Greetings, Rebellion readers. I’m still in bah-humbug mode from the holidays — too much food, too much drink, too little exercise, too much materialist excess. This morning I’m recovering from the celebration of the New Year. But what occasion, exactly, did we toast at 12:00 midnight? We celebrate the ticking of the second hand along arbitrarily assigned notations of time. This day, this particular revolution of the earth upon its axis, has no special historical or astronomical significance. Indeed, this day does not demarcate a new year for the Chinese nor the Mohammedans. It ushers in a new year only for those western cultures that adopted many centuries ago, for reasons long forgotten, the Gregorian calendar… which replaced the Julian calendar before it.

Bah! Humbug!

On a lighter topic, let me turn to a perennial favorite — alternate modes of transportation. Alert reader Ray Hyde sent me this photo of Swiss jet man Yves Rossy. Click here to view a video of Monsieur Rossy soaring back and forth through an Alpine valley. Ray’s acerbic comment: “Maybe there is a [transportation] solution. However, I suspect this is like electronic tolling: just because the technology works, doesn’t mean it is a good idea.”

I agree, personal jet packs are not a great idea. They’d improve access and mobility for, oh, nine or 10 people. Any more than that, and we’d have mid-air collisions and debris falling out of the sky. But in a column next week, I hope to persuade Ray and other skeptics that electronic tolling is, in fact, a great idea.