west on PanAm around the world.  Since then, I had a couple more global adventures, but my blog began reporting on them after she passed away in 2009.

Since this blog begun, the first started on 17January2010:

Today, I begin my journey. I will visit Seoul, Hanoi and other parts of Vietnam, Cambodia, Chiang Mai and Bangkok in Thailand, New Delhi, Barcelona, Munich, Helsinki, Copenhagen (had dinner at Noma, with Chef Rene to my left), Amsterdam, London, DC, New York City, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. I will keep you informed.

I returned to Honolulu on March 15, a nearly two-month trip.  Here is what I said six weeks into this odyssey.

I left Honolulu on 28September2010:

My Fall 2010 World Odyssey begins this morning from Honolulu.  I will visit:

  Japan

  South Korea

  China (photo from Shanghai Expo)

  Switzerland

  Kenya

  Tanzania  

  Qatar (before oil, had a pearl industry)

  Norway

  Netherlands

  Italy

  USA

   DC

   Austin

   Las Vegas

For any burglers reading this blog, someone will be taking care of my apartment. 

I returned to Honolulu on November 26, so that was again a nearly two month odyssey.  Some photos I took, including the right eye of a giraffe.  This was in Nairobi and that is a Rothschild giraffe.

On 3October2011 I again went around the world.

Today I begin my final ash scattering journey.  I'll be stopping through Bangkok, Tokyo, Zurich, Amsterdam, Stockholm, London, Sao Paulo, Rio, Buenos Aires, Lima, Cuzco, Machu Picchu, Las Vegas, Reno, and San Francisco.  Let me know if I'll be stopping by your city.  Perhaps we can have lunch or something.  My first leg takes 18 hours, so, maybe I'll break my Rome-DC record.  Hopefully, it will be less stressful than my Delhi to Barcelona adventure.

I had a particularly scary experience at the Machu Picchu Sundial.  Read this posting.

Another near disaster was being bitten by a spider in Rio de Janeiro.  My thumb swelled to a dangerous state, but I was able to continue on.  

I had some great meals at Pellegrino Best 100 World Restaurants.   St. John in London and DOM in Sao Paulo were outstanding.

A summary of my 2011 43-day around the world adventure.

Here is something brand new from Condé Nast, the ten most expensive cities in the world. 

• #1    Zurich and Singapore
• #3    Geneva and New York City
• #5    Hong Kong
• #6    Los Angeles

• 
  #7    Paris
• #8    Tel Aviv
• #9    Copenhagen
• #10  San Francisco

I've previously been to all of them and will on this next global journey stop in Singapore, New York City and Copenhagen.  The article does not say this, but so many U.S. cities must be because our dollar is so strong.  No Japan city cause we now get 150 yen to the dollar.  This was 100 Y to $1 not too long ago.

To close, a bit about The Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial cartoonist Mike Luckovich.  Need I say any more than that he has won two Pulitzer Prizes?  Here is one released today that speaks for itself.

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