२४ सप्टेंबर, २०२१

"It's a very small part of the sky," said the teenager observing the sunrise.

Overheard by me, this morning just as the sun was about to make its first appearance. 

He had, I guess, seen many pictures of sunrises and was struck by the small proportion of the sky that is framed in a photo of the sunrise... like this one of mine:

IMG_7390X

Another teenager: "What if it turned around and went the other way?" 

And that caused another teenage to visualize the newspaper headline: "Teenagers witness apocalypse/Millions terrorized." I thought that was very funny. Nice absurdity. "Millions" is a good touch. And just the idea that there would be a headline, a newspaper issued on the day the world ended.

३१ टिप्पण्या:

robother म्हणाले...

"as God is my witness...." The seemingly universal human need to imagine someone (a god, a reporter) viewing the whole thing, even its end.

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

At what age did you fully understand what a sunrise actually was- the turning of the ground you stood on to face the Sun itself? For me, it was around age 5 when I first saw a globe and an adult explain what the globe was. Up until that time, I thought the Sun physically rose over the horizon.

Scott Patton म्हणाले...

That's why no bookshelves should be facing east.

rehajm म्हणाले...

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/22729173091313325/

7 day apocalypse forecast…

Sebastian म्हणाले...

"And just the idea that there would be a headline, a newspaper issued on the day the world ended."

The apocalypse isn't what it used to be.

Original Mike म्हणाले...

"It's a very small part of the sky," said the teenager observing the sunrise."

The sun subtends about 0.0006% of the total sky area. Pretty small.

Howard म्हणाले...

Had a fantastic sunset-dusk swim last night. We had similar mare's tail's against blue skies over the Center Mass pond with 20-kt winds out of the southeast. The first leg into the quartering headwind was a challenge to stay on course. As the sun set for the night, a 2000-foot ceiling blew in. The water darkened from deep sepia to iron gall ink. At 72-deg F, the water is warm enough for the 50-minutes it took to swim one and a quarter miles. Still clinging to summer, the warm breeze felt nice on the beach. The black tunnel walk through the forest to the car was punctuated by an aggressively hooting owl. It's easy to see where Stephen King gets his ideas.

Hey Skipper म्हणाले...

My house, just north of Boise, has the patio facing east.

Often, the best part of sunset is the other direction.

Original Mike म्हणाले...

"Often, the best part of sunset is the other direction."

Absolutely. We summer at a house on the west shore of a wooded lake. Can't see the sunset per se, but the lighting of the far (eastern) shoreline for the 1 to 2 hours before sunset is magical. Much prefer it to the more traditional sunset view. We also have sun in the morning which is nice.

Sydney म्हणाले...

Wrapped in light as with a garment,
You stretch out the heavens like a tent.
You set the beams of your chambers upon the water.
You make the clouds your chariot.
-Psalm 104

Scot म्हणाले...

Helios: Dang, I forgot to shut the barn door.

madAsHell म्हणाले...

So, what is the end-game for Biden.

How does he leave office without revealing all the lies, and corruption??

Mary Beth म्हणाले...

"Millions terrorized", women and children hardest hit.

JRoberts म्हणाले...

"Often, the best part of sunset is the other direction."

How true. When I proposed to my wife 40 years ago, we at Panorama Point in Boulder, Colorado looking East at dusk. There was a thunderstorm taking place in eastern Colorado/western Kansas with lots of dramatic clouds and lightning.

Perfect.

Gerda Sprinchorn म्हणाले...

The comment section on most posts has become quite tedious. Comments on the sunrise pictures seem to be the only ones worth reading now. The others are filled mostly with shouted sludge. (Ann pointed this out a while back.)

Its too bad it took so much work to only post a few comments on each post back when comments were briefly emailed in. Almost all those comments were worth reading and many were quite good.

Also, the sludge greatly reduces the desire to contribute anything thoughtful. Why throw a diamond into the sludge? Who will notice?

Rockport Conservative म्हणाले...

Back in the dark ages of the 1940's, during WWII, we lived in Odessa, TX a very desert like place. We were out watching an eclipse of the moon when it was about one quarter covered, my dad asked, "what happens if it starts a shadow on the opposite edge?" He sure got his kids to thinking. Curiosity helps us learn.

pious agnostic म्हणाले...

Women and Minorities Hardest Hit

mikee म्हणाले...

Complete the headline: "women, minorities hardest hit."

StephenFearby म्हणाले...

Gerda Sprinchorn said...
"The comment section on most posts has become quite tedious. Comments on the sunrise pictures seem to be the only ones worth reading now. The others are filled mostly with shouted sludge. (Ann pointed this out a while back.)

Its too bad it took so much work to only post a few comments on each post back when comments were briefly emailed in. Almost all those comments were worth reading and many were quite good.

Also, the sludge greatly reduces the desire to contribute anything thoughtful. Why throw a diamond into the sludge? Who will notice?"

Yup. Comment moderation (for the usual suspects) seems to have fallen through the cracks.

It's not like the usual suspects haven't been warned.

Humperdink म्हणाले...

Wondering if the WaPoo is cataloging Biden's lies as they did the previous president.

Or maybe they are discounting Biden's prevarications by following the George Costanza rule of thumb: "It's not a lie if you believe it". But then how would Biden know?

stlcdr म्हणाले...

"And just the idea that there would be a headline, a newspaper issued on the day the world ended."

There's a lot of workaholics in the world. but. what if the world wasn't ending and you got an exclusive? I don't know what goes on in the mind of a reporter.

Quaestor म्हणाले...

Unnamed Madison teenager said, "What if it [the Sun] turned around and went the other way?"

Yes "Teenagers witness apocalypse/Millions terrorized" is mildly witty, but the world is well-supplied with budding Oscar Wildes but rather short on aspiring Henri Poincarés. I'd be more reassured if one of the teens pointed out that the it is Earth's rotation, and delighted if they began to reason out the consequences of such an event. After all, the kid asked what if and got low-brow trollery in reply rather than an insightful answer. (Here's one: Since they are presumably standing on the shore looking east, they would all be launched at about 1000 mph into Lake Mendota, or the mudhole it formerly occupied.)

Roger This म्हणाले...

You are 100% right, Gerda. The comments section in general is tedious.

Would love to see a voluntary experiment:

DRAGO AND CHUCK BOTH AGREE TO NOT COMMENT ON ANY TOPICS FOR 14 DAYS.

Let us ALL see the impact.

Do either Chuck or Drago have the self esteem to let the chips fall???

It might hurt to find out that the blog is better...

Rob

hawkeyedjb म्हणाले...

We sit on the east-facing patio in the evening, the dog and I. Sometimes Mrs. Hawkeye joins us. The sun lights up the trees in the park behind us, making them glow orange. Then the sun goes lower and the trees return to green, and finally he light fades and we contemplate the beauty of it all. The dog, unimpressed, hopes we are going for a walk - that's what the park is for, right?

Lewis Wetzel म्हणाले...

Working on the Triumph today.
I have two motorcycles, a 2006 Bonneville Black and a 2004 BMW R1150RT. In June I crashed the Bonnie. It wasn't a bad crash as they go. I lost traction on the rear tire when I leaned and accelerated the bike onto a ramp near Saint Croix Falls. The bike and I slid about twenty feet. I ended up with a badly bruised shoulder and a scraped knee. The Triumph had sheared throttle cables, a banged up R silencer, and dents in the gas tank.
I've been riding motorcycles for about 40 years, and this was the worst wreck I've had. It wasn't that bad -- no broken bones. I was wearing safety equipment, including an armored jacket and a half-helmet. I had to limp around for a week or so, and my shoulder still hurts sometimes, but it could have been much, much worse.
I've been riding the Beemer since I crashed the triumph, but I don't really like it. It would be great for touring cross country with a passenger, but it is not the kind of motorcycle you use for running around town or taking a spirited ride down a country lane.
So I am spending about as much as the Bonnie is worth to repair it, and I will sell the Beemer.
I like the Triumph better. I just hope I don't hit a deer.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent म्हणाले...

"Teenagers witness apocalypse/Millions terrorized."

Almost sounds like a riff on COVID Panic or, more accurately, the sensibilities and media absurdities of the Era of COVID Panic. Some good may come of this yet.

Lucien म्हणाले...

Our adversarial justice system frowns on collusive lawsuits because they aren’t, well . . adversarial. At the federal level, they may not present true cases or controversies, meaning Article III courts lack jurisdiction — and courts are rightly reluctant to arrogate uncalled-for jurisdiction to themselves. So the first two gotcha’ flavored suits against Dr. Braid in Texas may fizzle because they’re nakedly collusive. Use of the phrase “any person” in the statute may fail to create a case or controversy where one doesn’t really exist.

Mike of Snoqualmie म्हणाले...

The Maricopa audit found 57,000 problem ballots out of 2.2 million ballots. That's an error rate of 2.5%! Joe Biden won Arizona with about a 10,000 vote margin. That indicates that the Maricopa elections office is run by clowns.

Would anyone fly on a Boeing airplane if 2.5% of the rivets holding it together were faulty? The FAA would ground the whole fleet with that kind of quality control issue. Or what if SpaceX made that kind of error on its rockets. We'd see pad-explosions every time they tried to launch. No one would be booking SpaceX rockets.

And yes, the actual ballot counts hardly changed. That wasn't the point of the audit. The audit was to uncover procedural errors. It did, in spades.

JK Brown म्हणाले...

I worked a research vessel in the Hawaiian Islands back in the 1990s. I had the 4-8 watch so got sunrise and sunset. Watching a green flash at sunset is pretty common and easy as long as you don't stare too early. But my early mornings had the bonus of seeing green flashes at sunrise. But you had to know where to watch for that first split second as the sun cracked the horizon. Pretty much had to calculate the sun's azimuth the first morning out and get the bearing through the repeater. Still, the sudden appearance of a spot of green that split and "flowed" down both limbs of the sun for that second was a sight I always made time for with disappointment if there were clouds on that horizon.

Kevin म्हणाले...

And just the idea that there would be a headline, a newspaper issued on the day the world ended.

How else are they going to blame it on Trump?

Mike of Snoqualmie म्हणाले...

I'm watching "Harley & the Davidsons", a docudrama about the Harley-Davidson company. It starts around 1900 with the dawn of motorcycles. Their rival is Hardee motorcycles, maker of the Indian motorcycle. Business was really cutthroat back then, with the motorcycle companies trying to establish dealerships and trying to get people interested in riding these new fangled vehicles. They used races to draw the public in, and the races could be deadly. The second disk arrived yesterday and I'll watch it today. 4-stars.