THE EARTH IS SLOWING: RESET YOUR CLOCKS DEC. 31

Because the earth has slowed down, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service has decided to add a leap second to the end of the year. This will be the first one in seven years.

What this means is that, unless they are careful, people will be celebrating the start of 2006 a second too soon. Here is the U.S. it's not that difficult to get it right, because the extra second will come at right before 7:00pm EST on December 31. So we just have to reset our clocks after that.

The people in the UK, and anyone else in that time zone, will have it more difficult, because the extra second will occur right before midnight. They'll just have to wait a second to celebrate.

The international pact controlling all this allows leap seconds to be put in on June 30 also. But instead they insist on doing it the one time of the year when people really care when midnight is. I really think they are sadists--they're doing it just to torture people.