Althouse: What a difference a second makes

October 8, 2022

What a difference a second makes — 7:05:36 and 7:05:37.

Sunrise this morning:

One second later:

36 comments:

gilbar said...: interesting, the you spook the sun? And it turned around and hid?; 10/8/22, 7:07 PM
Leland said...: Typos make a difference too.

I ran out earlier, put the drone in the air, and snapped a picture of the rising moon.; 10/8/22, 7:40 PM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: I suppose it's not corruption when the democrats do it.

Link to alternative media claims Pelosi is raking in lots $$ with inside information.; 10/8/22, 7:42 PM
s'opihjerdt said...: Looks like 59 seconds earlier.; 10/8/22, 7:48 PM
Narr said...: Very peculiar. Sunrise surprise--"What if I just back up a smidge for once, and see who's paying attention?"

Some young and stupid friends and I drove eastward across Tennessee once, starting before dawn. Being flatlanders, it took us a while to realize that the sun was NOT going back down at the sight of us, but that we were topping rises and dropping into valleys.

This was when you could fill a gas-guzzler for $8.00 or so, and cruise along at 75+ with the windows open for a/c. Good times.; 10/8/22, 7:51 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Sorry I had a typo i. The numbers. Fixed no. Sorry that was especially confusing.; 10/8/22, 7:56 PM
Lurker21 said...: There is also a sunrise in the recent Norwegian film, The Worst Person in the World. I thought the picture was alright. It was the kind of movie people used to see and then talk about -- instead of not seeing and talking about anyway. It had a "new wave" feel to me. Not that it imitated French films of the Sixties, but it seemed fresher and more contemporary than most films nowadays. And the theme -- whether women can have it all, specifically as it relates to childbirth and raising children -- has been the subject of the Times Style pages and women's magazines for decades. The fact that men wrote and directed it might have been a disqualifier for some people in the past, but now looks like it could be an advantage, or at least not much of an issue. The director, Joachim Trier, isn't to be confused with the melancholy Danish director Lars von Trier, though they may look a little alike and have each made some very gloomy films. This one is gloomy too, but with a few unexpected bright spots.

If you saw all 15 hours of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1980 television adaptation of Alfred Döblin's 1929 novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz, you really ought to see the recent remake. It's only three hours long. You'll find all kinds of similarities and differences, echoes and recollections as memories of the earlier series return. The updating of the story to the present day and making the protagonist and African illegal immigrant actually worked for me. Of course if you haven't seen the earlier films or read the book, maybe don't bother with the new film, as it shows a very ugly world, sordid, seedy, and depressing (as Fassbinder's version did, as most of Fassbinder's other films did, as Döblin's novel did, as life in interwar Berlin's lower depths was).

When I did a web search of the film I found out that the lead in Fassbinder's version died just last week. That seems to be common now: googling some celebrity you remember and being surprised at how recently or how long ago they passed away.; 10/8/22, 8:22 PM
wildswan said...: Reading about the Kerch bridge explosion, I found myself thinking that, Whoever blew up the bridge, the explosion must appear very differently in different thought spaces. I was thinking about about how the Ukrainian Forces moving through territory the Russians recently held are finding torture chambers and graves in which the people tortured were buried and how that might affect them in ways we aren't considering. Putin might think The explosion was the Ukrainians and aimed at his prestige. Americans might think it was Ukrainians pointlessly insulting Putin. Ukrainians might be thinking about the recently discovered torture of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers in newly liberated Kharkiv and Kherson; they might be wondering what's hidden in Crimea. Ukrainians might regard the explosion as marking as clearly as possible the intention to separate from Russia. "Don't burn your bridges? Yeah, we will burn our bridges; we aren't going to leave a bridge for those people; the Russian administration tortures while the Russian people, knowing what goes on, sun themselves on the nearby beaches."; 10/8/22, 9:41 PM
effinayright said...: Last night I reported seeing a huge raptor-ish bird in Djakarta's zoo some years ago. I asked if anyone could identify it.

My thanks to those who offered suggestions. I got to see some awesome birds in the links you provided, but they weren't what "it".

Somewhere in my basement is a kid's book of dinosaurs my son glommed onto when he was about four. Like many, he loved those fearsome creatures. Before he could read I named for him the animals shown.

He memorized those complicated names, and could recite them as he looked through the book.

And he noticed things: he would chase me around the house as a three-fingered allosaurus, then have me stop!...and wait!.. while he adjusted his fingers to that of a two-fingered tyrannosaurus.

ANYWAY, in the back of that book were illustrations of feathered dinosaurs, precursors of today's birds.

IIRC one of them looked a lot like the scary thing I saw in Indonesia. If I can find it I'll try to find a pic on Bing Images and post it here.; 10/8/22, 11:16 PM
SteveWe said...: Reflection of sunlight off Lake Michigan?; 10/9/22, 1:03 AM
rhhardin said...: The psychological contrast is that the Cuban Missile Crisis was between two undisputed superpowers in their prime vying for the domination of the world, while the present crisis involves a has-been loser whose girlfriend is leaving him. Mainline deterrence theory didn’t anticipate the murder-suicide scenario.

Belmont Club<; 10/9/22, 2:21 AM
gadfly said...: Since 1967, the second has been defined to be "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom." Who knew?; 10/9/22, 4:04 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Since 1967, the second has been defined to be..."

Can anyone explain the flash of light that appears before the first appearance of the orb? The flash is larger than the sliver of orb that first appears, and it looks like the sunrise is reversing. I've been out there with other people who see it too, where we'll both be saying things like: it looks like the sun changed its mind or it's going in reverse.; 10/9/22, 5:43 AM
Michael McNeil said...: Anybody who had anything to do with an atomic clock during the last half century knew — which is lots of people (not Gadfly, obviously).; 10/9/22, 5:43 AM
tim in vermont said...: So the Ukrainians used a brokerage site to get a civilian to drive the truck bomb and told him it was fertilizer. Now they are trying to create some kind of mystery as to who did it? They were bragging about it for hours, then turned on a dime to blaming Russia for blowing up its own bridge.

BTW, the man behind impeachment, Al Vindman:: "I have been dreaming of this" re the bridge bombing. How much do they have to lie to you before you will begin to question it?

"Ukrainians are finding torture chambers and graves..."

Whose interests do these serve? Why would Russia want to create eternal enmity with Ukraine and an ungovernable protectorate? You know who wants that? Washington. There are enough stories out there of Ukrainians dealing with "collaborators" (Defined as people taking the other side in the civil war we started) to explain the vast majority of these atrocities.

Naziism is about the supreme primacy of the ethno-national will, over intellect, over all. Ukrainians want to depopulate Donbas of Russians and rule over it; this serves neocon interests. "Slava Ukraine!"; 10/9/22, 5:56 AM
tim in vermont said...: “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”. - Abraham Lincoln

True enough, but sadly it turns out that all that is required is to fool some of the people all of the time.; 10/9/22, 6:06 AM
MadTownGuy said...: Might be this: False sunrise; 10/9/22, 6:10 AM
Temujin said...: Time waits for no one.; 10/9/22, 6:32 AM
tim in vermont said...: I wonder how much of ethnic Russian Ukraine would have been rendered unlivable had the Zaporizhzhia NPP melted down? There was loose talk in the Ukrainian media, after the "Color Revolution of Dignity" we backed in 2014, of using nuclear weapons to depopulate the region.

Butkevich said that Donbass was "severely overpopulated with people nobody has any use for" and that out of 4 million inhabitants in Donetask oblast, "at least 1.5 million of them are superfluous"

I'm sure it's nothing.

I am sure that that the Russians not only were the ones shelling the NPP they control, but they blew up their own pipeline, blew up their own bridge, and are committing counterproductive atrocities, because they are stupid orcs who can't understand what is in their own interests. It sure is convenient for neocon propagandists how stupid Putin is.; 10/9/22, 6:37 AM
tim in vermont said...: Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. - JFK; 10/9/22, 7:16 AM
planetgeo said...: AA: "Can anyone explain the flash of light that appears before the first appearance of the orb?"

Sure. Atmospheric refraction of light as the sun begins to rise through varying layers of the atmosphere.

You're welcome.; 10/9/22, 7:27 AM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: The early sun flash is do to an atmospheric lens somewhere near the horizon. The atmospheric temperatures are not the normal lapse rate (linear decrease with altitude), but are complicated, forming a atmospheric lens. This bends the light around the curve of the Earth before the Sun is actually above the horizon. Then the Sun rises above the lens and the light is no longer bent around the curve of the Earth and it disappears.

"Other optical phenomena associated with this include the Novaya Zemlya effect, where the Sun appears to rise earlier or set later than predicted with a distorted shape."; 10/9/22, 7:29 AM
narciso said...: https://dailycaller.com/2022/10/08/opinion-mcconnell-eats-his-own-in-alaska-downing/; 10/9/22, 7:34 AM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: Mitch McConnel's campaign tactics are one reason I no longer donate money to any of the Republican committees, Congressional and Senate. I donate to a specific campaigns now. I don't trust those national campaigns.

Something else that bugs me is the zillions of emails from the various campaigns. I'll get a couple of dozen emails begging for money from Hershel Walker, Ron Johnson, John Kennedy, just to name a few. They're like stray cats after you've set out a snack for them. Always coming back, begging for more.

I even get begs from Patty Murray, our 30-year ineffective senator, and from the 1st District Congresscritter (can't remember her name). Adam Smith, my former Congresscritter, doesn't send me emails, he knows I'd never give him a dime.

Not to mention the "deadline" begs. "We're approaching our deadline, and we're not going to make our goal." is a typical message. The "deadline" is just a reporting period, there's no real consequence to this deadline. It's not like a SpaceX launch deadline, where going past the deadline means missing the desired orbit.; 10/9/22, 8:02 AM
Mr. Forward said...: “Can anyone explain the flash of light that appears before the first appearance of the orb?”

That’s the sun taking a picture of Althouse at dawn.; 10/9/22, 8:10 AM
Iman said...: “That seems to be common now: googling some celebrity you remember and being surprised at how recently or how long ago they passed away.”

What troubles me is when a thought of an older celebrity (e.g., wonder what they’re up to) comes seemingly out of the blue, haven’t thought of he or she for years and then said celebrity dies a few weeks later.

Bernard McGuirk was the latest for me.; 10/9/22, 8:30 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Thanks for the answers about the flash of light! I'll have to put some time into trying to understand those things.; 10/9/22, 8:42 AM
BUMBLE BEE said...: Look out! here comes MONTY PYTHON

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifLqzLEB3E0; 10/9/22, 8:54 AM
Lurker21 said...: Kim Taunts West By Launching Missile Over Japan.

I really thought she and Kanye had moved on.

John Lennon would have been 82 today.

I guess that means Paul and Ringo are also wicked old.; 10/9/22, 9:18 AM
tim in vermont said...: LOL The Grauniad:
https://twitter.com/MoonofA/status/1579094393793175552; 10/9/22, 10:09 AM
Achilles said...: Ann Althouse said...

"Since 1967, the second has been defined to be..."

Can anyone explain the flash of light that appears before the first appearance of the orb? The flash is larger than the sliver of orb that first appears, and it looks like the sunrise is reversing. I've been out there with other people who see it too, where we'll both be saying things like: it looks like the sun changed its mind or it's going in reverse.

Slightly over 1 minute explanation of the sunrise refraction of light entering the atmosphere in the morning.; 10/9/22, 10:32 AM
Saint Croix said...: Amazing to me that fucking white people think that "it's dangerous" for a black man to wear a shirt that says, "White Lives Matter."

Dangerous for you and your thoughtless racism!

Now they're just trying to paint a brother white

“white lives matter” – which the Anti-Defamation considers a hate slogan, used by the KKK, the Aryan Renaissance Society and other white supremacist groups.

It's literally the same fucking slogan, with the word "white" substituted for the word "black."

When challenged on the morality of saying that white lives matter, Kanye simply says, "They do!"

The fucktards on the left moved the Overton window when they said that saying "all lives matter" is hate speech.

So now when you say "white lives matter," it's super-duper hate speech, you're in the Klan now.

The fucking idiots have painted themselves into a moral corner where they are saying that the only lives that matter are black lives. White lives don't matter, brown lives don't matter, yellow lives don't matter, all lives don't matter. The only "acceptable" lives that matter are black lives.

And when a black man, and a beautiful artist, calls them on their horseshit, all they can say is that he is a white nationalist, or crazy, or blah blah blah. He is way more logical than you. You dumb Sneetch fuckers are trying to call him white! He's a marketing genius and, simultaneously, a moral crusader. Dude. Props. Awesome. I'm going to have to start listening to his music now.; 10/9/22, 11:09 AM
Saint Croix said...: There is also a sunrise in the recent Norwegian film, The Worst Person in the World. I thought the picture was alright.

Jack Benny made a movie called The Meanest Man in the World (1943). In his career, he couldn't pull off the transition from TV to film. But it's a funny movie.

Of course it had Rochester in it. "You couldn't get into my lodge. You'd be whiteballed."; 10/9/22, 11:17 AM
Saint Croix said...: Althouse covered Kanye's fashion show last week.

I either missed it or just ignored it.

It's interesting when "liberal" white people try to tell a black man that he's not allowed to say things about white people. Even good things!

Are you fuckers sure you are liberals? Who put you in charge of the plantation? "I don't believe in free speech or allowing black people to say things about white people." Why don't you run for office on that!

Richard Pryor famously put Gene Wilder in black face. "Looks good. Get it on top of your head there."

It's funny!

You know what Kanye West thought about his T-shirt?

It's funny!

(and yes, they are talking about him in India!); 10/9/22, 12:10 PM
SteveWe said...: That's it. The relatively warmer waters of Lake Michigan created an atmospheric lens above the lake. At at certain point of time, the atmospheric lens bent the light of the rising sun so that Althouse saw the flash. Then as the sun rose higher above the horizon, the lens was no longer a factor in what Althouse was seeing and the sunrise appeared to be dimmer than a moment before.; 10/9/22, 12:58 PM
Curious George said...: Uh, oh. The streak will be over in less than three hours.; 10/9/22, 9:12 PM