Great Eclipse of 2017

"Well, aren't you special." - a pissed off Rick Pitino

 

considering the strain of anti-intellectualism and lack of curiosity in this country (as exemplified by a shithead president who doesn't read), I'd say the answer is a lot of people DGAF.

 

May want to avoid your local evening news tonight with reporters stationed at the local hospital ERs...

 

But what if you could view it from a cornfield?

 

My kids are in place. My younger son & his 3-year-old daughter are already at the zoo in Nashville, where they're expecting a BIG crowd. Others are in Charleston, where it looks like rain.

We're getting about 80% totality here, and the college is having an eclipse viewing party at the science building. Should be fun.

 

Beautiful, clear day here (99 percent totality coming up soon).

Also, I sort of love and also roll my eyes at what these minor league teams are doing. The Salem-Keizer Volcanoes are close enough that I thought about going, but I decided not to.

Enjoy, wherever you are.

 

Pretty cool find....

 

I'm a little surprised by the absence of large groups claiming this celestial event marks the end of the world. Maybe I missed it, or maybe people got burned out on all the past predictions that never came to be, but this seems like a big deal, relatively speaking, and where are all the cultists?

 

They are on YouTube. My 8-year-old was doing YouTube searches for eclipse videos this morning and came out of the room pale as a ghost.

 

MLB standings on 8/21/32

Code:

                                     
Tm     W  L W-L%   GB  RS  RA pythW-L%
NYY   82 37 .689   -- 793 560     .654
PHA   74 48 .607  9.5 773 610     .607
CLE   70 51 .579 13.0 671 606     .546
WSH   67 53 .558 15.5 646 575     .553
DET   61 57 .517 20.5 625 606     .514
SLB   54 64 .458 27.5 593 670     .444
CHW   37 79 .319 43.5 489 682     .352
BOS   32 88 .267 50.5 439 720     .288

Code:

                                     
Tm     W  L W-L%   GB  RS  RA pythW-L%
CHC   66 51 .564   -- 547 494     .546
BRO   66 57 .537  3.0 620 593     .520
PIT   63 57 .525  4.5 539 578     .468
PHI   61 62 .496  8.0 716 683     .522
BSN   61 63 .492  8.5 511 545     .471
STL   59 61 .492  8.5 563 582     .485
NYG   58 62 .483  9.5 600 547     .542
CIN   52 73 .416 18.0 480 554     .435

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 8/21/2017.

 

Looks like you haven't missed much if you are a Chicago baseball fan.

 

Oak Ridge National Laboratory did something great here. They've got a half-dozen trailers in the parking lot that looks like carnival midway attractions, each with different science exhibits inside. In a time and region where people are, umm, ambivalent about hard science, it was refreshing to see and hopefully plants seeds for the future.

Tennessee Tech in general has a tailgate atmosphere, more so than for actual football games.