Late and overweight but it's not your fault!

An Extra Second and Tons of Space Dust
By Joseph Walther


I don’t know about all of you folks, but a couple of things have me all frustrated this New Year’s Day. First, my time reference seems to be completely out of kilter for some strange reason. Second, I am a lot heavier this year than I was last year at the same time. In fact, the weight problem seems to be something that has occurred with regularity for the past 40-years or so. For all I know, it may have been occurring all of my life and I’ve just noticed it over the past few years or so.

I have never been one of those namby-pamby types who chalk everything up to “God’s Will.” No siree! One thing that reading all of those “articles” in Playboy Magazine for the past 38-years has taught me is that there is a scientific reason for everything that happens. Not knowing the scientific reason does not mean that one does not exist. It just means we need to be more diligent and determined in our search.

So, I decided to have my research assistant, Lovie Kravesit, help me get to the bottom of my time and weight concerns. We found the answers on the Internet. That’s right; we found them on the Internet, so you know they must be true. Through painstaking and methodical scientific digging—even though we did get tricked into viewing a disgusting dirty picture or two—we discovered that it’s not my fault that I feel so out of sorts relative to time and weight.

The answers were all right there in plain view on the Internet. And, two of the world’s most respected bodies of science: The International Earth Rotation Service (IERS) and the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) have endorsed every one of them.

Who among us could possibly question these scientists? It’s impossible because, first, we’d have to understand what the hell they’re saying and, second, everything they say has passed the Carl Sagan Baloney Detection Kit: commonly referred to by us common folks as the Bullshit Meter.

I readily admit that I do not have anywhere near the facility for scientific analysis that Lovie has. She’s outstanding at analyzing this stuff and I trust her both implicitly and explicitly. She’s good a lot of other stuff, too, but I’m not going to talk about it here.

Without going into too much scientific detail, mainly because I don’t understand a word they’re saying, here’s the skinny on the time thing. According to IERS, the ephemeris second used to be defined as the fraction 1/31,336,925.9747th of the tropical year for 1900 January 0 at 12 hours ephemeris time.

Grinning like a Chessie Cat eating bumblebees, Lovie explained that even though the Eleventh General Conference on Weights and Measures ratified this definition, reference to the year 1900 did NOT mean that this was epoch of a mean solar day of 86,400 seconds. It, instead, simply referred to the epoch of the tropical year of 31,556,925.9747 seconds of ephemeris time AND ephemeris time (ET) was redefined as the measure of time that brings the observed positions of the celestial bodies into accord with the Newtonian dynamical theory of motion.

So, as any dolt can plainly see, the result is a completely new definition for the term, SECOND. Science now defines an atomic second in SI units as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom. However, and this is critical, we must define the ground state at ZERO magnetic field. As long as we comply with this, we can define the atomic second in SI units as the equivalent to the ephemeris second!

I know what you’re all saying. You’re all saying that it’s all crystal clear now. Why didn’t they teach us this earlier in life? There would not have been a need for the digital watch and we would not have to assume that everyone wearing one is a complete idiot. Still, though, telling someone to be careful out there, because life can change in less than the duration of 9,192,263,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom, simply does not have the same impact as stating that life can change in less than a second.

Anyway, it is critical for all of you to know that a mean solar day has gone from 86,400 seconds to its present 86,400.002 seconds in a mere 179 years. All of the scientists agree on this, even to the point of being snotty about it. And they all blame the outcome on the growing trend of Earth’s slowing orbital speed due to tidal breaking.

Their solution has been to add a second of time, called a leap second, every so often to keep our clocks synchronized. Last night, New Year’s Eve, they added a second to our clocks at 6:59 PM.

If you, too, seem to be out of kilter, time wise, this is the reason. I understand it now, but I don’t like it. I also do not buy into their theory that all of this time warping is due to the moon's impact on tidal breaking. As you will see from what Lovie has told me about my weight dilemma, there is a much more logical reason for the slowing of Earth’s orbit.

For years, now, the American Institute for Instilling Dietary Terror has been blaming our weight gains on the ingestion of too many hamburgers, French fries, cheese steaks, pizza, cookies, cakes, chocolate, pregnancy, homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality, lack of exercise, too much television, Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, and a host of other stuff. What a crock this has been.

Science… that’s right, SCIENCE has finally debunked this crap. According to the United States Geographic Survey, no less than 1,000 million grams of finely particled space dust enters our atmosphere and falls to Earth each year. That’s 1,000 tons of fine particle dust piling up year after year. It doesn’t take a rocket science degree to understand that a lot of it lands on each of us! Hell, we’re lucky we don’t weigh a lot more than we do.

Well, the gig is finally up and thanks to my research assistant, Lovie Kravesit, we can all stop feeling so damn guilty. All of you medical doctors out there need to get off of our backs. Even though we might have butts like those of Quarter Horses, it’s not our fault. So there! Also, with all of the added weight, is it any wonder that the Earth’s orbital speed is slowing down? DUH!

I noticed one other thing while I was looking at some of the web sites Lovie suggested. A couple of the sites with the dirty pictures taught me something. There is, apparently, no limit to the human body’s tolerance for contortion, especially under the right motivational circumstances. Wow! I had no idea that humans could get themselves that contorted.

Lovie explained this, too. It just goes to prove that I was correct earlier when I said that she’s good a lots of other stuff. According to Lovie, as long as you don’t have any severe lower back problems, those positions are a piece of cake.

Thanks, Lovie. You’ve made my day, not to mention those of my readers. Thanks to your expert research, we can all relax and have some fun. In the meantime, I’m going to go get a pizza and a submarine sandwich. I’m also going to have my lower back checked out, you know… just in case!

Have a great New Year. See you next Sunday.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send email to: publisher@thetruefacts.com