Wheat-dogg’s world
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I like pretty eclipse pictures, but honestly the best way to observe an eclipse is to witness it personally. The surroundings get quieter, the sky turns dark as night, the stars come out, the air gets cooler — no wonder the sight awed and frightened our distant ancestors.

Without the additional sensory inputs, just looking at yet another solar eclipse picture is, well, ho-hum.

So, to add a twist to yesterday’s eclipse post, here are two images of the moon’s shadow taken by Eumetsat, the European weather satellite agency. Try to imagine being within the coolness of moon’s umbra.
This first one, of the Sahara Desert, is by way of the Beeb. The white national borders are added by the Eumetsat image team.

This one shows the shadow some hours later over Turkey:

Both these images are © 2006 Eumetsat.

The biweekly anthology of science bloggers’ best recent work is at The Island of Doubt. Topics range from astronomy to zoology, from the strictly scientific to the strictly political. It’s well worth a look.

Who says scientists can’t write?

On the eve of a solar eclipse, it seemed a good time to blog about the moon.

First of all, the eclipse, which begins early this morning US eastern time, will not be visible in US at all. The path of totality crosses over northern Africa, the Mediterranean and central Asia.

So, we will just have to settle for pretty pictures.

Meanwhile, over at Anthonares, another science blog, Anthony Kendall offers some details about the sun’s silvery partner in this little moondance. In particular, Anthony explains what we have learned from bouncing laser beams the corner-cube reflectors left on the moon’s surface 30 years ago by the Apollo astronauts.

From the laser-ranging data, we know that the mutual gravitational pull and tidal effects between Earth and Moon are both slowing down Earth’s diurnal rotation and increasing the distance between Earth and Moon. Billions of years ago, the earth rotated much faster (a day was just 6 hours long) and the moon was much closer. (Scientists are pretty sure the moon was once part of the mass that later formed the earth.)
The situation 600 million years ago was closer to what we experience now. A day on the earth was about 22 hours long, and the moon was approaching its current average orbital radius of about 384,000 km (240,000 mi).

Back in the days of Spain’s colonization of the New World, the king’s viceroys would royal decrees with the phrase, “Obedezco, pero no cumplo” — I obey, but I do not carry out. Pres. George W. Bush has the same attitude when it comes to congressional attempts to limit his power.

When Bush signed the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act this month, he added an addendum to the law, which in effect said he would not comply with some requirements of the law if he felt it necessary. In other words, he was writing his own loophole into the law.

While presidents have frequently added addenda to laws to specify how they interpret such laws, Bush has apparently taken the practice to new heights (or lows, as the case may be). Experts say Bush has expanded the idea of executive power in a way not seen since Richard M. NIxon.
From the Boston Globe:

Members of both parties have pointed out that the Constitution gives the legislative branch the power to write the laws and the executive branch the duty to ”faithfully execute” them.

Bush is bending the “faithfully” part just a little too much. The addendum was added quietly after the public signing, after the gallery cleared. So much for an open democracy.

I’ve spent the last several weeks pondering why so many laymen have such a difficult time accepting scientific premises, conclusions and theories. The doubt is not limited to the theory of evolution, which has been in the national news recently, but extends to other scientific controversies, like HIV/AIDS and the Big Bang.

The problem comes down to a person’s ability to accept and deal with ambiguity. [Update: A Dutch social scientist has drawn similar conclusions, but in a different context. I feel so smart now. See below for details.]
Science, by definition, depends on measurement and observation. Both are susceptible to ambiguity. One of the first labs any science student performs is a basic measurement test. An entire class, for example, finds the mass, volume and density of a metal cube. If everyone measures the same cube, different students will nevertheless have slightly different results. If the class uses a set of presumably identical cubes, there will also be different results, but for additional reasons. Regardless, the exercise demonstrates that measurements (and cube production) cannot be exactly the same every time for every scientist. Instructors then generally discuss the difference between precision and accuracy in measurement.

We have a fundraiser at school: men’s NCAA brackets, $1 a sheet. As of today, my ranking is …. dead last. I have been assured that no one this year can do worse than I will, so my standing is secure.

I will get my $1 back as consolation.

Through the first round, I was holding my own, but my second round choices (including I am sorry to say both UK and IU) failed to meet my expectations. I am now watching Duke, one of my successful second-round picks, lose to LSU.

So, yup, my fate is sealed. Dead last. Oh, well, there’s always next year …

South Dakota has made abortion illegal, but it has no legal jurisdiction over the Oglala Sioux Pine Ridge reservation. So, the president of the tribal council there, Cecilia Fire Thunder, says she will build a Planned Parenthood clinic on the reservation.

From Indianz.com:

A former nurse and healthcare giver, she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.

“To me, it is now a question of sovereignty,” she said to me last week. “I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.”

The tribe is not swimming in money, so supporters of Fire Thunder’s project are asked to contribute funds. Contact details are here.

George W. Bush & Co., the United Nations, and the world’s nuclear powers all have their underwear in knots about Iran’s nuclear enrichment plans. It’s a serious problem, enough that BushCo is implying it will take military action against Iran if Iran does not immediately cease and desist.

For the physics-challenged, let’s set aside political sabre-rattling for a moment and gloss on the term “uranium enrichment,” to get an idea what all this brouhaha is about.

First, some elementary (ha, ha) details about uranium, number 92 on the periodic table of the elements.

The 92 refers to the number of protons in the uranium nucleus; that is its atomic number. Protons have positive electrical charge, so without some “glue” to keep them confined in the nucleus, they would just fly apart. (Y’know, “opposites attract, and likes repel.”)

Joining the protons in the nucleus are a whole lot of neutrons, which help exert an opposing, attractive force, whimsically called the “strong nuclear force.” The strong force keeps all atomic nuclei (and in fact protons and neutrons individually) in one piece.

But the strong force, like Superman, has a weakness. The strong force only works within a range of about 10^-15 meters, which is not coincidentally the approximate size of the typical atomic nucleus.

Uranium’s nucleus, with 92 protons and anywhere from 142 to 146 neutrons churning around in that tiny volume, is just a little too big for the strong force to hold things together. The electrical repulsion of the protons overwhelms the strong force, and the uranium nucleus breaks apart, or decays.

One of the sites in my blogroll, morons.org, had this news item, which sound eerily like the drama teacher crisis in Fulton, Mo. This time, the controversy involves the opera Faust, primary school students and a Christian music teacher.

I’ll start with the end first. The teacher, Tresa Waggoner, resigned her job with the Bennett, Colo., schools, after being put on administrative leave. Sound familiar? Not only that, the mayor of the tiny town also resigned, saying the Waggoner episode was the last straw in a series of backbiting incidents there.

Wow.

Now here’s the background. Waggoner, 33, is a former opera singer, a gospel singer with two albums and a national gospel award under her belt, and a church music director. Her pastor calls her a “woman of God.” Some members of the Bennett community have called her a lesbian and a devil worshipper.

In January, Waggoner had arranged for a visit by Opera Colorado to perform The Island of Tulipatan at Bennett Elementary School at the end of the month. To prepare her students, she pulled an opera appreciation videotape off the music room shelves and decided to show them a portion describing the different singing parts and explaining “trouser roles” in opera.

The children’s program, dating from the ’70s, features Dame Joan Sutherland and sock puppets, of all things, discussing the 1859 opera Faust, by Charles Gounod. Faust, of course, is the legendary figure who, on the brink of suicide, decides to sell his soul to the devil to buy his services.

Giving in to right wing complaints, the Federal Communications Commission walloped CBS with a record $3.6 million fine earlier this week, charging 111 affiliate stations with “graphically depicting teenage boys and girls participating in a sexual orgy” in a episode of the crime drama Without a Trace.

While the show is normally broadcast after 10 pm (adult viewing time) on the coasts, the affiliates fined were all in the Central and Mountain time zones, and had perhaps unwisely aired the offending episode (206: “Our Sons and Daughters”) earlier in the evening on Dec. 31, 2004. Thus, children might have witnessed murky scenes of scantily clad actors drinking, smoking, kissing and perhaps indulging in other things normally left to daytime soap operas. (Hmm, sounds like “Grease.”)

CBS protested the action, but to no avail. The FCC is on a “public decency” rampage, fed by conservative watchdogs, and will have no naughty stuff on the airwaves. The commission also upheld its earlier $550K fine for Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during the CBS broadcast of the 2004 Superbowl, which singlehandedly emotionally scarred millions of young (and bored) football fans for life.

The Without a Trace scenes in question last barely a minute and a half, and are part of a flashback during a character’s questioning by the fictional FBI missing persons team. The actors are all wearing underwear, and in any event, no “naughty bits” are visible. In other words, it’s not the Playboy channel or Spice Network.