the island of the day before

Year in and year out, as the Earth’s rotation marks the procession of the hours around the globe—although with geo-political license that apportions certain time zones to one area and groups national entities, especially those comprised of disperse archipelago and the divisions aren’t smoothly radiating from pole to pole—one’s given to wonder how it might feel to live in a place that’s off-set from the rest (majority of the population, perhaps, but there are quite a few of these zones and ones that describe great swathes of the Earth’s surface) by a half-hour and even rarer lesser increments.
Any readers in those places, please let us know your thoughts. Would it be strange and jarring to be synchronised at the top of the hour or does it even register? Maybe that is by turns convenient and awkward for scheduling and meeting dead-lines.  Though probably not longer than living memory Tonga (UTC +13:00) and New Zealand’s Chatham Islands (UTC +12:45), places which are sadly usually covered up by the frontispieces of globes, have lied precarious close to the international date line, the edge of tomorrow—by convention—and now are afforded times later than, ahead of the neighbouring, relatively neighbourless waters, which to my mind would push them into tomorrow, instead of just later that day. We’re eager to hear from any residents of Nuku’alofa or Waitangi or anyone else that might have some insight into this perplexing situation.

mmxvii

Happy New Year’s to one and all. Warm greetings to all and hopes that your dreams be fulfilled and that everything starts out on the right footing. For the sake of re-introducing any reductio ad diffidenita into the discourse and colouring our expectations too garishly, we’ll refrain from predictions for the moment—both the expert and the astrological varieties and invite all to take comfort and strength in new beginnings.

eine guten rutsch ins neue jahr!

Previously we’ve learnt that wishing someone a good stumble into the new year wasn’t exactly like telling someone to break a leg but rather just to have a good start, but regardless of how you’re ticking off these final moments of 2016 and what lucky rites you’re practising, we’ll cross that threshold together. Thanks for visiting and best wishes for a healthy and auspicious new year from us at PfRC.

shooting-gallery or swords into ploughshares

The always engrossing BLDGBlog informs that the US Department of Defence, who’ve committed to dozens of projects to protect the environment and encourage sustainable practises, is entertaining a proposal by the Small Business Administration that would have the armed forces at least train with ammunition whose bullet shells are biodegradable.
They would contain a small amount of seeds to be released as the casing is broken down, in order to sow the tactile grounds and ranges with native brush and wild flowers. The DoD is seeking out companies with the material expertise to make this a reality and urges people to come forward. Geoff Manaugh goes on to ponder how this initiative—which sounds potentially quite the opposite to the notion of salting the fields of one’s enemies, reminds him of a tree bombing-raid campaign he blogged about over a decade ago that might result in mass-reforestation after wildfires or allow woodlands to reclaim fallow pastures.

nineteen-wonderful

In case you had forgotten the about the pure, unbound theological and metaphysical bizarreness that comprises Rankin and Bass Christmas specials, here’s a brief plot summary of Rudolph’s Shiny New Year. Spent from having just helped deliver Christmas gifts, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer finds himself again in contract by Father Time, seeking his help urgently to find the missing Baby New Year—Happy, before the strike of midnight on New Year’s Eve, else the year will never progress with the incumbent never able to retire.

Father Time conjectures, rightly, that Happy, bashful, has hid somewhere on the archipelago of years past, where superannuated, old Babies-New-Year step down to rule an era similar to their calendar year. Having enlisted extra help, they locate the baby only to see him abducted by a vulture called Eon the Terrible, who is predestined to expire at the passing of the year and is determined to stop the procession of time to avoid dissolution into ice and snow. The vulture is a bit endeared to Happy and by being persuaded to release the baby back into Rudolf’s custody, is spared his fate and Happy is flown back to Father Time’s castle to herald in the year ‘Nineteen-Wonderful,’ Rudolph adding that he wishes it a shiny one.