23 September—“Urgent” email from Headline USA just received: “Charlie Kirk Commemoratives Selling Fast . . .” The reverse of the pictured silver round now says “Welcome without judgment, love without condition, forgive without limit.” But the “Design Details” still spell(s) “judgement” correctly.

And Dr. Donald Trump boasts that the politically driven changes his BFF charlatan Bobby Kennedy Jr.s flunkies have suggested to the childhood vaccine schedule are “based on what I feel.” Is comment necessary?

So fall fell yesterday at 6:19 UTC in the Northern Hemisphere as the autumnal equinox just happened: Earth, which is tilted on its axis, was perfectly positioned so that the sun shone directly over the Equator, resulting in day and night of equal length.

And at that very moment (6:19 UTC), spring sprung yesterday in the Southern Hemisphere as the vernal equinox just happened: Earth, which is tilted on its axis, was perfectly positioned so that the sun shone directly over the Equator, resulting in day and night of equal length. Is that a coincidence or what!

The word “equinox” is first found in Old French as “equinoxe.” It comes from late Latin “æquinox,” obviously meaning “equal night” but by extension and implication meaning “day-night equality.” Don’t ask why it’s not “æquidies,” meaning “equal day.” Or, for that matter, “die-noctis-æqualitatem,” really “day-night-equality.”

“Equator” also comes from late Latin, in this instance “æquator,” meaning “equalizer,” and giving us “æquator diei et noctis,” “equalizer of day and night.” The word is invariably used to refer to an imaginary line around the middle of a planet or other rotating spherical body that has poles. Thus the Earth’s (or terrestrial) Equator is equidistant from the North and South Poles and is the zero-degree line of latitude.

Got it? Then here’s more pedantry:

UTC is the initialism—in this instance erroneously called an acronym—for Coordinated Universal Time. In the good old days (before 1972) it was known as Greenwich Mean Time, GMT. UTC is in fact a compromise between English Coordinated Universal Time—CUT—and French Temps Universel Coordonné—TUC. Call it Universal Time Coordinated if it makes you feel better. And don’t worry about other languages.

Incidentally, 6:19 UTC is 2:19 pm EDT (Eastern Daylight Time), 11:19 am PDT (Pacific Daylight Time), and 7:19 pm BST (British Summer Time)—because Greenwich is in London but GMT/UTC doesn’t do ridiculous daylight time. And it might be said that time starts with GMT because zero-degree longitude is located at the Greenwich “prime” meridian, which runs through the North and South Poles.

So when does day become night and when does night become day? The transitions have in fact been defined in astronomical terms, based on the position of Earth relative to the sun. And that’s where we’ll leave it, except to remind you that the sun is just a big ball of hot gas . . .