Earth Days activated every Equinox
equinox
EQ takes the Earth Day idea – and doubles it.
Equinoxes are Earth Days, and come around every spring and autumn
By pledging twice a year to SPRING INTO ACTION and TURN OVER A NEW LEAF at equinox, we will accelerate towards a sustainable post-carbon future.
Equinoxes are universally and uniquely suited to be Earth Action Days:
1) Equinoxes are true planet events
Fixed events in Earth’s orbit around the sun.
2) At equinox we are equal under the sun*
Equal day and night – 12 hours each – wherever you are on the planet
Click any dark green text on this site to explore further
* a 2013 demo website for EQ/equalunderthesun.org
Planet Neptune. 5 of 6
This is No 5 in a sequence of 6 prepared for EQ a while back by Jonny Biggins, CEO of The Book of Everyone. They will show in rotation at the top of the site. Can’t wait for the next instalment? Click here
EQ ‘looks at the science’: the climate crisis in a graph
Our climate and biosphere are now universally recognised to be in crisis, as this chart* of 1000 years of ice core and 50 years of atmospheric data starkly shows.
The equinoxes in March and September are here to help. If they are adopted as official Earth Days, they can become action rallying points for us all. This is how it will work: Continue reading
Asymmetric Daylight saving: Spock muses
26-10-19, 09.17 UTC (Earthtime). Many humanoids will “fall back”* to a logically correct time tonight, when they set their clocks to approximate to the solar noon of their slice of planet Earth’s surface. This is wise, for they have been getting up increasingly in the dark, Continue reading
Shūbun no Hi! An autumn equinox in Japan
The Autumn equinox coincides with my last day with the Royal Opera on tour in Japan. We will have just performed the thrilling opening sequence of Verdi’s Otello in Tokyo at the moment of equinox – UK readers will be having breakfast (08.50 BST). Whatever, wherever, whenever… Happy Equinox! Continue reading
Spring Equinox: Fifty Years ago the First (forgotten) Earth Day
These words of the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead – who with others 50 years ago in 1969 chose this fixed event in the calendar to be the first Earth Day – apply precisely to the equinox.
The Spring Equinox is a natural Earth Day, with a host of advantages built in. Not only that, it has a twin on the other side of the year: the Autumnal Equinox (September 23). Continue reading
Stephen Hawking, Parsifal and Space-Time
Note: February 2020. If you have been directed here from EQ’s new landing page, this is temporary. A YouTube video about the EQ logo, the Golden Ratio – Phi – and the Fibonacci series is in preparation. Meanwhile, enjoy a 2017 memoir and excursion into time, space and music…
Stephen Hawking is 75! Indomitable doesn’t come close to describing his life.
He became a research fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge shortly before I joined as an undergraduate. Continue reading
Autumn Equinox 2018: Straight and Crooked Thinking (1930)
EQ is a reimagining, half a century on, of Margaret Mead and others’ choice of the Vernal Equinox of 1969 as Earth Day*, but coupling it with the Autumn Equinox to make twinned biannual Earth Days. But equally, equinoxes are excellent prompts for clear, rational and logical thinking. Hence a post about this great book, published in 1930. Continue reading
Earthrise. Blue Marble. Pale Blue Dot. A triptych.
This is the transcript of a reading given on December 15th at St Clement Danes Church as part of the Christmas Concert of the talented young choir Coro.
Apollo 8 was the first manned spacecraft to leave Earth’s orbit and head up and out into deeper space. The astronauts were Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders and they orbited the moon ten times during December 24, 1968. On the fourth pass, at 4pm GMT, as they came round again from the dark side of the moon Anders saw something emerging from below the lunar horizon: Continue reading
Summer Solstice Sweden 2018. A celebratory seaboard
Happy Summer Solstice (not summer equinox, as Justin Webb had it this morning on @BBCR4Today). The Swedes get the equinoxes and the solstices – as do all high latitude peoples, and today these ancient rocks will be hosting al fresco parties, for they are at the end of the island of Smögen, a popular and picturesque shrimping port – and party venue. Continue reading
Spring Equinox 2018: takes the long view
” ..but, eternally having sunshine in equal nights and in equal days, the good receive a less toilsome life, not vexing the earth or the water of the sea with the strength of their hands to achieve a meagre sustenance; instead, in the presence of the honoured Gods, those who delighted in keeping their oaths pass a tearless existence…”*
So recited Pindar, in his Olympian Ode 2 Continue reading
Autumn Equinox 2017: turn over a new leaf
This mugshot¹ displays one of many slogans that attach naturally and convincingly to EQ. On the other side: Spring into Action.
The autumn equinox is a time for renewal even while leaf-fall reminds us of the natural cycle of decay. Continue reading