Archives for June 2006

Today marks the Summer Solstice. Wikipedia provides this explanation:

“The summer solstice is an astronomical term regarding the position of the sun in relation to the celestial equator. At the time of the summer solstice, Earth is at a point in its orbit where one hemisphere is most tilted towards the sun, causing the sun to appear at 23.45 degrees above the celestial equator, thus making its highest path across the sky. The summer solstice is the day of the year with the longest daylight period and hence the shortest night. This day usually occurs on June 21/June 22 in the northern hemisphere and on December 21/December 22 in the southern hemisphere. The actual date changes due to differences between the calendar year and the tropical year.”

I have been rather fond of the day for years, primarily because it marks the beginning of summer. Summer is easily my favorite season, especially early in the summer. There is something about early summer that just makes me smile. Maybe it is because it is filled with so much potential.

I also find the summer solstice to be interesting because of Stonehenge.

“Stonehenge (stōn‘hÄ•nj‘) , group of standing stones on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, S England. Preeminent among megalithic monuments in the British Isles, it is similar to an older and larger monument at Avebury. The great prehistoric structure is enclosed within a circular ditch 300 ft (91 m) in diameter, with a bank on the inner side, and is approached by a broad roadway called the Avenue. Within the circular trench the stones are arranged in four series: The outermost is a circle of sandstones about 13.5 ft (4.1 m) high connected by lintels; the second is a circle of bluestone menhirs; the third is horseshoe shaped; the innermost, ovoid. Within the ovoid lies the Altar Stone. The Heelstone is a great upright stone in the Avenue, northeast of the circle. It was at one time widely believed that Stonehenge was a druid temple, but this is contradicted by the fact that the druids probably did not arrive in Britain until c.250 B.C. In 1963 the American astronomer Gerald Hawkins theorized that Stonehenge was used as a huge astronomical instrument that could accurately measure solar and lunar movements as well as eclipses. “

I don’t know about you, but there is something very cool about the place. I haven’t been there, but it is on my list of places to visit.

For those of you who are afraid of getting older I present this:

Research Shows That Age and Other Perceived Adversities Don’t Always Bring Us Down

June 21, 2006 — We may get creaky and cranky as we get older, but we can be happier than we were when we were young.

So says Peter A. Ubel and other researchers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Ubel has spent years researching how we cope with life, and how we deal with the circumstances we sometimes find ourselves in, and he reveals all in a book just released by McGraw-Hill, “You’re Stronger Than You Think: Tapping the Secrets of Emotionally Resilient People.”

Ubel, director of the university’s Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine, says people are wrong if they think sad circumstances condemns them to a life of misery.

“They imagine that experiencing adversity, like a serious illness, or a disability, or aging, if you want to call that an adversity, will make them less happy,” he says. “But a hoard of studies really show that it has a much smaller affect on people’s happiness than they anticipate.

“Many people come away [from adversity] no less happy than they were before.”

In his latest study, carried out with Heather Lacey, a postdoctoral fellow with the Veterans Administration’s Ann Arbor Healthcare System, Ubel found that most people are happier in their later years than they were when they were young, although they may not have expected that to be the case.

The research also shows that even if you think you’re going to be happy in your senior years, you probably think most of you’re friends won’t. But that’s not true either, says Ubel, who is 44 years old and admits to being chronically happy.

Wisdom May Bring Contentment

Why?

Click here to find out the answers to why.

This post here is still getting a lot of attention, especially behind the scenes:

You Live In A Christian Country- Deal With It

https://www.thejackb.com/2006/06/21/3573/

Enya- May It Be

Clannad

80’s Music

I.T. People Hate Teddy Bears

The Joy of Construction

The Island of Dr. Moreau

Top Ten Deadliest Animals

Enter The Bad Boss Contest

Perfect Vision Is Helping and Hurting Navy