Northern Hemisphere Hegemony
As the Games of XX Winter Olympics fade into the media morass which brought them to us, it occurs to me that, in fact, it is really only winter for one half of the globe--coincidentally, that half that watches the most television and buys the most stuff (yes, it's the Northern Hemisphere, home to America, among others). It's summertime in the southern hemisphere, yet we, with our self absorption and hemisphere-centric mentality, shove the term "winter" down the throat of the entire world. The opposite situation occurs every four years during the summer games, when it's winter down below. Sure, the southern hemisphere is much less populated, but who decided that our seasons would be the dominant ones? If you're, say, a curling champion from Antarctica, wouldn't you'd be steamed? I would.
Well, I guess they get the last laugh--the stars sure do shine brighter down there. The photo above is Aurora Australis (or, the Southern Lights). This is the same sky that is home to the Southern Cross, as sung about by Crosby, Stills & Young on Daylight Again (1982), which is a respectable album, given that the trio who made it had more fun in the 60s and 70s that almost anybody else on the planet.
