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What’s on your mind?

SandboxGeneral said:
Thank you.

I was trying to recall her story from memory when I heard it as a child and without looking it up today.

I should like to read a book about her life.
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Helen Keller positively rocked.

Among many, many other things, she was the first blind/deaf person to obtain a university degree (at a time - 1904 - when women weren't admitted to many universities and long before they had the right to vote in the US).
 
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Have read three times now about the upcoming transit of planet Mercury between the Sun and planet Earth on the 11th-12th November, and still don't quite get the weirdness of the repetition pattern. I know the little planet has a kind of oblong orbit and so that has to figure into it, but it's just strange that the pattern manages to be about 13-14 times a century, ends up occurring only in May or November yet can be three years apart or 13 or 33... and that those don't have to fall in any particular sequence either.

Well as my other sober friends say, I'm not gonna pick up a drink over it but it does make me think I must have skipped part of calculus 201 back in my school "daze". It certainly confirms my suspicion that the supposedly parallel abilities in the brains of mathematicians and musicians might be a little more tenuous than is usually advertised.

Anyway if y'all don't know how to observe a transit of the sun by Mercury, it's safest to seek one out on the internet. Be safe... like don't be looking at the sun through an unfiltered telescope.

Good tips: https://www.space.com/mercury-transit-2019-viewing-guide.html
 
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LizKat said:
Have read three times now about the upcoming transit of planet Mercury between the Sun and planet Earth on the 11th-12th November, and still don't quite get the weirdness of the repetition pattern. I know the little planet has a kind of oblong orbit and so that has to figure into it, but it's just strange that the pattern manages to be about 13-14 times a century, ends up occurring only in May or November yet can be three years apart or 13 or 33... and that those don't have to fall in any particular sequence either.

Well as my other sober friends say, I'm not gonna pick up a drink over it but it does make me think I must have skipped part of calculus 201 back in my school "daze". It certainly confirms my suspicion that the supposedly parallel abilities in the brains of mathematicians and musicians might be a little more tenuous than is usually advertised.

Anyway if y'all don't know how to observe a transit of the sun by Mercury, it's safest to seek one out on the internet. Be safe... like don't be looking at the sun through an unfiltered telescope.

Good tips: https://www.space.com/mercury-transit-2019-viewing-guide.html
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I love this sort of stuff.

SandboxGeneral said:
Can I just view it by looking straight up at it and using my hand as a sort of visor?
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Fortunately, it is usually too overcast, (grey, charcoal grey, dark, dreary) for that dilemma to arise in my life.

As a child, I dreamed (among other things) of a career in astronomy, only to come to the reluctant realisation, 1) that - in those days - Daughters of Eve weren't enthusiastically encouraged to pursue such esoteric and exciting careers, and 2) the almost permanent cloud cover in my corner of north west Europe means that we don't get to see the sky all that often, in the first place.
 
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Scepticalscribe said:
As a child, I dreamed (among other things) of a career in astronomy, only to come to the reluctant realisation, 1) that - in those days - Daughters of Eve weren't enthusiastically encouraged to pursue such esoteric and exciting careers...
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Nor were farm boys.

We had a set of 1969 World Book encyclopedias with an accompanying set of “Life In the...” [pond, ocean, stream, forest etc]. It was a slight disappointment we didn’t hold off for the 1970 or 1971 edition for the moon landing.

I wrote NASA for three consecutive years. They were so kind to return a manilla envelope generously stuffed with material on Apollo and the solar system...even colored photos of the planets. It was surely from their visitor’s center but how awesome it was to receive....in the mail too! I felt like Nathan R when he saw his name in the phone book.
 
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Gutwrench said:
Nor were farm boys.

We had a set of 1969 World Book encyclopedias with an accompanying set of “Life In the...” [pond, ocean, stream, forest etc]. It was a slight disappointment we didn’t hold off for the 1970 or 1971 edition for the moon landing.

I wrote NASA for three consecutive years. They were so kind to return a manilla envelope generously stuffed filled with material on Apollo and the solar system...even colored photos of the planets. It were surely from their visitor’s center but how awesome it was to receive....in the mail too! I felt like Nathan R when he saw his name in the phone book.
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Somehow, - and my parents were exceptionally encouraging of - and supportive of - my interest in such matters, - books about the planets, the Moon, the solar system mysteriously appeared in the house - (as was the case with discouraging farm boys from cultivating an interest in such amazing things, it was wider societal attitudes and values that proved a bit more resistant to change), - and, now that you mention it - wonderful prints with coloured photos of the planets - which I gazed at, awestruck - also made their way to my house, but not due to my epistolary efforts.

Bless them.
 
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SandboxGeneral said:
Can I just view it by looking straight up at it and using my hand as a sort of visor?
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Hah... yeah, no, unless tired of looking at everything else forever too.

That post cracked me up. Flashed back to when taking one of those logic tests where you have to sketch out the code for getting a robot to walk from the office where you're sitting to the curb outside to hail a taxi. Oops... forgot to code wait for elevator door to open, etc. ;)
 
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LizKat said:
Hah... yeah, no, unless tired of looking at everything else forever too.

That post cracked me up. Flashed back to when taking one of those logic tests where you have to sketch out the code for getting a robot to walk from the office where you're sitting to the curb outside to hail a taxi. Oops... forgot to code wait for elevator door to open, etc. ;)
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Sooooo... I shouldn't do it like this?

Screenshot_2019-11-10 Yes, Donald Trump really did look into the sky during the solar eclipse.png
 
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Gutwrench said:
@SandboxGeneral - Happy Birthday!
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May I extend my best wishes as well, on your birthday @SandboxGeneral.

(And where - I get lost under this new system - does one find lists of birthdays? I know I have tripped over them in the past).

LizKat said:
What if ours is the rogue? One could more than suspect this to be the case, all things we currently understand about this solar system taken into consideration.
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This perspective makes complete sense.

Gutwrench said:
We‘d have a second moon? Of course no one would exist to see it. 😞
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We might be the second moon.

As to what is on my mind, I am just back from a short church service commemorating those who had died in the parish over the past year (November to November - month of the dead, all souls' day stuff), where a few prayers were said, songs sung, and good wishes and sympathies extended.

Candles were lit as each name (of each deceased person - in order of the date of death, not alphabetically, as I realised while listening) was read out in the church, and, outside, afterwards, under a dark, and threatening and lowering sky, we were invited to plant both a small cross, (each cross bore the name of the deceased person whom you were remembering, thus, the crosses were individual) and plant a decent sized bulb in a large flower bed.

They had written to us a few weeks ago - a lovely gesture I thought - inviting family members of those who had died to attend this service in their memory. Very tastefully done.

My mother would have loved it; gardening - she used to refer to gardening as "food for the soul" - and plants appealed to her a lot more - actually, she adored gardening - than sanctimonious stuff.
 
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Apple fanboy said:
It was this one you were in? ;)
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Nope. Not royalty here. Granted the US Marines were formed based on your Royal Marines, but we made ourselves to be unique in our own way.
chown33 said:
At least you got some nice epaulets out of the experience. I bet those look snappy paired with your black and white plumage.
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18th century naval officers and some Army officers wore those, but US Marines did not. Some Merchant Marines, however did.
 
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