Well, it’s a few days after the much-ballyhooed End of the World, wherein the magnetic poles were (according to some less-than-astute prognosticators) supposed to flip — North would go negative, and South, positive — causing volcanoes, tidal waves, and all sorts of havoc.
But Christmas Eve has arrived on schedule, the Mayan calendar goes back to being as irrelevant as Isaac Asimov’s idea of a quarterly calendar that would “abolish the months,” and we can return to thinking about the upcoming magnetic pole flip in a scientific way, sans Apocalypse.
Indeed, on Christmas Eve, the only talk about poles is about Santa’s storied connection with the North.
But hey: don’t think Arctic, think Antarctic. The big story, today, is that Queen Elizabeth II, Diamond Jubilee monarch of America’s “Mother Country” (sorry, Mother), is getting a plot of land on the Frozen Continent named after her.
Yes, to celebrate her 60 years on the throne, she attended a cabinet meeting, and received 60 place mats, one for each year of “service.”
“Can’t have too many place mats,” somebody said. Or must’ve.
Then she was chauffeured over to the Foreign Office where she received the “fitting tribute” of a big triangle of forbidding land south of the Ronne Ice Shelf, which will be called Queen Elizabeth Land. I’m assuming it’s a tribute to her warmth of personality.
Frankly, I’d prefer the place mats. But then, having a stretch of land you will never visit named after you is its own kind of place mat. Just goes to show you that giving gifts is not easy. What do you give the Person who has everything?
That is, everything but relevance.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
1 reply on “Cold as Ice”
My understanding is that Antarctica is property in common for all mankind, not subject to ownership. Some forbearance in naming rights for whatever brave soul manages to slog through a particular area on snowshoes. Nothing that indicates any particular right or priority for someone that manages to inherit well from their war-faring ancestor. That being the case, I would like to posit a counter-claim to that area of frozen parking lot.
I hereby claim it my self and christen it Drik-land.
Kinda catchy and just as irrelevant.