Thanksgivingukkah: A Once In Every 70,000 Year Holiday?

Even though it was just a fluke that in 2013 Thanksgiving and the first day of Hanukkah fell on the same day, does this quirky coincidence make it a new American holiday? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Thanksgivingukkah has now been all the rage as of late, but does it qualify as a bona-fide American holiday? The legendary boxing promoter Don King could be making his iconic “only in America” speeches about the birth of this holiday. But the truth is – the extraordinary similarity between the two seemingly disparate holidays could astound everyone not yet in the know. 

In truth, both the American Thanksgiving and Hanukkah were born in times of civil war. The origins Hanukkah was born out of the Maccabean Revolt of 167 to 160 BC – which is a “civil war” of sorts between occupying Syrian tribes and Hebrews on what is now the state of Israel. While the “salient theme” of the American Thanksgiving dates back to the Pilgrims sitting down with a banquet with the Native American tribes that they became first acquainted with, it wasn’t until the then US President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November as the official American Thanksgiving Holiday at the height of the American Civil War back in 1863. But should American’s this day and age combine the two just because both fall on the same day? 

At least it happens only once in every 70,000 years or so and if we continue using the Gregorian Calendar for the next upcoming millenniums, it is safe to say that Thanksgivingukkha will be celebrated again. Well, it’s only a once in every 70,000 year holiday making it around a thousand times less likely to occur in comparison to the once in every 76-year return of the Halley’s Comet. 

When Is A Leap Year Not A Leap Year?

A February 29th in 2012 may be proof that its a bona fide leap year, but are there supposed "leap years" that are disqualified from getting their own February 29ths?

By: Ringo Bones

Believe it or not, the year 2000 might be the only century year within most of existing folks lifetimes that passed muster to necessitate a February 29th. On the other hand, century years - those ending in double zeroes - ordinarily do not deserve a February 29th, as in the century years of 1700, 1800 and 1900 didn't have this additional day. But once every four centuries, the double-0 year is a leap year, and the year 2000 was one of them.

The complexity of adding leap years is due to the fact that humans like to work with nice whole numbers while Mother Nature never obliges to such a "square" convention. Measured against astronomical observations, a typical Earth year lasts 365.2422 days - i.e 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds. If the Earth year were 365.25 days long - or about 11 minutes longer when measured against background stars - rules for adding a February 29th would have been much simpler and we would add one leap day every fourth year in order to eliminate the fraction. But the planet Earth circles our Sun a tad faster than that, so we occasionally have to skip the once-every-four-year February 29th.

Bypassing three leap years every 400 years may be confusing, but it gets the job done. This extra "tweak" - introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 - keeps our calendar accurate to one day every 3,300 years. Years divisible by 4,000 are not leap years, which fixes that little glitch. Although critics of Pope Gregory's method say this tweak needs further refinement and necessitates the addition of a February 30th in the year 3000 to keep the Gregorian Calendar accurate beyond that date.

If it weren't for this elaborate system of leap years, each January 1 would begin at a slightly different point in the Earth's orbit around our Sun. That might not seem like such a big deal, but eventually the seasons would start at odd times. Christmas would come in August - or summer in the Northern Hemisphere - if this went on long enough. Our previous calendar - i.e. the Julian Calendar - in which all century years were leap years, was good enough for Julius Caesar, but its annual 11-minute error eventually did add up. By the 1500s, equinoxes and solstices took place a full 10 days too early.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII boldly returned the seasons to their intended schedules by simply eliminating 10 days from the calendar. So in that year, October 4 was immediately followed by October 15. Pope Gregory also decreed at that time that all century years divisible by 400 would be leap years.

Will the World End in 2012?

Given a significant portion of the Earth's population got a sudden preoccupation of the Mayan calendar during the last two years, is there really something to this the world will end in December 23, 2012 nonsense?

By: Ringo Bones

To cut to the chase, the only that's both interestingly "scientific" about the world ending in December 23, 2012 nonsense is the part where our planet Earth's 23 and a half degree axial tilt of rotation will align the Sun with the galactic center of our Milky Way galaxy near the end of 2012 - around December in fact according to the Mayan calendar. But is there any cause for alarm?

Astronomers have known for quite awhile now that the 26,000-year cycle of the Earth's rotational tilt had been shifting the Earth's celestial alignment at a rate of one degree for every 72 years since humanity began to carefully observe the stars in the nighttime sky. But is the hubbub surrounding the 2012 end-of-the-world obsession of a significant number of the Earth's populace nothing more that a quirk of celestial geometry?

Strangely enough, the 2012 galactic alignment will coincide with peak in Solar activity in the summer solstice of 2012 - thus the preoccupation by doomsayers that this quirk could allow the Sun to supposedly trigger massive geologic upheavals near the tail end of 2012. From the Mayans to Nostradamus, the galactic alignment had since been used as a rather hackneyed temporal signpost to mark a world-ending catastrophe. Could geometry spell doom for our seemingly eternal planet Earth?

Professor Ron Mallett And His Time Machine

Given what we currently know about the fabric of spacetime in the world bleeding edge theoretical physics, is Professor Mallett’s proposed time machine design the most likely to work?


By: Ringo Bones


Maybe it was on what we currently know about the latest experiments in the “bleeding edge” of theoretical physics that the fabric of spacetime could probably do what it wants with utter disregard to Einstein’s Special and General Relativity Laws, but if I were to bet a sizable amount of cash on a time machine design that works, I’d probably place all of my money on Professor Ron Mallett’s proposed time machine design that uses lasers to manipulate the fabric of spacetime. Given that it is by far the time travel device design that is most likely to work. But unfortunately, humanity has yet to meet a time traveler from the distant future.

Professor Mallett’s laser based time machine is an offshoot on his research on lasers and their noted effects on inertial reference frames (inertial reference frame manipulation technology?). Although the “time machine” prop used in Stargate: Continuum that looks uncannily like one of Professor Mallett’s table-top laser experiments scaled up might had made me partial to the idea of laser based time machines. According to Professor Mallett, a sufficiently powerful and manipulated laser assembly can be used to manipulate the inertial reference frame of the local spacetime in order to allow travel back into the past.

Anyone can easily tell that Professor Ron Mallett is a time travel “fan” because he drives a DeLorean inspired by one of the most famous time travel sci-fi movie of all time called Back to the Future. Professor Mallett’s fascination with the still unexplored science of time travel was primarily driven by his father’s untimely passing via a heart attack when professor Mallett was just aged 10.

Fans of time travel scenarios – either of science fiction literature and the latest on-going experimental research in the field of “bleeding-edge” theoretical physics -has always been eternally hopeful of the possibilities of practical time travel. It is not just because of the vast amounts of time travel related science fiction literature, it is also because science is yet to find physical laws that forbid the possibility of time travel – either into the distant future or back into our distant past.

Is Time Just an Illusion?

Will the British physicist Julian Barbour join the ranks with Albert Einstein in redefining the ultimate nature of time?


By: Vanessa Uy


When Albert Einstein proclaimed that time is just another dimension – similar to that of height, width, and depth – and went on to declare that it can be stretched and warped like a sheet of rubber. He single-handedly started a revolution that became an indispensable part in shaping 20th Century physics via his General and Special Theory of Relativity. Einstein’s offbeat view of time – since proven through careful observations with the aid of sensitive instruments like ultra-precise atomic clocks – has received it’s share of serious scrutiny when in 1963 an equally more radical view of the true nature of time was put forth.

British physicist Julian Barbour first began to doubt the reality of time as far back as 1963 while on board a German train. The riddle behind in defining the true nature of time has always fascinated Barbour. Then in 1986, he took strides to tackle the problem in earnest. Barbour had serious doubts about the existence of time because there is no real physical way to get hold of time. Plus – according to Barbour – time is invisible; “you can’t really get your hands on it. So what it is really?” In short, there wasn’t any good answer. Even though physicists work with time all the time, they never define precisely what it is.

As part of the on-going trial-and-error method via mathematical means in discovering a differential equation that describes the “Theory of Everything” – i.e. the Holy Grail of modern physics. An American physicist named Bryce De Witt – using Julian Barbour’s concept of unreal or illusory time – had “managed” to meld general relativity with quantum mechanics into a single consistent theory. Even though there are still doubts whether Bryce De Witt had truly achieved this major goal of modern physics, he did it by removing time from the equations. Though many in the theoretical physics community had since reached a consensus that the mere thought of using Barbour’s concept of illusory time to solve the greatest problem plaguing modern physics to be just a mere mathematical trick with no basis in reality.

Julian Barbour’s concept of illusory time centers on the idea that every “moment” we experience is real. And according to him, these moments exist only for that brief instant, during which time – according to Barbour – literally stands still. Thus – Barbour concludes – that the passage of time is as illusory as the sense of movement created by the succession of still frames in a motion picture.

Barbour says that there may even be a way to test his concept of illusory time experimentally. A consequence of Barbour’s theory is that the universe would be filled with more black holes and neutron stars – super-massive celestial bodies oft used to describe the concept of dark matter – than experts believe. Even though most scientists are just too wary of abandoning the orthodox (Einsteinean?) concept of time, Barbour’s idea is already taken quite seriously by such respected physicists like Penn State’s Lee Smolin and the University of Alberta’s Don Page.

Unlike Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem that deals primarily with the social construct – i.e. man-made – of formalist logic, Julian Barbour’s time-is-but-a-mere-illusion concept has to face up tangible tools. Like the latest in ultra-precise atomic clocks mentioned before. Plus noting that how our current Internet infrastructure is very dependent on how actually we can measure and control time-measuring devices, Julian Barbour’s concept of an illusory time could be easily relegated by an overwhelming majority of us as mere “descriptive time”. From my perspective, it looks like Julian Barbour's theory of illusory time is fast becoming like an obsolete Victorian-era idea. Not unlike the one astronomer’s used to describe the advancing perihelion of the planet Mercury’s orbit around the Sun – i.e. planet Vulcan – before Einstein’s general relativity explained this apparent celestial discrepancy.

2009: Unluckiest Year Ever?

Despite of the on-going global economic downturn, will 2009 be remembered as the unluckiest year ever for containing the most number of Friday the 13th s?


By: Vanessa Uy


As a concept of time - which has a less rigorous definition that it even deserves classification under descriptive time, nothing raises more irrational mysticism and awe than the superstitious aura behind Friday the 13th. As years go, 2009 probably qualifies as the year that contains one of the most number of Friday the 13th s. On average, a typical year contains a single or a couple of Friday the 13th s. But 2009 contains three of them. We had one last February 13, 2009 – which is Friday the 13th. Those that are yet to come are March 13, 2009 and November 13, 2009. But what is it about Friday the 13th that almost all of us find fascinating?

Though not a part of official Christian canon and doctrine, it was widely believed that the Fall of Man – i.e. when Adam and Eve were driven out of Paradise for disobeying God’s first commandment – happened on a Friday the 13th. During Medieval times, The Inquisition believed that practitioners of black magic, sorcery, and other form of the black arts find Friday the 13th as an auspicious day to practice their “evil” craft. Thus making Friday the 13th, together with a black cat crossing your path, the ace of spades, and walking under a ladder one of the prime examples of bad luck signs or an unlucky omen. Given that we had progressed so much, can the superstitious mysticism behind Friday the 13th really give us bad luck?

Older acquaintances of mine used to tell tales that back in the days when teen-agers used to covet the Ibanez electric guitars endorsed by Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. A computer virus known as the Friday the 13th computer virus was wreaking havoc during the infancy of the Internet every time Friday the 13th rolls around – especially during 1992 when there was a couple of then – March 13, 1992 and November 13, 1992. Now in the era of Web 2.0 the Friday the 13th computer virus – or any of its 21st Century incarnations – seems almost unheard of. Given that the global economy has been in dire straits since the last two weeks of July 2007, the three Friday the 13th s of 2009 still awaits to be used as a convenient scapegoat for calling this year the unluckiest year ever. Friday the 13th could be one of the contentious subjects of descriptive time.

Is Singapore on Permanent Daylight Saving Time?

Though many ex-pat workers had observed that at 6 in the morning Singapore is kind of dark when compared to Hong Kong’s. Is this a sign of a permanent Daylight Saving Time?


By: Vanessa Uy


Given that longitudinally, the island nation of Singapore should have been in sync with Bangkok, Thailand’s standard time. Why is it then that Singapore chose to follow Hong Kong’s time zone? Are the reasons economically driven – rather than geographical – like the standard-time boundaries of the United States, which are designated by the Interstate Commerce Commission? But first, let us examine the concepts behind a country’s geographic location and it’s designated time zone.

The local time for any place on Earth depends upon its geographic longitude. The local time is set less advanced than that of Greenwich Mean Time by 1 hour for each 15-degree of longitude west of the Greenwich 0-degree meridian. This is so because it takes 24 hours for our Sun to “circumnavigate” – due to the Earth’s rotation – across the globe. Which turns out to be 360 degrees given the circular circumference of our planet. Dividing 360 degrees by 24 hours works out to 15 degrees per hour or each time zone is 15 degrees wide. Barring the now mandatory “occasional” leap-second corrections via the now widespread use of ultra-accurate atomic clocks, longitude west of Greenwich is determined by subtracting the local mean solar time – obtained by astronomical observation – from Greenwich Mean Time obtained from radio time signals.

To avoid continuous changes in time with longitude, Earth is divided into 24 zones. Within each zone, the same standard time is kept. Minutes and seconds are kept identical in all standard-time zones; only the hours differ. The time zone boundaries over land areas quite often zigzag in order to avoid inconvenient changes of time within geographic borders legally defined by various nation-states.

In some areas, time zones are used wherein the time may differ by 30 minutes – like the Indian Standard Time. Or by an odd number of minutes and seconds of Greenwich Mean Time – these are not considered standard time zones, however. While countries very near the north and south poles where the meridians converge and there is no single time zone, they customarily default to Greenwich Mean Time.

Given that since her independence, Singapore’s stock exchange has always operated in sync with Hong Kong Standard Time – rather than that of Bangkok, Thailand which supposedly is where Singapore’s geographic meridian is in parallel with – the probable expense of syncing with Bangkok Standard Time could prove to be too costly. Thus Singapore had always stuck with Hong Kong Standard Time – in spite of the “gripes” of the island state’s resident’s circadian rhythms and Old-School Feng Sui practitioners. Which is kind of disconcerting since Singapore’s near-equatorial location doesn’t allow the island state to have seasonal variations like that of lands located further up north the need to save energy intended for use in lighting purposes – the supposed raison d’être of Daylight Saving Time.