Which of the following organizations are real?
A, Cat Video Studies Club
B, International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service
C, The Prince Philip Movement
Answer: B, but millions upon millions are more interested in and have joined cat clubs and related feline study groups around the world. These are the ‘cat fanciers’. A ‘fancier’ is someone with either time on their hands or has personally viewed hundreds of hours of cat videos.
Cats have been an enigma throughout history since the time we as humans realized they really didn’t care too much about us unless it was feeding time. At that point, they’ll feign some affection, maybe purr a little or show us how to upload the video you just took of them. Yes, they are smarter than many of us.
But here’s the big news!
The Earth seems to be slowing down due to the Moon’s orbit getting bigger. Whoa! Come back! Don’t go out and buy up toilet paper and/or peanut butter and tuna fish for the apocalypse. You still have plenty of time to live, post a random cat video on your Facebook page and get hundreds of ‘likes’.
The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service says as the moon’s orbit gets bigger it exerts a transfer of Earth’s rotational momentum to the Moon’s orbital momentum and the tidal friction slows the Earth’s rotation. Either that or some of you have been dragging your feet.
Don’t blame the Earth for slowing down. If you were 4 billion years old, you’d slow down too. What does it mean that the earth has slowed down? It means that there is an additional second that we have to add to the year so that our clocks are still in perfect sync with something that doesn’t mean anything to any of us. They did that at one second to midnight on New Year’s Eve. Did you notice? Neither did I.
We’ll still be ‘running late’ and a second means about as much to us as those cat videos we delete.
Important note: It will not mean the ‘end of the world’. The end of the world as we know it will occur when the Sun’s hydrogen is gone and it expands into a red giant engulfing the solar system or Justin Bieber gets elected to the Senate.
All it meant was we got an extra second, or a “leap second,” in order to sync atomic clock time to the Earth’s rotational time. Who knew that ‘tidal friction’ could lead to humankind actually running late a second sooner. What a concept.
Isn’t that better than Justin Bieber running for the Senate?
Writer’s note:
For those who may ask about The Prince Philip Movement. It is a religious sect in Vanuatu that believes Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is a divine being. His birthday is celebrated with a gigantic feast and signed portraits of the Prince are treasured and taken care of with utmost reverence.
Sub note: Yes, Vanuatu is a real place.
Sub note (A) Who cares?
