Heard on the radio yesterday:
SYDNEY JORDAN: There are estimates that Americans consume, on average, one credit card worth of plastic every week.
Didn’t realize the amount of micro-plastics consumed was that high.
As I continue planning for the total Solar eclipse next month, I reserved a campsite at Buchanan dam near the centerline of the zone of totality. Here the total eclipse will last for about 4 and half minutes compared to Austin where it will be under 2 minutes. It will be an hour of driving from Austin but will be totally worth it.
It is the Spring equinox today - first day of Spring. Did my bit of Spring cleaning and shaved off my Winter beard. That should make the missus happy.
Finished reading: An Abundance of Katherines by John Green 📚 ★★★
Seems like all John Green books are alike. My daughter was surprised that I read John Green because it is all teen fiction. I don’t need to read more than 2 books I have read already. That said I really liked his non-fiction “Anthropocene reviewed”
Last night, started watching “Shogun”. Haven’t read the book so, didn’t know anything about it. Daughter left the room in about 15 minutes. After an hour-long evening bike ride, at 9:30 pm it was hard work for me to read the subtitles to figure out what was going on. So, turned it off at ~30 minutes. I’ll have to give it another try when I am more awake.
On my walk yesterday evening, heard a lot of spring peepers at the pond. That means Spring is almost here. There wasn’t much of a Winter this year and the last year and the year before that. Sad!
Heard on the news this morning that trump was calling facebook, the enemy of the people. Maybe, it is time to go back to facebook after all these years.
Did another community outreach program last night about the solar eclipse. I think I did the wear-eclipse-glasses-don’t-look-at-the-sun bit a little too much. At the end, one lady asked if it was safe to look at the Sun on TV while watching an eclipse broadcast. Maybe, she was annoyed with us for stressing eye safety so much and being sarcastic.
Well…. make sure you always keep the eclipse glasses on while looking at the eclipse (except during totality). As there are no pain receptors in the retina, you can burn your retina without knowing about the damage.
East Bay Bike Path in Providence, RI
I have been thinking about riding on this bike path in Providence for a while. Finally an opportunity presented itself. I had a free afternoon after dropping off my son at Providence airport. Took my bike along for the drop off and then went to the bike path which was only about 10 minute drive from the airport. It was partly cloudy and warmer with 45F. It is flat trail but, the crazy crosswinds made it feel colder and harder to ride all afternoon. Still, it was a fun ride and I’ll have to go back there again in the Spring or Fall. I can imagine it will get busy during Summer months. The bike path seemed to end at Independence park in Bristol. Should look up in maps if there is another section of it.
Link to Strava.
Kids only have this weekend overlapping between their Spring breaks. They want to do something fun together. So, they are going to spend it in NYC while leaving the parents at home.
Yesterday, we had a public event to talk about the upcoming solar eclipse. A local amateur astronomer friend and I made an hour-long presentation describing the celestial mechanics that make an eclipse happen and also the practical aspects of observing and photographing an eclipse such as use of filters for protection. After the event, a retired eye-doctor from the Navy told us about his experience from 1970s. He was stationed in Florida and a group of marines from Georgia were sent to him for treatment. It seemed that they viewed the solar eclipse at that time without any protection and damaged their eyesight. According to him, these marines were about to be shipped out to Vietnam and they did this intentionally to get out of that tour of duty.
We have one more event scheduled next Monday. Let’s see what stories I get to hear there.
Either the Christian nationalists are too stupid and trump is using them to grab power or they are super smart and using trump to push their regressive policies onto American people. Either way, a relationship that involves using each other to get what they want is not going to end well.
These photos were taken about 24 hours apart. From the movement of the Sunspots we can appreciate the Sun’s rotation. This is the first time for me to observe this and the Sun rotates much slower than I expected.
Sun on Feb 25, 2024. The huge sunspot group AR3590 is as wide as 10 earths. It can be seen even with eclipse glasses. Check it out if you have them. This kind of solar storm is capable of knocking out telecommunication satellites, power grids and internet. There was some speculation that last week’s cellphone outage was because of this - turned out not to be the case.
Alrighty! Had enough of this week. Time to hang up the boots and step into the weekend. You all have a good one!
