Friday, April 22, 2011

Good Friday & Earth Day

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Ever heard someone try to disparage the term 'environmentalist'?
Did that sound ignorant, intolerant and silly to you?
But, there are also others who would disdain the observation of any type of religious faith, whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist or others.
I sometimes wonder how much overlap exists between these two groups?
Maybe more than I wish to know, which would be a real shame.

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Did it ever occur to you that today was the first time these two special days were coincident?

Per Wikipedia, Good Friday is the Friday before Easter, which is calculated differently in Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity (see Computus for details). Easter falls on the first Sunday following the Paschal Full Moon, the full moon on or after 21 March, taken to be the date of the vernal equinox. The Western calculation uses the Gregorian calendar, while the Eastern calculation uses the Julian calendar, whose 21 March now corresponds to the Gregorian calendar's 3 April. The calculations for identifying the date of the full moon also differ. See Easter Dating Method (Astronomical Society of South Australia).
In Eastern Christianity, Easter can fall between March 22 and April 25 on Julian Calendar (thus between April 4 and May 8 in terms of the Gregorian calendar, during the period 1900 and 2099), so Good Friday can fall between March 20 and April 23, inclusive (or between April 2 and May 6 in terms of the Gregorian calendar). (See Easter.)

Good Friday Calendar:

2011 = April 22

2012 = April 6

2013 = March 29

2014 = April 18

2015 = April 3



Of course, Earth Day is a much more recent special day, as Wikipedia again records.



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Remember this POGO poster by Walt Kelly?
Think Pogo was right?




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