... you can talk all night.
And no, I've got no pictures for you today. I got up at 5 and looked out the window and thought how could it have rained? It's 24°. But the sidewalks had that rained-on look — brown. That has to be ice. I delayed going out, and though it got sunny and the temperature rose above freezing, a ridiculous wind kicked up. I played it safe and stayed inside. Now, it's dark at last.
Do you realize the entire dark season — darkest 3-month period of the year — is over and we've entered one of the 2 periods of the year when the light and dark are most balanced?
I've explained my thinking before: "I think the seasons are wrongly divided. They shouldn't begin with an equinox/solstice, but should have the equinox/solstice put right in the middle. That would correspond to how I feel about the seasons: It's about light, not temperature. Winter should have the solstice as its center and should end by mid-February and so forth.”
And: "I would call the seasons: 1. Dark Time (with winter solstice in the middle), 2. Dark-Light Time (with spring equinox in the middle), 3. Light Time (summer solstice in middle), and 4. Light-Dark Time (with fall equinox in middle). Don't worry about the temperature. That can vary. The light and dark are absolutely nailed down."
So, despite the ice and wind, we're in Dark-Light Time now.
Posts
108 comments:
Loury and McWhorter say good riddance to DEI but favor positive things like Black History Month.
Black history month is a month celebrating the accomplishments of a group with an average IQ of 86. I mean, that's how it's felt. There are lots of smart blacks, is the lesson of the month. But few enough that it deserves a month remarking on them. In short, it's perverse marketing. There's no demand for white male month for a reason. You expect accomplishments.
We have warm but the sunlight is still low. Another couple weeks and the second fall for the oaks will happen, then we’re in pollen season. We can plow pollen in some years…
Does that mean when Sarah Huckabee Sanders wins the Presidency in 2028 she will usher in the Light time?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/02/06/black-hawk-helicopter-safety-system-turned-off-dc-crash/
Bet you REGRET voting for TRUMP now!
Prof, you're the Empress of Althousia, and can name the seasons any way you want.
My walk this morning was slower than usual. I walked down Highland. That was not fun. Roads were a-ok. Sidewalks emphatically were not. I stayed on the grass as much as I could. Didn't fall. Win!
"It's about light"
The problem with that as an equinox, is the equinox would then be dependent on what Latitude you are at. Because as much as the day/night cycle is roughly equal for you, it isn't for other places on the planet and never will be across the whole of the planet.
On the other hand, the equinox has never been about temperature either. The equinox is when the sun (source of light and heat) is at the equator, halfway between the top and bottom of the Earth along its rotation, although that rotation is tilted. If the Earth didn't have a tilt, then we would essentially always have an equal day and night cycle.
The seasons should run by month according to grade school decorations. March-May are spring. Sep-Nov are fall. Fill in the rest yourself.
Totally agree that the solstice and equinox days are stupid starting points.
Shhh. Ya not to say anything negative about the female helo pilot. Saint Rebecca has her own niche, right next to Trayvon Martin and Geo Floyd, in the DEI Cathedral.
I'm wouldn't object to dividing up the seasons as you do, but could we still call them winter, spring, summer and fall. Dark Time, Dark-Light Time, Light Time and Light-Dark Time sound too similar.
Why four seasons? And why the same seasons for everyone? The etymology of the word season relates to the Latin word, satio, for seed planting. You can tell from seed catalogs that every region has different times for planting and harvesting. The Los Angeles basin (not the valleys) has a season for mostly maritime onshore flow of cool moist air from approximately mid-April until September, followed by a hot dry season until November, followed by cool weather (mid 40's to mid 60's) interspersed with rainstorms and Santa Ana winds (fires, mudslides, and floods) from November to the middle of April. The amount of hourly sunlight figures into it, but doesn't seem to matter all that much.
"The problem with that as an equinox, is the equinox would then be dependent on what Latitude you are at. Because as much as the day/night cycle is roughly equal for you, it isn't for other places on the planet and never will be across the whole of the planet."
Ummm... that's not right. The equinox occurs at a precise moment, which is the same everywhere. The time on the clock when this happens is just different for different places. As well, there are 12 hours each of day and night everywhere on earth at that time.
Remember when we were told RFK Jr. couldn't be a good choice to run HHS, because he put rodents in blenders to feed his pet snakes.
Well:
"New federal contracts obtained by WCW via FOIA show 300 beagles per week are being force-fed and injected with drugs in wasteful tests in China funded with our tax dollars.
The documents from the Chinese lab state: “Beagle dog is docile, cute, and easy to domesticate, so it has been the best choice.”
The National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense are funding this puppy abuse in China through a recently extended contract."
"Why four seasons?"
And why does autumn/fall have two names but the other three only have one?
If you have not seen this yet, you need to watch it.
https://x.com/isaiahlcarter/status/1887290743032561803?s=61
A Black man leaves the Democrat party. The best explanation I have seen yet.
It's interesting to read the morning paper now. It's about 4 News Cycles behind because of all the things Trump is doing, mostly good, some I might question. Still has a crossword puzzle though.
Whoever shut off the transponders was remarkably irresponsible
Now it's dark - Blue Velvet (1986)
https://eko.substack.com/p/override
Was never keen on that film
I agree. The Celts did it right.
Imbolc
I would re-align the months to fit the seasons:
Fall - September October November
Winter - December to Feb
Spring - March to May
Summer - June July Aug
I subscribe to Althouse's division. But, as she observed this morning, the lived experience of humans that resulted in the traditional seasons is that lag (especially pronounced when you live near large bodies of water): warmth hangs on longer than the fall equinox, and cold hangs on longer than the spring equinox.
I refuse to think of March 1 as "Winter" or December 1 as "Fall"
I have to say I'm very disappointed in our New Soviet Democraticals that it took them until the 3rd week of the Trump admin to formally present articles of impeachment against him.
The New Soviet Democraticals are clearly off their game.
of course, your names for seasons only work in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere. the southern hemisphere could have your names, reversed. the poles could have more extreme versions of your names: very light, very dark. the equator would just be light-dark (or dark-light) all the time.
Went surfing today in North East Florida at the river mouth of the St Johns River. Air was 75°, water was 60°+ and these were 2'-3' perfection bright blue and glossy. Only four other surfers were out and our cars parked on beach above the high tide line were safe. At 72 this is my 60th year of surfing.
Yes the equinox occurs at the precise moment the sun crosses the equator, which is the same everywhere. Althouse was suggesting an equinox when day and night duration is the exact same. Even if it was exactly the same in Madison, WI; it wouldn't be the same in Lima, Peru.
Unknown said…
“of course, your names for seasons only work in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere. the southern hemisphere could have your names, reversed.”
Llaf, remmus, gnirps, retniw?
Via Reddit: Rick Astley's cover of "Ain't No Sunshine"
Because of Althouse, I now think of the time from mid-November to mid-January as “Darkmunth.”
Gaelic pagan tradition has the same demarcation of seasons, marked by these festival days:
Imbolc, February 1
Beltane, May 1
Lughnasadh, August 1
Samhain, November 1
Via Reddit: DOGE ushers in a new beginning
I'm always amused by periodically taking note of the shape of the terminator line. Windows clock app displays the flattened map of the world with the current terminator map. On the equinoxes, the dark/light patches are rendered as basically a rectangle. On the solstices, the terminator curve is at its maximum showing the latitudes closest to the poles that are constant light/dark and the drastic differences between lengths of daytime and nighttime based on latitude.
For weather statistics winter is already Dec-Feb, and so on. Much cleaner that way.
Democrats and ChiComs can all die in a fire.
I am watching the labor that the DOGEnauts have undertaken in the sewer that is DC, and I am wondering, why haven't we seen any references to the Augean stables?
Blacks are Americans too.
"second fall for the oaks". Is that like, a second fall of acorns?
Those in fact are referred to as the meteorological seasons, as opposed to the astronomical seasons. In America it works well: Meteorological Summer is Memorial Day to Labor Day. Fall is roughly Labor Day to Thanksgiving. We just don't have a holiday around March 1st to make it complete.
Firefighters kept from Palisades, Eaton front lines due to unserviced LAFD vehicles (KTLA 5)
I'm also very conscious of light and dark. It's striking to me that the days start getting longer on the first day of winter, and shorter on the first day of summer, though it's not really noticeable until a few weeks later.
thx
There is a J6 political prisoner, whose son turned him in to the FBI. He was included in Trump's pardon, and he has been released from the Democrat Gulag. He is reunited with his family, and apparently the son is estranged from the other members. I read an article on this, on some site, that ended with a poll; "If you were this father, would you ever be able to forgive your son?". Without really giving it much thought, I clicked on "yes". If my son shot me through the heart, I would die forgiving him. I was astonished to see that "yes" was less than 30%.
@Jupiter, no reference to the Augean stables and you won’t see one. No lefty wants to compare their illicit undertakings to horseshit.
Treason against family is the worst.
Local Media
Oh, yeah. Summer is dying as soon as it's born. But Winter also. Even as the days grow colder, they grow longer. For our hostess;
"He not busy being born ..."
Yes indeed. And refusing to forgive would be the deepest treason.
Reading that a member of Elon’s DOGE team resigned over a racist post.
This is all they got, folks.
Freezing rain Wednesday night and a coat of ice on the deck and driveway this morning. By midafternoon we were up to 60. Such is winter weather in Virginia.
He sounds great.
Robert Frost;
"Home is where,
When you have to go there,
They have to let you in."
I forgive but I don't forget
Well I would never be anywhere near something like J6 because it reeked of “setup “. If you can’t tell a Democrat dirty trick by the stench they leave on it then you’re suffering from anosmia.
But if I had a son who turned me into the feds because Democrats tried to make it illegal to be a Trump supporters I might — someday — forgive him but he’s absolutely out of the will. The other son gets it all.
“ BREAKING: Global Affairs Canada has abruptly deleted its entire public database of foreign aid spending, rendering the data inaccessible to the public.”
I wonder why.
The thing is, this still doesn't fix the fault. You never want aircraft crossing the same place over the ground at the same time, period, in congested airspace. Even if it had been flying 100 ft lower, it still would have passed directly under the plane and would have been a very dangerous near miss.
@Althouse, apparently Madison has declined to call itself a sanctuary city, but it has apparently pledged not to cooperate with ICE. How much federal assistance does your city get right now and how well can your city cope when Attorney General Bondi lowers the boom, as she surely will? (Her performance at the confirmation hearings convinced me that she is one tough cookie. — the kind young feminist women should admire and emulate).
The Daily Mail reported that Mr Musk's racist was one of his two number two men. I'm going to bet that this resignation will be on the front page of the NYT in the morning.
Bullshit.
Everything is possible with Trump. He's coming out with an EO that will change the seasons. He will be forming a committee to look into it.
Anyone who's not far-left is racist. I thought everybody knew that.
I like the land acquisition policies. So far we've got Greenland, Mars, the Panama Canal, the Gulf of America (wherever that is) and Gaza and we're only sixteen days in. I think we'll have a viable human society going on Mars before we do in Gaza but it's all good.
I wonder if "Politico Pro" was a portal that let insiders see which stories were being worked on to give a heads up, and access to reporters and editors, in order to kill stories you didn't want done, or to allow the holder of that subscription to insert his spin, or to edit out certain uncomfortable facts.
It almost makes you wonder if that's how those stories on Biden's Ukraine corruption were killed.
"Oh, I see you are doing a story on Joe Biden's business dealings in Ukraine... You do know that I can yank these millions of. dollars at any time, right chief?"
"Great Caesar's ghost! Were we working on a story like that? I will talk to the boys, don't you worry!"
The results of an IQ test that Donald Trump allegedly took during his first year at New York Military Academy have been discovered in a file box in a closet in Brooklyn. According to the test results, Trump's IQ is 73.
Read what he posted and defend it.
Mason I will count you on his side when he discusses wiping Israel and its people off the map.
You no doubt will stand by this one "I would not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the Earth.”
Elon hires the best people.
It is winter when it snows.
It is spring when it rains.
It is summer when it is hot.
It is fall when the leaves fall.
At least that's how it works for me in western Pennsylvania.
The astronomical situation sets the incoming energy. When it's more than outgoing radiation, the temperature rises. When it's less, the temperature falls.
The rising or falling though continues until the two rates are equal, which is well after maximum incoming or minimum incoming points in time.
CoreyBorealis
@borealis_corey
Pretty hard to argue with Lindy.
Ok I don’t care so much about the legality.
I care if this is acceptable.
The hypocrisy on the left criticizing Elon while at the same time jumping on board with Kamala- who was not elected to run, but chosen by the DNC.
The whole thing stinks.
10:36 AM · Feb 6, 2025
Shawn Ryan
@ShawnRyan762
Lindy Li: "Despite her repeated denials, Beyonce was paid."
Shawn Ryan: "Who was she paid by?"
Lindy Li: "And Kamala Harris thought all these people came out to Texas to hear her speak. Yeah, right. Kamala Harris got booed. She got drowned in boos."
"Cardi B, who famously said she wasn't paid. Her production company was paid to show up."
"Katy Perry was paid. Christina Aguilera was paid. Oprah wasn't paid a million. She was paid $2 million. $2 million to Harpo Productions."
"Al Sharpton was paid money. People like Roland Martin, who are attacking me now, he was paid $350,000 to interview Kamala."
"The Pennsylvania Democratic Party was paid $25 million after the chair raised hell for not being paid enough street money."
@lindyli
https://x.com/ShawnRyan762/status/1887523784854323447
THIS is how I know we won a huge battle with evil. I hope every single Progressive woman takes this as a challenge, and does the same. Just think of all the murdering of babies we stopped!! Praise to this woman who is as delusional as Joe Biden. Trump destroyed her brain. (wasn't much to destroy obviously.) Hopefully, she gets the extreme help that she needs.
https://www.themidwesterner.news/2025/02/michigan-rep-laurie-pohutsky-opts-for-voluntarily-sterilization-to-avoid-pregnancy-in-donald-trumps-america/
The Prodigal Son was expelled again when an old tweet of his was discovered.
So yours must be around 40 then, right Gad?? You are a joke. Shoo fly, shoo....
Mark, have you ever heard the fools on your side?? You have the RACIST squad, who spew all kinds of hate whitey crap from their podiums and you don't say boo. Cry harder next time. There may be a reason we are against the idiots that are in your party. NONE of them deserve any respect. Sorry, but I am not sorry. THEY did this to themselves. Suffer.
Wow! Great article. Thanks for sharing.
Sarah cannot run until the end of the second Vance term ends, so 2036.
I believe second fall refers to the oak varieties that hold onto their leaves most of the winter finally letting go.
"Unindicted “Russia collusion” co-conspirator and former acting director of the FBI Andrew McCabe ran to the Communist News Network to complain that all his old friends at the Bureau are terrified of being fired. He reported to fellow Democrat traveler Anderson Cooper that FBI officials are worried about how they’re going to pay their bills and take care of their families. “If you get fired,” McCabe explained energetically, like one toddler telling another toddler about the world, “you’re done. That’s the end of your reputation, your ability to get any job. You lose your pay, you lose your chance at a pension, you lose your health insurance.” Baby Cooper agreed with Baby McCabe that those consequences sound scary."
" Watching the two Democrat babies cry about FBI agents losing their jobs and reputations after we have seen the Bureau do the exact same thing to law-abiding Americans for years is absolutely surreal! "
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/02/our_self_important_self_deluding_self_unaware_elites.html
Count Wendybar on the side of gas chambers as well.
Standing behind the tweets a 22 year old try to hide isn't the hill I would chose to die on, but you do you.
Next up: Let's readopt Roman hours -- they lasted 45 minutes on the winter solstice and 75 minutes on the summer solstice. In Rome.
When I thought Trump 2.0 can’t get any better, I now find out one of Musk’s DOGE wunderkind’s online name is Big Balls. CNN made the mistake of reporting this and now Big Balls is trending. Winning!
I think you've hit on what is likely the root of our hostess's rejection, which is that the year starts in the middle of a season rather than at the beginning of one as it did when people agreed the year started in March. There's also the problem of trying to coordinate months based roughly on the lunar cycle with a solar cycle that doesn't divide evenly.
Left Bank: ref the old Celtic seasons:
Those were defined during a warm spell prior to the Little Ice Age, right?
Yet more evidence that climate change happens with or without industry...
JSM
The Democrats have been doing a lot of introspection concerning their loss. The problem is Democrats are delusional and dishonest, so their introspection will not be meaningful. They need to ask independent voters and Republicans why they lost. I am open to voting for a Democrat, except their identity politics is a non-starter for me. Picking a VP based solely on their gender and race and picking a Supreme Court Justice on gender and race is racist and unacceptable.
Yes Ralph we have many varieties of oaks including those that lose their tiny little obnoxious leaves in early spring…
“ Sarah cannot run until the end of the second Vance term ends, so 2036.”
By then, Karoline will be eligible.
I don’t know who Justin Murphy is, but he got this exactly right.
https://x.com/jmrphy/status/1887225944647094594?s=61
As for Black history month: embrace it.
Offer to speak at a local high school. Be kind.
But offer these points: conservative groups, especially the John Birch Society, but also the Republican-led military,desegregated decades before the major political parties.
Poor whites in indentured servitude were, by law, no more protected than blacks under slavery and died of malnutrition at higher rates both before and after the Civil War -- which did not free them.
There were many black slave holders.
In the 19th Century, after slavery, black women had more access to report abuse and rape than did white women to the courts. And more success in imprisoning their abusers.
Jim Crow was especially, awfully emotionally damaging to blacks.
But by the 1960's, blacks were committing crime against blacks and whites at rates far out of their population percentages. Now, against whites, It's almost 100%. Also against blacks.
So take a day to share these facts. Don't diminish Jim Crow. Don't diminish crime rates.
We don't know who turned it off. Maybe the men training her made the mistake. Let's review the last 100 mixed sex plane errors before making such an assumption, shall we, gspencer? Facts matter for those who are logical, not automatic pricks. If it was her fault, we will learn soon.
Maybe Anderson Cooper should have George Papadopoulos or Carter Page on, to tell him how good life is when Andy McCabe and his cabal decides to screw with you.
Mark adds “Drama Queen” to his sorry repertoire.
Althouse isn't proposing to change the date or definition of the equinox. Just the definitions and dates of the seasons. Put me down as a yes.
Nope. Not me. the Prodigal didn't betray his father for no good reason other than spite. He was a wastrel and no-goodnik who came back chastened. The son who betrayed his father was scum. Let his mother forgive him, would be my attitude.
Excellent read, narciso!
Gadfly. This whole Tump administration thing must be very painful for you. Good.
I was wrong: not a word on the front page of the NYT this morning about the racist fellow who no longer works for Mr Musk. I thought his nonsense would be catnip but the Timespeople have bigger fish to fry, I guess.
TY
Althouse writes, "I would call the seasons: 1. Dark Time (with winter solstice in the middle), 2. Dark-Light Time (with spring equinox in the middle), 3. Light Time (summer solstice in middle), and 4. Light-Dark Time (with fall equinox in middle)."
Ah, but we lose the agricultural foundations of the traditional terms, and since civilizations rests on those same foundation, it would not be to our advantage to further isolate our daily language from those roots.
Winter, spring, summer, autumn -- these words are so primeval their origins have been largely lost, though autumn may derive from a proto-Italic word meaning to ripen or enlarge, thus referencing its significance as the season of the harvest, and winter may trace to a Proto-Indo-European term meaning to be pale or washed out as in the landscape covered in snow or frost. Alone amongst the season names, spring's meaning is obvious. So, lets keep the food-related meanings for the time being.
On a stylistic sidenote, should you be quoting yourself?
Cool! When I visit my daughters in California one of the things I enjoy doing is watching the surfers at Huntington Beach. It's very exotic for a midwesterner.
Was she? She seemed to specifically talk about light. Because seasonally, it feels like Spring where I live. I'm ready to act like it is Spring. Earlier this week, I saw a rodent held aloft and proclaim Spring had come, although I don't know how more sunlight prevents a shadow from being cast?
So he posted racist shit democrats like Mark say every day. He quit. Everybody happy now? Everybody 'feel' safe? Mark? You OK? Need counseling?
Nice. Too bad about the laser turrets... but we can still do crocodiles.
Warm time. warm-cold time. Miserable. Cold-warm time.
Mona Lisa like smile time , smiley face time, librarian smile time, hysterical laughing time. Up North. In Tampa it's ac on, ac off time.
Dan Bongino
@dbongino
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Rep. Eric Swalwell
@RepSwalwell
Protect our data
12:52 PM · Feb 6, 2025
Yes, the Spring equinox would stay the same (March 20, 2025), with balanced light & dark of 12 hours each everywhere, including Madison and all of Peru. The Dark-Light season (nee Spring) would have the equinox in the middle, so about Feb 3 to May 5. Given this, we are now in Dark-Light. Celebrate!
Next up: Let's readopt Roman hours — they lasted 45 minutes on the winter solstice and 75 minutes on the summer solstice. In Rome.
Only during the day; night was the reverse. Basically, there were 12 equal hours of daylight (regardless of the time of year and the length of the day), and 12 (usually different) equal hours of darkness (ditto… of the night), in the system of hours of the day as it had existed since Greek (ultimately Egyptian) times.
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