February de-Monthed

Today is Mardi Gras.

Officially it's Shrove Tuesday, but more commonly known as "Fat Tuesday."

As we make our preparations to begin the season of Lent, it might do us good to remember our place in the universe. Get a sense of that - well, a little bit, anyway - by visiting Experience the Planets.

It's a website that hosts artistic renditions of the eight planets in our solar system, backed by some awesome ambient music. It reminded me of being in a planetarium, really.

And as a bonus, you can download these artistic vistas as wallpaper for your computer desktop.

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A PRESS RELEASE

Emboldened by their success in declaring that Pluto was not a planet, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) determined this week by a close vote that February is too short to be considered a true month. It has, however, been granted the newly-created status of "dwarf month."

It shares this dubious distinction with several other calendar time spans, including Labor Day Weekend, Christmas Vacation, and The Time Between When You Were Supposed to Get Your Oil Changed and When You Actually Did.

"It only seems fair," said IAU President Ron Eckers. "February reaches a peak size of 29 days, averaging only 28 days for 75% of the time. Recent research has shown that other periods, such as The Time Between When You Were Supposed to Get Your Oil Changed and When You Actually Did, often exceed this meager time frame.

"In fact, this erratic behavior only strengthens our case that February does not belong in the same classification as the eleven 'true' months."

Eckers also warned that the crop of 30-day "so-called" months should be careful to maintain their number of days. "They're already cutting it close in my book," said Eckers.

[written by Michael Haber via Good Clean Funnies List]

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WORDS for YOUR WEEK: "With every passing hour our solar system comes 43 thousand miles closer to globular cluster 13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress." (Ransom K. Ferm)

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