Have you noticed that there’s not quite as much time in the day as you’d like to spend with bradwarthen.com? Well, it’s not a subjective impression on your part. Days just got shorter, permanently:

(CNN) — The massive earthquake that struck Chile on Saturday may have shifted Earth’s axis and created shorter days, scientists at NASA say.

The change is negligible, but permanent: Each day should be 1.26 microseconds shorter, according to preliminary calculations. A microsecond is one-millionth of a second.

A large quake shifts massive amounts of rock and alters the distribution of mass on the planet.

When that distribution changes, it changes the rate at which the planet rotates. And the rotation rate determines the length of a day.

As worldwide effects of a disaster go, this is WAY freakier than the tsunami that didn’t wipe out Waikiki. And its another settler for you libertarians out there who believe we’re not all in this together. As Donne wrote, “if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less…“

Not only that, but it spins faster…