Happy New Year links - history, advice and lots of hangover cures

Happy New Year! A happy and healthy 2019 to all.

How (Not) to Celebrate the New Year: advice from 700 AD (hint - if you dress up as a stag or a calf you'll spend 3 years doing penance). 

Strange New Year traditions around the world.

Smithsonian's Top 11 Stories of 2018. 

The Guardian's best photographs of 2018, with commentary by the people who shot them. Also, National Geographic's 100 best images of the year. and their Best Animal Photos.

The Surprising Origins of the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop Tradition.

Lifehacker's Most Popular Posts of 2018. 

The 16 Best Gadgets of 2018. 

The Top 10 Websites for Science in 2018. 

Advice from 1862: How to Tell Your Fortune for the New Year.

Dave Barry’s 2018 Year in Review. Here's the 2017 version, and the columns for previous years are available here.

Some links to avoid becoming philogrobolized: 

Your Complete Guide to the Science of Hangovers

Infographic on the Anatomy of a Hangover

Hangover Cures From Famous Heavy Drinkers

Scientists Find a Way to Cut Wine Hangovers. 

5 Really Strange Ways to Cure a Hangover

Dark Liquor Makes For Worse Hangovers

How to Cure a Hangover in 10 Simple Steps.

According to a study in the Journal of Food Science, the amino acids and minerals found in asparagus extract may alleviate alcohol hangover and protect liver cells against toxins.

My favorite New Year's resolution story.

Why We Sing Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s Eve, and here's Mark Steyn singing and explaining the song What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

Eat your heart out, New York: Boise, Idaho drops a giant potato downtown on New Year's Eve.

ICYMI, Most recent (all Christmas-related) links are here.

Rudyard Kipling's little known poem "New Year's Resolutions"

Jstor: On January 1st, 1887, Rudyard Kipling (wiki) explored the human desire to make New Year’s resolutions in an uncollected poem published in the Civil and Military Gazette.

Transcribed by Dark Brightness.

New Year’s Resolutions.

I am resolved throughout the year

To lay my vices on the shelf

A godly, sober course to steer

And love my neighbours as myself –

Excepting always two or three

Whom I detest as they hate me.

I am resolved – that whist is low —

Especially with cars like mine –

It guts a health Bank-book – so

These earthly pleasures I resign.

Except – and here I see no sin –

When asked by others to “cut in”.

I am resolved – no more o’ dance

With ingenues – so help me Venus!

It gives the Chaperone her chance

For hinting Heaven knows what between us.

The Ballroom and the Altar stand

Too close in this suspicous land.

(N. B.) But I will (her ten names) abandon?

No, while I have a leg to stand on!

I am resolved – to sell my horses,

They cannot stay, they will not go,

They lead me into evil courses

Wherefore I mean to part with – No!

Cut out that resolution – I’ll

Try Jilt to-morrow on the mile.

I am resolved – to flirt no more,

It leads to strife and tribulation;

Not that I used to flirt before,

But as a bar against temptation.

Her I except (cut out the names)

Perfectly Platonic flames.

I am resolved – to drop my smokes,

The Trichi has an evil taste

I cannot buy the brand of Oakes

But lest I take a step in haste,

And so upset my health, I choose a

“More perfect way: in pipes and Poona.

I am resolved – that vows like these

Though lightly made, are hard to keep

Wherefore I’ll take them by degrees,

Lest my back-slidings make me weep.

One vow a year will see me through;

And I’ll begin with number two.

Rudyard Kipling.

Monday links

Happy New Year! A happy and healthy 2018 to all.

A roundup of hangover science and cures.

The New Year’s Feast That Transformed Fools Into Popes and Kings.

Dave Barry’s 2017 Year in Review: Did that really happen? Previous such columns are available here.

Get your trebuchets, catapults, air cannons, and giant sling shots ready - January 3rd is National Fruitcake Toss Day.

New Year’s Day in Paris in the 1800s.

Hawaiian Airlines flight takes off in 2018, gets sucked into a vortex and lands in 2017.

The Year in Discovery: The 50 Greatest Finds of 2017.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include New Year traditions, history, resolutions, "best of" lists, and advice. 

A roundup of hangover science and cures

Some links to avoid becoming philogrobolized: 

Your Complete Guide to the Science of Hangovers

Infographic on the Anatomy of a Hangover

15 Historical Hangover Cures 

Hangover Cures From Famous Heavy Drinkers

Scientists Find a Way to Cut Wine Hangovers. 

5 Really Strange Ways to Cure a Hangover

Dark Liquor Makes For Worse Hangovers

How to Cure a Hangover. 

According to a study in the Journal of Food Science, the amino acids and minerals found in asparagus extract may alleviate alcohol hangover and protect liver cells against toxins.

SciShow on the science of hangovers:

Related: Ben Franklin's 200+ synonyms for “drunk”, alphabetically arranged.

What's A Leap Second?

Screenshot of the UTC clock from www.time.gov during
 the leap second on December 31, 2016.

Every now and then a leap second is added to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in order to synchronize clocks worldwide with the Earth's ever slowing rotation.

Atomic Time vs. Universal Time - two components are used to determine Coordinated Universal Time (UTC):

International Atomic Time (TAI): A time scale that combines the output of some 200 highly precise atomic clocks worldwide, and provides the exact speed for our clocks to tick.

Universal Time (UT1), also known as Astronomical Time, refers to the Earth's rotation around its own axis, which determines the length of a day.

Here're some excerpts from WhatIf's excellent explanation - go there and read the whole thing:

Half a billion years ago (when the Earth was 4 billion years old, instead of 4.5), each day was 22 hours long instead of 24. The day has gotten longer because of tidal forces from the Moon.

Loosely speaking, here’s how tidal drag works: The Moon’s tides raise bulges in the Earth, but the Earth’s rotation moves those bulges out of line with the Moon. The Moon’s gravity tries to tug the bulges back into line, which exerts a twisting force on the Earth, slowing it down.

Strangely, the Earth is actually not slowing down as much as you’d expect from tidal drag. The biggest reason for the discrepancy is that during the last ice age, the continents were pushed down by the weight of the glaciers, and they’re still springing back into place. This has the effect of shifting mass toward the poles, closer to the axis of rotation: 

At the moment, each day is about 0.8 milliseconds longer than the 86,400 seconds it needs to be to avoid adding leap seconds.

This difference fluctuates over time based on weather and other effects (it’s actually shortened a bit since the early 1990s), although in the long run, it will definitely get larger as the Earth slows.

If we wanted to get rid of leap seconds, we’d need to keep the Earth spinning at a more constant rate. This means speeding up the Earth and shortening each day by about 0.8 milliseconds. 

This is a tough problem. Here are a few things that won’t work:

Spinning counterclockwise in a chair. It temporarily alters the Earth’s rate of rotation, but not enough to matter.

Putting rocket engines on the Equator. This won’t work because the exhaust would go into the atmosphere, which transmits the force back to the ground as wind drag—it’d be like making a bike go forward by pushing on the handlebars. If the engines were somehow mounted above the atmosphere, they’d be able to slow the Earth, but not by enough to accomplish our goal.

Triggering big earthquakes. This can alter the length of the day, but even those aren’t big enough to make a difference.

In the end, there’s only one solution: Hitting the Earth with asteroids.

More science, from TimeandDate.com:

A normal day has 86,400 seconds, but in the atomic time scale 1 second is not defined as one 86,400th of the time it takes Earth to rotate around its axis but rather as the time it takes a Cesium-133 atom at the ground state to oscillate precisely 9,192,631,770 times.

The advantage of this definition is that it is extremely precise: atomic clocks deviate only 1 second in up to 100 million years. On the other hand, the Earth's rotation, which is expressed by the time standard UT1, is far less reliable. It slows down over time, which means that days get longer. On average, an Earth day is about 0.002 seconds longer than the daily sum of the 86,400 seconds measured by the atomic clocks. This makes for a discrepancy between TAI and UT1 of around 1 second every 1.5 years.

Leap seconds are added to our clocks (UTC) so this discrepancy does not get too large over time and the time we use is synchronized as much as possible with the Earth's rotation.

When the difference between UTC and UT1 approaches 0.9 seconds, a leap second is added to UTC and to clocks worldwide. By adding an additional second to the time count, our clocks are effectively stopped for that second to give Earth the opportunity to catch up with atomic time.

More at TimeandDate and WhatIf.

New Year's links

Advice from 1862: How to Tell Your Fortune for the New Year.

List of lists: the lists of top 2016 science stories from 24 different sources.

Dave Barry's 2016 Year In Review. Previous such columns are available here.

How (Not) to Celebrate the New Year: Advice from 700 AD (or thereabouts).

Strange New Year traditions around the world.

Some links to avoid becoming philogrobolized:

Your Complete Guide to the Science of Hangovers.

Infographic on the Anatomy of a Hangover.

Hangover Cures From Famous Heavy Drinkers.

5 Really Strange Ways to Cure a Hangover.

Scientists Find a Way to Cut Wine Hangovers.

Dark Liquor Makes For Worse Hangovers.

How to Cure a Hangover.

According to a study in the Journal of Food Science, the amino acids and minerals found in asparagus extract may alleviate alcohol hangover and protect liver cells against toxins.

My favorite New Year's resolution story.

Why We Sing Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s Eve, and here's Mark Steyn singing and explaining What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

Eat your heart out, New York: Boise, Idaho drops a giant potato downtown on New Year's Eve.

ICYMI, most recent links are here.

Monday links

This will get your first Monday morning of the year off to a rousing start: a supercut of people falling and landing on vehicles, set to the cannon-punctuated finale of the 1812 Overture.

What Do the Buttons on Darth Vader's Suit Actually Do and What Really Caused the Emperor's Deformed Appearance?

The History of Farting for Money.

Yesterday was National Fruitcake Toss Day.

How Do You Train a Dog to Sniff Bombs?

A Medieval Guide to Predicting the Year - here's the appropriate bit for 2016: 

If the first of January comes on a Friday, the winter will be temperate, and the summer and autumn, dry. Grain will be cheap. There will be eye diseases, and many infants will die, and there will be movement of knights, and there will be much oil in some places.

ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, including lots of hangover cures, the top 50 photos of 2015, and Dave Barry's Year in Review.

New Year's Eve links

How (Not) to Celebrate the New Year: advice from 700 AD (hint - if you dress up as a stag or a calf you'll spend 3 years doing penance). Also, advice from 1862: How to Tell Your Fortune for the New Year.

Dave Barry's Year in Review - previous such columns are available here.

Strange New Year traditions around the world.

Some links to avoid becoming philogrobolized: 

Your Complete Guide to the Science of Hangovers

Infographic on the Anatomy of a Hangover

Hangover Cures From Famous Heavy Drinkers

5 Really Strange Ways to Cure a Hangover

Dark Liquor Makes For Worse Hangovers

How to Cure a Hangover. 

According to a 2009 study in the Journal of Food Science, the amino acids and minerals found in asparagus extract may alleviate alcohol hangover and protect liver cells against toxins.

My favorite New Year's resolution story.

Why We Sing Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s Eve, and here's Mark Steyn singing and explaining What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

Eat your heart out, New York: Boise, Idaho drops a giant potato downtown on New Year's Eve.

Best of 2015: Top 50 Photographs from Around the World.

ICYMI, Most recent (all Christmas-related) links are here.

Advice from 1862: How to Tell Your Fortune for the New Year

I'm not sure whether it makes sense to generalize on the basis of this one example, but going by this there was not any thought in 1862 of shaping your own future in the sense of making New Year's resolutions - you just got what the world threw at you.

"The evening which of all others is the most adapted for witchery, is New Year's eve. It is a very ill practice to spend this evening at a ball, and it is an acknowledged fact that ill luck, more or less, follows a person throughout the year, who has danced the old year out and the new year in. You should spend New Year's eve with a small circle of near and dear friends, around a punch-bowl, while you seek to inquire what the future has in store for you. In the first place this may be done with melted lead or wax... Take a good-sized piece of lead or wax, (the former is better,) place it in a melting ladle, and dissolve it over the coals, or over a spirit-lamp, into which you have poured a little alcohol. You must then take a vessel full of water, (a bowl is best, that is not too deep nor too shallow,) and pour into it the lead or wax, and from the various figures which it forms in the water you endeavor to tell your fortunes."

Felix Fontaine, The Golden Wheel Dream-Book and Fortune Teller

From Ask The Past (via their blog):

Forget the dancing: your best bet for a safe and merry New Year's eve involves molten lead and witchery. No instructions are provided for interpreting the lead forms, so I'll predict in advance that your 2014 will be kind of formless and globular.

New Year links: songs, strange traditions, hangover science and cures, Dave Barry's Year in Review

Strange New Year traditions around the world.

Advice from 1862: How to Tell Your Fortune for the New Year.

Your Complete Guide to the Science of Hangovers, The Anatomy of a Hangover, and 12 Hangover Cures From Famous Heavy Drinkers.

Why We Sing Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s Eve, and here's Mark Steyn singing and explaining What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

Speaking of Mark Steyn, here are his New Year links.

Eat your heart out, New York: Boise, Idaho drops a giant potato downtown on New Year's Eve.

Here's Dave Barry's Year in Review; previous such columns are available here.