I understand The Magic Kingdom is converting to the Gregorian calendar.
I'll get the popcorn...
Posted on 07/12/2016 8:03:24 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Pluto isn't quite as lonely as scientists had thought.
Astronomers have discovered another dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy objects beyond Neptune. But this newfound world, dubbed 2015 RR245, is much more distant than Pluto, orbiting the sun once every 700 Earth years, scientists said. (Pluto completes one lap around the sun every 248 Earth years.)
"The icy worlds beyond Neptune trace how the giant planets formed and then moved out from the sun," discovery team member Michele Bannister, of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said in a statement. "They let us piece together the history of our solar system."
...
The exact size of 2015 RR245 is not yet known, but the researchers think it's about 435 miles (700 kilometers) wide. Pluto is the largest resident of the Kuiper Belt, with a diameter of 1,474 miles (2,371 km).
The research team first spotted 2015 RR245 in February of this year, while poring over images that the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii took in September 2015 as part of the ongoing Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS).
"There it was on the screen — this dot of light moving so slowly that it had to be at least twice as far as Neptune from the sun," Bannister said.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
I listen to the “Mortification of Spin” podcast partly for the cute British accents of some of the presenters and guests. The one I played yesterday had a minister from Scotland on with the most darling voice.
We had French toast for breakfast. Now I’m going to get my jacket and shoes and go outside for a bit of exercise. Hope you have a nice time at church!
If you happen upon anything enlightening about Herod the Great, would you send up a flare? Our pastor thinks he was off his rocker but, I tellya, if there’s a biblical figure who was one tack short of a pack, it was Nebuchadnezzar. Uh oh. Gotta go. Take care!
I think there’s something of a historical consensus that Herod the Great was bats.
Herod the Great was at a minimum paranoid. He had his sons killed so they wouldn’t usurp his throne. Since Herod (an Idumean) was attempting to convince the Jews that he was one of them, it was said that it was safer to be Herod’s pig than his son..
He also killed his wife for (it is said) the same reason. His fear of losing his throne puts the Biblical story of his ordering the death of the Bethlehem infants in perspective.
Josephus records that Herod attempted suicide by stabbing but was prevented by his aides. He died in 4 BC, thus placing the birth of Jesus at least four years earlier than the calendar.. ;-)
The part about Herod’s death being in 4 B.C. was new to me. Thanks!
Merry Christmas and a blessed Yule to all my UT FRIends...
Merry Christmas, DC. The weather radarthing is indicating that you have precipitation of some flavor (I looked at the foregnostication for Owatonna - my Sister lives there.. ;-)
Which brings me to one of my hobby horses:
We already agree that our calendar is wrong, off by anywhere from 2 to 16 years, depending on who’s doing the reckoning, and further in error because of the absence of a year zero.
The more fundamental point is that God did not intend us to mark His years by the birth of Jesus.
If He had intended this we would have a Biblical fixing of the date.
Further, the day of Jesus’ birth is unremarkable as all men are born.
However, very few return from the dead, that event is remarkable, and it is the defining moment of Christianity, the very moment of proof that his sacrifice was not in vain. And the Bible gives a precise reference for when this happened!
Clearly this was the date the calendar was supposed to start!
For extra points, this makes our calendar off by anywhere from 17 to 30 years. That makes this something like Holy Year 1998 to Holy Year 1985, giving us anywhere from 2 to 15 years to get our affairs in order before the real end of the millennium...
Interesting point, null and void. What a mess, though, if we tried to change the calendars again!
Gud Yule, DC and all your family.
We will have a large piece of meat eventually.
I hope your music was a success today. We’re off this weekend.
Afternoon! Kathleen and I had naps. I need to find my phone so I can text Anoreth and Bill and see how they’re doing.
Yeah, what was it, something like a week and a half lost when Gregory improved on Caesar’s calendar? ;-)
They’re still on the Julian calendar in Ethiopia and parts of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Music was OK, introduced a new song.
Attendance was down - more showed up last night for the Christmas Eve service. We had a guest preacherperson who was pretty good and used the prologue to John’s Gospel as text.
I told him he cribbed off of my Christmas Eve Facepagething post..
I understand The Magic Kingdom is converting to the Gregorian calendar.
I'll get the popcorn...
I’m not a fan of new music at Christmas. The group who did our first service last night not only had two unfamiliar songs at Communion, but they insisted on doing their third song even though Communion was completely over, in spite of a SRO crowd heavy on small children and people already arriving for the next service.
Music, she says grouchily, must always be at the service of the congregation’s worship experience and take into account survival factors.
Hope you’re having a happy Christmas SG.
All the best for the New Year. :)
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