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All Hallow's Eve
It seemed like a shame to delete all the Hallowe'en submissions coming in today, so let's see if we can figure out something useful to do with them. Tonight is a full moon, which is a bad thing if you happen to be around animals. Several readers sent in Mac O' Lanterns of various types. One soul sent in a Jack O' Linux. This guy carves big pumpkins (be sure to click the arrows to see the finished versions). And if all else fails, bring out the Gimp.
Well, wouldn't it be kinda hard to have a full moon on the 31st without having had one earlier in the month?
From the article:
what's so unusual about a blue moon on Halloween is that it last shone over California in 1944. And there won't be another until the year 2020
And:
The blue moon was originally defined by the Maine Farmer's Almanac in 1819 as an extra full moon within any season. Later, however, the respected publication Sky and Telescope altered the almanac's definition and since then it has come to mean the second full moon within a single month.
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Once: you're a philosopher. Twice: a pervert.
According to them, it was originally defined as an extra moon within a season - since all 12 full moons within the year have a specific name relative to their season, this extra moon was the blue one.
So, (as has been pointed out) with our more recent definition, every Halloween full moon will be a blue moon, but with the old definition it would would be blue. (blue moons could only be in Feb/March, May/June, Aug/Sept or Nov/Dec - at the end of the season)
Never never never smoke crack before geometry class!
Go to the Ottawa Canada Linux Users Group homepage, and check out the great Tux jack-o-lanterns linked at the top of the page!
Just a friendly reminder!
Random Musings
If you take your data from the wrong couple of years and you find if your full moons occur disproportionaltely on weekends, is it that surprising that there are more hospital visits? Drunks and partiers are always doing wierd stuff on weekends. Since there are only a dozen or so full moons in a year, it is hard to get sufficient data to even out statistical effects such as this.
Cecil Adams has a couple articles on some of these things such as crazies and full moons and for a discussion of blue moons. Anyway, the study sighted took place over two years, which is about 24 months. No mention was made about the effect of day of the week which is probably only the first effect to control for. Do people go out hunting more often when the moon is full due to the better lighting? Are more people outside at night on those dates? Are people more likely to go to the hospital on these dates for some reason even if the biting rate doesn't change on these dates?
The fact that the author makes statemets like "Human behaviour is altered during the full moon period" after saying that the studies are contradictory and then goes on to say that their study adds "Animals have an increased propensity to bite humans during the full moon periods" (at best they have shown that more people come to the hospital with animal bites in these periods). These types of conclusions do not fill me with confidence in any of the other work.
And for a great short story about the expression, 'once in a blue moon', check out Connie Willis' "Blued Moon" in her book
Fire Watch [amazon.com].