Frazz by Jef Mallett for January 04, 2022

Kind of like a race horse?

Since years are not all the same length, your age is already an aproximation.

… no? My birthday and the solstice are completely unrelated.

Actually right about now does/can make sense astronomically for the start of the new year – because today (Tuesday Jan 4) or yesterday (Monday Jan 3) (depending on where you live) is when the earth is/was at its perihelion (the closest point in its orbit around the sun).

Astronomers take New Year’s Siriusly. New Year is marked by the star Sirius being directly overhead at midnight. When it is off by a day they insert a February 29th.

Oh, Just set your alarm and let it alone. The variations in the amount of daylight at dawn and sunset are beyond one’s control.

So, Frazz “games” age group classification?

Then there are the two twins, one was breached 15 minutes to midnight Dec 31, 2021 and the other just after midnight on January 01, 2022. Question: Is one of the twins a year older that the other?

No, because your age is determined by your birthday, not the New Year.

Also, no one date makes more sense than any other date. Maybe it should be the summer solstice. Maybe the New Moon like it used to be. Or the full moon. Or MY birthday. It’s about as subjective as a thing gets.

The new year should start in March at beginning of spring. It did at one time and that is why December is called the tenth month.

Well, let’s see- the earth’s bulges interact with the moon so that the length of an earthly day is gradually getting longer (the earth’s rotation is getting slower) as the moon is swung about faster so that it is slowly moving out further from us, and eventually, if it all lasts long enough, the month and the day will be the same length. No, not in my lifetime (or yours), but that is where it is heading.

Summer and winter have nothing to do with aphelion and perihelion. They represent when our planet’s tilt is toward or away from the sun, which depends upon which hemisphere (north or south) you use as your reference.

The winter solstice in the northern hemisphere is the summer solstice in the south. Spring in the northern hemisphere is autumn in the south. What day you pick for New Year’s Day is truly arbitrary. Just remember that seasonal choices may involve latitudinal chauvinism… :)

Maybe it’s on January 1st because it’s the first day of the first month.

Nah, couldn’t be.

Frazz likes entering all age group races, specifically so he talk and talk and talk about himself.

This whole thing is more stupid that when we celebrated 2000 as the beginning of a new century rather than the end of one. I thought the irony was best pointed out when I saw some souvenirs on display as the “first day of the first month of the first year”.

They were labeled, “01-01-00”. Whoops.

As a sidebar, the only Y2K glitch I saw was a network news program that showed the date as, January 1, 19100.