"A Tip About Shags" Wore One, Danced It, Done It!

Word of the day: sequacious\sih-KWAY-shus\ adjective: intellectually servile.

NEW:  Star Gazing    Winter Solstice Winter begins in the northern hemisphere tomorrow, as the Sun appears farthest south in our sky for the year -- a point called the December solstice.

The seasons change because our planet is tilted with respect to its orbit around the Sun. Right now, we're tilting "back" as viewed from north of the equator, so the southern hemisphere gets the most sunlight. Six months from now, the northern hemisphere will tilt sunward, giving us the longer, hotter days of summer.

Without that tilt, we'd have no seasons at all. Any given spot on Earth would see the same amount of sunlight every day of the year.

Astronomers aren't sure just why Earth is tilted, but the leading idea says it's because our planet got a big "whack" early in its history. According to this theory, a planet as big as Mars slammed into Earth when it was just a few million years old. The impact knocked our planet askew. It also vaporized Earth's outer layers, spraying them into space. Much of this material quickly coalesced to form the Moon.

Other planets may have been knocked around, too. Uranus, the third-largest planet in the solar system, lies on its side. And Venus spins backwards. Again, there's no definitive explanation for these orientations, but the leading theory says they were caused by giant collisions.

Incidentally, the December solstice -- the beginning of winter -- occurs tomorrow at 12:35 p.m. Central Standard Time.   www.stardate.org/nightsky.

I had lunch at "Cafe Deluxe" with 3 of my new co-workers today, Brie, Shona, and Trish.  Brie has this sequacious methodology of calculating a tip.  It is:  Divide the total by 7 and then add $2.00.  Amazingly, it does work!  Very Einsteinian!  As lunch was ending, Trish was talking about hairdos.  She said she used to have a shag,  Brie said she's done the shag.  Shona, the South African Blonde, said she used to GET SHAGGED!  So we all busted out laughing and thought that'd be a great line for the next Austin Powers movie!