{"id":2515,"date":"2008-12-21T06:50:09","date_gmt":"2008-12-21T11:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=2515"},"modified":"2008-12-21T07:01:07","modified_gmt":"2008-12-21T12:01:07","slug":"happy-winter-solstice-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/2515","title":{"rendered":"Happy Winter Solstice 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m struggling with insomnia again for some reason, and sitting here at the computer surfing around I am reminded that the solstice occurs in just a few minutes as I write this.&nbsp; So&#8230;Happy Winter Solstice 2008 everyone.&nbsp; I&#8217;m sure happy.&nbsp; Because now the days can start getting longer again.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>Well&#8230;except for you folks in the southern hemisphere that is.&nbsp; Sorry.&nbsp; Now your days start getting shorter.&nbsp; So I guess that should be Happy Northern Hemisphere Winter Solstice 2008.<\/p>\n<p>One of these days I have to travel to the southern hemisphere so I can experience the disjoint in seasons for myself.&nbsp; Oh, and look up at the night sky and see the half of infinity that I don&#8217;t see up here.&nbsp; At some time or another in your life you should experience in a way that really drives it home, the fact that you are living on a planet.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s what&#8217;s wrong with Larry Niven&#8217;s Ringworld.&nbsp; It experiences no seasons.&nbsp; Everywhere you go on Ringworld it is always the middle of summer.&nbsp; Except where the engineers installed heat fins underneath.&nbsp; But even there it is always winter.&nbsp; Or Autumn.&nbsp; Or whatever season the engineers have decided it will always be.&nbsp; Which would be worse I wonder&#8230;a never ending summer or a never ending winter?&nbsp; And even the artificial winters of Ringworld wouldn&#8217;t be right, because the sun&#8217;s radiant energy is always the same no matter what.&nbsp; Now that I think of it, it would be really <em>Wierd<\/em> to experience a Ringworld winter because the ground would be cold, and maybe the air around you somewhat too, but the sun is still bearing down on you like it&#8217;s summer.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m geeking out here aren&#8217;t I?&nbsp; Time to go back to bed and try to sleep a little more&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m struggling with insomnia again for some reason, and sitting here at the computer surfing around I am reminded that the solstice occurs in just a few minutes as I write this.&nbsp; So&#8230;Happy Winter Solstice 2008 everyone.&nbsp; I&#8217;m sure happy.&nbsp; Because now the days can start getting longer again.&nbsp; Well&#8230;except for you folks in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[55],"class_list":["post-2515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-this-and-that"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}