Dark times--but it's only astronomical in this case

If I'm calculating things correctly, the winter solstice will occur at 10:35 am (Pacific time zone), tomorrow (December 21). Of course, if you care about commemorating that moment, you probably already knew that.

Enjoy, or ignore, as you see fit. And if you want to review what I said about this event (four years ago), here's a link to it (which may or may not be more entertaining than this Wikipedia article about it).

And now, apropos of nothing above, on the left there's a picture of one of the ice sculptures that adorned the bars at my office's holiday party last week. Yes, there's tubes running through it to act as a luge for the vodka poured by the bartender in the top and coming out colder in the glass below.


It's difficult to not feel guilty about such indulgence when there's so much suffering in the world. That's where the vodka comes in.