Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Article of the Month

From Instant Genius

THE NORTH CELESTIAL POLE

If you stood exactly on the spot that is Earth's geographic North Pole and looked straight up into the sky, you would be looking at what astronomers refer to as the North Celestial Pole (NCP).

• Very near to that imaginary pole in the sky, with a little variation due to Earth's rotational tilt, you would find the star Polaris, also known as the "North Star" or the "Pole Star." It's part of the constellation Ursa Minor, the "Little Bear," also known as the "Little Dipper." (Polaris is the last star in the dipper's handle.)

• Because of its location relative to Earth's rotation, Polaris appears to us to stay in the same spot all night long, every night (in the daytime, too, if we could see it). And because, from our perspective, Earth rotates clockwise relative to that pole star, all the other stars in the sky seem to move around it in a counterclockwise direction. That phenomenon is known as diurnal motion-from the Latin for "daily" (and it can be seen graphically in time-lapse photography).

• This made Polaris extremely useful for ancient navigators (it still does), since no matter where you are, if you draw a line down from Polaris to the horizon-that point is almost exactly north. It is, however, only visible from the Northern Hemisphere.

• Polaris was not always nor will it always be our North Star. For various reasons concerning the movement of celestial bodies, our positional relationship to the stars changes on an approximately 25,765-year cycle. Two thousand years from now, the star known as Gamma Cephei will become our North Star. And about 3,000 years after that, Iota Cephei will take its place.

• To find Polaris, first locate the Big Dipper (Ursa Major, which is often easier to spot than the Little Dipper). The two stars that make up the front of the cup (farthest from the handle) are known as the "pointer stars." Follow them out from the cup, and the next bright star you see is Polaris.
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THE BOTTOM LINE
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From Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Jingle Bell Christmas

Bah Humbug!

Here are some nominees for Scrooge of the Year.

• A dentist gave a $30 gift certificate to his dental assistant for Christmas. She found the certificate could only be redeemed at an upscale boutique owned by the dentist's wife that carried nothing even close to $30.

• The Great Dickens Christmas Fair in San Francisco decided not to hand out cash bonuses to its employees at Christmas. Instead, each employee received a white painter's cap with the words "Bah Humbug" printed on it.

• Every year, a consumer electronics company in the English town of Grimsby gives its workers the same Christmas bonus: a sack of potatoes. (The owner's cousin owns a potato farm.)

• Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, became notorious for his "Scrooge Memo," in which he pointedly reminded employees of their obligation to work a full day on Christmas Eve-or else.

• Richard Martin, a 71-year-old apartment manager in Bay Ridge, New York, got upset one year when someone tore down the Christmas decorations he'd put up in the lobby of his apartment building. So he wrote the following note and sent it to all his tenants: "Dear scumbag: If I catch you, I will kill you where you are. You don't want to f*** with the Irish."

• Colin Wood hated Christmas so much that he rented a fallout shelter for $600 so he could lock himself away for the holidays. He said Christmas provoked too many family arguments and he preferred to avoid the whole thing. His brother gave him a copy of Dickens' A Christmas Carol to read while underground.