Friday links

December 21 is the winter solstice, the first day of winter, and the shortest day of the year. Here are science, history, and short video explanations of the celestial mechanics involved, plus descriptions of the concurrent celebrations of Saturnalia and Halcyon Days.

The Origin of the Myth of the Poisonous Poinsettia. Related, why we kiss under the mistletoe and how the plant got that strange name (spoiler - it literally means "dung twig").

The 1914 Christmas truce.

The classic Christmas drunken fruitcake recipe: Check the whiskey. Pour 1 level cup and drink. Repeat.

That Christmas when Parisians Ate the Zoo.

10 Important Facts About A Christmas Story's Leg Lamp. Related: Ralphie teamed up with Flash Gordon in a deleted scene from A Christmas Story.

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include the pre-Seinfeld origins of Festivus, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer's origin story, and that time Santa Claus took the Union's side in the Civil War.

Thursday links

Whatever is dreamed on this night, will come to pass; the summer solstice is this morning (June 21) at 6:07 AM Eastern Time. Related, Fridgehenge: to celebrate the solstice, British guy recreated Stonehenge using old refrigerators. 

Gallery: Cars with Propellers.

During the Great Depression, ‘Penny Restaurants’ Fed the Unemployed.

How to Have a Healthy Summer: Advice from 1656: you'll need to drink feebl green Wine and eschue the company of women.

Operation Acoustic Kitty: (Unsuccessful) Cold War attempt to eavesdrop via transmitters implanted into cats. 

"CIA staffers drove Acoustic Kitty to the park and tasked it with capturing the conversation of two men sitting on a bench. Instead, the cat wandered into the street, where it was promptly squashed by a taxi."

Alcohol - is there anything it can't do? Drunk People Are Better at Creative Problem Solving.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include the anniversary of the 1815 Battle of Waterloo (including, of course, a Lego re-enactment), the sport of motor-ball (AKA soccer on motorcycles), prayers to stop a dog from barking, and where to hit someone to do the most damage.

Thursday links

December 21 is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year

Christmas Gift Ideas from the 19th Century.

A collection of downloadable templates for Star Wars snowflakes.

Classic Christmas drunken fruitcake recipe: Check the whiskey. Pour 1 level cup and drink. Repeat.

The Long Lost World of the Luxury Flying Boat.

Loud orgies of Mexican fish could deafen dolphins, say scientists.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include the Scientific American guide to cheating in the Olympics, the anniversary of the Wright brothers' first flight, how to have a British Christmas, and it's not just humans - 'High-Ranking Male Primates Keep Wafting Their Sex Stink at Females, Who Hate It".

December 21 is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year

In the Northern Hemisphere the December solstice (wiki) marks the longest night and shortest day of the year with the latest dawn and the sun at its lowest point in the sky. I seem to remember that when I was a kid, the first day of each new season was always considered to be the 21st (of March for Spring, June for Summer, September for Autumn, and December for Winter). I guess it's more accurate now.

In seed-time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.

~William Blake

Winter is the king of showmen,

Turning tree stumps into snowmen

And houses into birthday cakes

And spreading sugar over lakes.

Smooth and clean and frosty white,

The world looks good enough to bite.

That’s the season to be young,

Catching snowflakes on your tongue.

Snow is snowy when it’s snowing,

I’m sorry it’s slushy when it’s going.

~ Ogden Nash

I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.

~ Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.

~ John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“Nothing burns like the cold.”

~ George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Nature has many scenes to exhibit, and constantly draws a curtain over this part or that. She is constantly repainting the landscape and all surfaces, dressing up some scene for our entertainment. Lately we had a leafy wilderness; now bare twigs begin to prevail, and soon she will surprise us with a mantle of snow. Some green she thinks so good for our eyes that, like blue, she never banishes it entirely from our eyes, but has created evergreens.

~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The winter solstice (wiki) produces the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, when darkness descends over the land to its greatest extent. For centuries, humankind has greeted the solstice with mixed emotions - with fear that the darkness might not really recede; and with hope that the cycling of the seasons would again reassert itself. 

Of the winter season, American poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972) complained,

"Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamn,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamn."*

* N.B. This is actually a parody of an anonymous 13th-century English song:

"Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med,
And springeth the wude nu.
Sing cuccu."

Here's a brief explanation on the mechanics of solstices and equinoxes:

And a two minute NatGeo video:

The two revolutions, I mean the annual revolutions of the declination and of the centre of the Earth, are not completely equal; that is the return of the declination to its original value is slightly ahead of the period of the centre. Hence it necessarily follows that the equinoxes and solstices seem to anticipate their timing, not because the sphere of the fixed stars moves to the east, but rather the equatorial circle moves to the west, being at an angle to the plane of the ecliptic in proportion to the declination of the axis of the terrestrial globe.

~ Nicolaus Copernicus (wiki)

Also at this time of year:

Saturnalia (wiki):

The winter solstice festival Saturnalia began on December 17 and lasted for seven days in In Ancient Rome. These Saturnalian banquets were held from as far back as around 217 BCE to honor Saturn, the father of the gods.

Saturnalia by Antoine-Francois Callet (1741-1823) Musée du Louvre

The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn, in the Roman Forum, and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms.

The festival was characterized as a free-for-all when all discipline and orderly behavior was ignored.

Wars were interrupted or postponed, gambling was permitted, slaves were served by their masters and all grudges and quarrels were forgotten.

The Saturnalia would degenerate into a week-long orgy of debauchery and crime – giving rise to the modern use of the term 'saturnalia', meaning a period of unrestrained license and revelry. A mock 'king' was even chosen from a group of slaves or convicts and was allowed to behave as he pleased for seven days (until his eventual ritual execution).

Halcyon Days (wiki):

The seven days preceding, and the seven days following the shortest day, or the winter-solstice, were called by the ancients the Halcyon Days. This phrase, so familiar as expressive of a period of tranquility and happiness, is derived from a fable, that during the period just indicated, while the halcyon bird or king-fisher was breeding, the sea was always calm, and might be navigated in perfect security by the mariner. The name halcyon is derived from two Greek words: the sea & to conceive; and, according to the poetic fiction, the bird was represented as hatching her eggs on a floating nest, in the midst of the waters. Dryden thus alludes to the notion:

'Amidst our arms as quiet you shall be,
As halcyons brooding on a winter's sea.'

More on the Greek myth of Halcyon and Ceyx here.

Related posts: 

Autumnal equinox science, videos, quotes, poems, Vivaldi and Copernicus.

Spring is here: science, myths, "spring spheres" and more.

Wednesday links

Summer started this morning at 12:24 EDT - here's some solstice science, history, poetry and music. Related: Fridgehenge: to celebrate the solstice, British guy recreates Stonehenge using old refrigerators. 

Why Is It Called Area 51?

 

Hawaiian Style: The History of the Aloha Shirt.

How to Have a Healthy Summer: Advice from 1656.

You've Got Quail: Why Thousands of Rural Mail Carriers Count Roadside Wildlife Every Year.

How Cats Used Humans to Conquer the World.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include the science of whiskey flavors, the anniversary of Waterloo (with a Lego re-enactment), the art of Soviet children's literature, and, for Father's Day, a selection of parenting advice from Homer Simpson.

Summer solstice science, quotes, poetry and music

Whatever is dreamed on this night, will come to pass...

Walking around the grocery store on a hot day always reminds me of this Shakespeare quote:

For men, like butterflies, show not their mealy wings but to the summer.

~ Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida Act III, Scene 3

Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound;
And through this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose.

~ Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, Sc. 2

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

In early June the world of leaf and blade and flowers explodes, and every sunset is different.

~ John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Green was the silence, wet was the light,

the month of June trembled like a butterfly.

~ Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

~ Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

Thou orb aloft full dazzling,

    Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand;

Thou sibilant near sea, with vistas far, and foam,

    And tawny streaks and shades, and spreading blue;

Before I sing the rest, O sun refulgent,

    My special word to thee.

~ Walt Whitman, A Summer Invocation

Shine on, O moon of summer.

Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,

All silver under your rain to-night.

Carl Sandburg, Back Yard

Today is the summer solstice (wiki): at the solstice (from the Latin solstitium, from sol (sun) and stitium (to stop)), the Earth reaches the point in its orbit where the northern hemisphere is most tilted toward the sun, which puts the latter higher in the sky at noon than at any other time of the  year.*  This is also the day of the year with the longest daylight period and the shortest night.  In prehistoric times, the summer solstice was of great importance to aboriginal peoples. The snow had disappeared, food was easier to find, and crops already planted would soon be harvested in months to come. From then on, however, the days would begin to shorten, indicating the inevitable return of the cold season. 

Here's a brief explanation on the mechanics of solstices and equinoxes:

The two revolutions, I mean the annual revolutions of the declination and of the centre of the Earth, are not completely equal; that is the return of the declination to its original value is slightly ahead of the period of the centre. Hence it necessarily follows that the equinoxes and solstices seem to anticipate their timing, not because the sphere of the fixed stars moves to the east, but rather the equatorial circle moves to the west, being at an angle to the plane of the ecliptic in proportion to the declination of the axis of the terrestrial globe.

~ Nicolaus Copernicus

Here's Nigel Kennedy playing the last movement of Vivaldi's "Summer" concerto from The Four Seasons:

Here's the view from Stonehenge.

Wednesday links

December 21 is the winter solstice, the first day of winter, and the shortest day of the year. Here are science, history, and short video explanations of the celestial mechanics involved, plus descriptions of the concurrent celebrations of Saturnalia and Halcyon Days.

How The World Looked When Jesus Was Born, According to Roman Geographers.

A collection of downloadable templates for Star Wars snowflakes.

Classic Christmas drunken fruitcake recipe: Check the whiskey. Pour 1 level cup and drink. Repeat.

The 1914 Christmas truce.

The Origin of the Myth of the Poisonous Poinsettia. Related, why we kiss under the mistletoe and how the plant got that strange name (spoiler - it literally means "dung twig").

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include advice from ~1200 on how to survive the winter (don't forget to lay off the purging and blood-letting, and keep your hands and feet covered in wolf grease), the complicated history of humans and cats, an island where donkeys wear pajamas, and a map of the entire internet as of 1973, on one sheet of paper.

Monday links

The summer solstice occurs this evening at 6:34 PM EDT: some science, history, poetry and music.

The Numbers Add Up: Peeing in the Shower Makes Sense.

The Ad Campaign that Convinced Americans to Pay for Water.

How to Have a Healthy Summer: Advice from 1656.

What Happens If GPS Fails?

The Weird and Very Long History of State Liquor Laws.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include parenting advice from Homer Simpson, a photo gallery of awkwardly sitting dogs, the anniversary of the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, and a 1942 guide to spaghetti-eating etiquette.

Monday links

Today is the winter solstice, the first day of winter, and the shortest day of the year.

All the Stuff British Soldiers Have Carried in Battle, From the 11th Century to Today.

How The World Looked When Jesus Was Born, According to Roman Geographers.

Classic drunken fruitcake recipe: Check the whiskey. Pour 1 level cup and drink. Repeat.

A collection of downloadable templates for Star Wars snowflakes.

The 1914 Christmas truce.

Here’s what happens when a flamethrower does battle with a firehose.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include lots of ugly Christmas sweaters (plus instructions for making your own), a Klingon Christmas Carol, why Japan is obsessed with Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas, poinsettia and mistletoe (which literally means "dung twig") science, and my personal favorite Christmas story: 'Twas the Overnight Before Christmas: The Merry Tale of How Air Cargo Deregulation Led To Amazon.

Friday links

For Father's Day, parenting advice from Homer Simpson: “Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.” And here's a video supercut of the classic Star Wars line, "I am your father", in 20 languages.

Father's Day lessons from Walter White, Don Draper and Tywin Lannister.

No Sex Jokes Please, French Government Advises Travelers to U.S.

Whatever is dreamed on this night, will come to pass; the summer solstice is on Sunday, June 21. Here's the view from Stonehenge.

20 heroic librarians who save the world.

Gorgeous Victorian fairy tale art.

ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and include the cost of building a Jurassic Park, Disney Princess softball team, the 200th anniversary of Waterloo (with a Lego re-enactment of the battle), and a gallery of lesser-known monsters.