[Kzyxtalk] A thing going in front of another thing.

[Marco McClean]

An eclipse is a good time to point out that the stars and planets in the 
sky, as well as the one we live on the moist skin of, are not gods and 
goddesses or spirits of anything but /places/ made of naturally 
occurring materials in a big naturally occurring clock, so astrology is 
nonsense.

The coolest thing to me about the last solar eclipse (2012-05-20) was 
the projection on walls and on the ground of thousands of crescent suns, 
because of the pinhole cameras made of spaces between leaves in trees. 
And a breeze made them all wiggle and wink in and out like the shiny 
sequins on the back of an Alhambra water truck.

Here's Randall Munroe's latest webcomic page about solar-eclipse-o'clock 
Monday, including the line, "It's not like the concept is all that 
arcane or mathematical. It's a thing going in front of another thing."
https://xkcd.com/1877/

Speaking of which, I looked up /How many eclipses, solar or lunar, are 
there every year?/ and found this:
http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/how-many-solar-or-lunar-eclipses-in-one-calendar-year

And here are track maps of all 35 solar eclipses visible from the U.S. 
between 1901 and June of 2048, when I'll be 89 years old and probably 
still waiting patiently for whoever is the then-current managerial lump 
at KZYX to schedule my excellent local radio show there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_visible_from_the_United_States


--
Marco McClean

memo at mcn.org

http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com