The International Earth Rotation Service is calling for a leap second - the 24th of its kind since the first in 1971. I wonder what they did before that?

At midnight GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) on December 31st, the world will stop while a second is added to clocks everywhere.

The Earth rotates at different speeds in different years. The moon’s gravity supposedly has something to do with this. IERS uses calculations from more than 200 atomic clocks which base their time measurements on atomic resonance frequency.

Timekeepers warn that refusing to coordinate clocks might lead to lapse or collapse in communication, aerospace, finance and transportation. Remember Y2K!

Atomic time was introduced in 1958. Since then the Earth’s rotation has gained 33 seconds. I wonder, how did we and the animals get along before we had atomic time to tell us we were all off?

When I was in the Navy, we learned that the most reliable, predicatable and accurate measurements for navigation and time were the stars. Seems like we can’t be the Creator’s doing no matter how hard we try.

What are you going to do with your extra second?

Tokyo will be hosting its 21st International Film Festival from October 18th-26th. Not wanting to be outdone by filmmakers across the big pond to the east, can you say Hollywood?, TIFF has a green theme – “Action! for Earth.” Protection and preservation of the environment will be the common theme of films that are exhibited during the week long event. No red carpet this year either. It’ll be green! That will surely save the world.

 “One of the most urgent problems we now face is protecting the Earth’s environment,” said a press statement. “While many individual films have grappled with how to sustain our environment, no international film festival has yet stopped to champion this issue.”

The festival will take place in Roppongi and Shibuya districts, two areas of Tokyo that probably consumes more energy in a week than all of India does in a year. TIFF says, “We hope that our ideas will resonate far beyond the film community, contributing to the global conversation on our planet’s future.”

We hope they will show their movies using renewable energy sources or not show them at all.

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