Ooh, a government conspiracy that involves some of my colleagues.

The time of the winter solstice on 12/21/2012 has been changed from 11:11 to 11:12. Something sinister is obviously afoot.

Given that the Naval Observatory is probably the most precise observatory in the world I find this highly unusual. A minutes change is huge! What’s going on here?

Best guess? It’s a precision issue. The time is specified to the minute, which means you have to decide to round or not. If the calculated time was 11:11:29 and changed to 11:11:30 — a mere second longer — in a recalculation (which might happen depending on, say, how many leap seconds had been added since you did the previous calculation, or other factors), you would display it as 11:12.