As if you need any further evidence that conference realignment has gotten way out of hand, Andy Glockner, Mike Greiner and NU Hoops Fan made a brilliant observation on Twitter just now: if a presidential candidate were to win every state with a current or incoming member of the Big East Conference, they would get 291 electoral votes — enough to capture the presidency, based on one league alone.
Heh. Andy suggests we rename the Big East the #ElectoralConference.
P.S. And then there’s this.
You may recall that it was a particularly ridiculous Drudge homepage that led to the creation of the “PANIC!!!!!!” graphic that subsequently became my oft-praised Twitter avatar. Well, Drudge has struck again:
That’s Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a Democrat, who made headlines over the weekend by criticizing President Obama’s anti-Bain Capital ads. ABC says the Obama camp is in damage control mode, which led Drudge to proclaim — referring to the president by the first letter of his last name, then stretching it out for effect — “OOOOOOO NOOOOOO.”
Teehee. Oh, Drudge, you ridiculous, sensationalist partisan shill, you. I doooooon’t knoooooow hoooooow to quit yoooooou.
Anyway, yet again, I couldn’t resist coming up with some alternate versions:
Wow! The solar eclipse over Denver was awesome!
Above, a photo that Becky took of me holding 10-month-old Loyabelle in one arm and, in the other, raised above my head, a 13-year-old piece of welder’s glass that made it possible to show the Sun in otherwise normally-exposed pictures. It worked amazingly well. (See also here, here, here and here.)
Below, a shot of the eclipse as seen through a pair of eclipse glasses, followed by a close-up of the eclipse taken by my camcorder (with its makeshift solar filter system, constructed with masking tape and one-half of a pair of those glasses).
These photos were all taken from the west lawn of the Denver Museum of the Nature and Science, which was packed. It was a great place to watch the action, with lots of stuff for the girls to do (like rolling down the hill, chasing bubbles and wandering through the rose gardens), and we even ran into some friends there. But we very nearly didn’t end up there at all!
With the clock ticking toward the eclipse, and the sky looking increasingly overcast, I decided to abandon our museum plan in favor of a long drive south toward Colorado Springs and Pueblo, where the skies looked clearer on the high-resolution visible satellite with ~2 hours to go. So we got on I-225 South and started heading in that direction — but then, with a clearer view of Denver’s western horizon, we could see that there were sunlit skies beyond the clouds, moving toward us, and I made a snap decision that we should go back to the original plan and go to the museum after all. A good thing, too: it looks like the Springs and Pueblo ended up cloudy, while Denver got a great view! We had a cloudy interlude early in the eclipse, but viewing conditions were awesome for the best part of the show, around maximum eclipse.
More photos:
UPDATE: New blog logo!
P.S. After the jump, my Storify page on the eclipse, saving my tweets & retweets for posterity.
I wrote last night that the only solar eclipse I’ve ever seen was on May 10, 1994, when I caught a brief, unsafe, naked-eye glimpse of the partially eclipsed sun, perhaps 40% or 50% covered, looking out a bus window in Virginia during a school trip. But I belatedly realized that’s not right: I also saw, from the road in the desert of southeastern California, ~20% of the sun eclipsed on December 14, 2001, using a makeshift pinhole to project it from the window of Becky’s Camry onto a notepad as we drove from L.A. to Phoenix:
Hopefully we’ll get a somewhat more dramatic view this evening. Cross your fingers. After crystal-clear blue skies this morning, it’s now partly cloudy.
UPDATE: I found my welder’s glass! Since buying it way back in 1999 ahead of the sunrise eclipse that I couldn’t see due to clouds, I’ve been hauling it around the country for 13 years — and now that I finally need it, last night I couldn’t find it. But I just located it, in a box in the basement:
Tomorrow, America will experience its first annular eclipse since May 10, 1994. Weather permitting, I’ll get to see it as an 85% partial eclipse in Denver — the second solar eclipse I’ve ever witnessed, and the first since (again) May 10, 1994. It will also be the first solar eclipse I’m witnessed safely, with proper eye protection.
On May 10, 1994, I saw the partial phase of that day’s annular eclipse from inside a bus near Historic Jamestowne, VA, catching a glimpse for a split-second with my naked eye — which you should not do, as it’s dangerous. Thankfully, my eyes were not damaged. They could have been!
Why was I on a bus in Virginia, you ask? Well, it was day 2 of the annual Martin Kellogg Middle School seventh-grade class trip to Washington and Williamsburg. I was, uncharacteristically, not tuned in to astronomical events of the day; I don’t think I even knew about the eclipse, or else I had forgotten, until our bus’s lead chaperone, Mr. Spitzer, mentioned it. When he did so, and before he could utter the next sentence (reminding us NOT TO LOOK DIRECTLY AT IT), I instinctively turned my head to the left, looked out the window, glanced up, and saw it. Being an astronomy nerd with knowledge of such things, I knew better than this — but I couldn’t help myself. I immediately looked away, and then blurted out something like, “You’re right, I just saw it!”
This all happened in a split second, and gave Mr. Spitzer the perfect segue into his next sentence, telling everyone NOT TO DO WHAT LOY JUST DID. (In fairness to Mr. Spitzer, I think he actually may have said “now, I don’t want you to look at it, but…” before he even mentioned the eclipse — an admonition I promptly ignored — and then merely reiterated the point after I looked.)
Anyway, I discovered this evening that, down in the basement, in our box of photo albums, inside my Williamsburg Trip Scrapbook (a post-trip homework assignment in Mrs. Weber’s class), there is my account of that day! I had forgotten this even exists. We had to write a little something about each day of the trip, and include photos and whatnot; I went above and beyond, giving each day an extended, detailed write-up, and include a ton of photos, souvenirs, etc. I know you’re shocked. 🙂 Anyway, here’s the relevant part of the May 10 write-up, followed by a relevant photo and, er, illustration.
(Before I go on, a key point of clarification: the “tape recorder” in question is an audio recorder only. You’ll understand why that’s important when you read my write-up.)
Get your eclipse glasses, pinhole viewers, or Shade 14 welder’s glass out, and your “penumbras and emanations” jokes ready, because there’s a solar eclipse a-comin’ on Sunday evening!
The photo above (by Kevin Baird) shows roughly what the eclipse will look like along the central “line of annularity,” which stretches from parts of China and Japan, across the Pacific, to parts of California and Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, extreme southwestern Colorado, New Mexico, and northwest Texas:
(Graphics via eclipse-maps.com.)
Here in Denver, the eclipse, at its 7:30 PM peak, will look more like this, with the sun 86% eclipsed. (Photo by Peter Rosen, via Universe Today.)
If you don’t already have eclipse glasses, and you can’t find a local store that’s selling them at this late date, your best options, in order, are probably: 1) find a public eclipse-viewing event in your local area where they’ll be giving eclipse glasses away, or selling them for like $2 (here in Denver/Boulder, options include CU, DU, and the DMNS); 2) find a local store that sells welding supplies, and buy some “Shade 14” welder’s glass (it must be 14, not 12 or a lower number); or 3) make a pinhole viewer, and project the Sun’s image instead of looking at it directly.
(Whatever you do, DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN WITHOUT PROPER EYE PROTECTION!!!. At no point during an annular or partial solar eclipse is it ever safe to do this. You could go blind.)
If you do manage to secure eclipse glasses or welder’s glass, consider it an investment. A Transit of Venus–only the second one since 1882, and the last until 2117–is coming next month (June 5, to be exact), and of course the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse is something you should go ahead and put in your gCal, iCal or Outlook calendars right now. It’s absolutely not to be missed.
Today could be an historic day for freedom and equality in Becky’s and my adopted home state of Colorado, as a bill establishing civil unions for gays & lesbians is on the verge of passing into law.
Even as North Carolina goes down a reactionary road (fueled in large part by ignorance of the facts), the former “Hate State” of Colorado could become another beacon of hope for those of us who believe the arc of the moral universe does indeed bend toward justice.
I said “could.” Nothing is certain yet. The bill has already passed the Democratic-controlled Senate, then eked through two GOP-majority House committees late last week, each time thanks to a single Republican dissenter — Rep. B.J. Nikkel, R-Loveland (a former aide to right-wing congresswoman and Federal Marriage Amendment co-sponsor Marilyn Musgrave) in the Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Don Beezley, R-Bloomfield, in the Finance Committee — and it is expected to pass the Appropriations Committee this afternoon, thanks to the declared support of Rep. Cheri Gerou, R-Evergreen. What happens after that is less clear:
GOP leadership will decide whether to call it up [to the House floor] and hear the measure. The bill must be debated today because the official vote has to be taken on another day as the debate, and Wednesday is the last day of the session. …
House leadership — Speaker Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, but particularly House Majority Leader Amy Stephens, R-Monument — will decide when and if it will be heard. Both oppose civil unions. Only one GOP vote is needed to pass the measure. At least five Republicans are expected to vote with Democrats. If approved, the bill goes to Gov. John Hickenlooper, who has said he will sign it.
So the question is whether McNulty and Stephens allow a floor debate [UPDATE: and initial voice vote] today. If they do, the bill will ultimately become law; if they don’t, it will die, unless Hickenlooper calls a special session, as the Denver Post has urged him to do if necessary. (He has called such talk “premature,” but hasn’t ruled it out.)
[UPDATE/CLARIFICATION: Eli Stokols explains the procedural requirements:
If [the bill passes the Appropriations Committee], the measure would still need to be approved by the full House on an initial voice vote by Tuesday at midnight.
That’s because bill’s must pass second- and third-reading votes on separate days; so if the House doesn’t do an initial vote by Tuesday night, there wouldn’t be time to hold a final vote on Wednesday.
Knock on wood, but I don’t think McNulty and Stephens will prevent a vote. Perhaps they’ll try to extract some sort of concession in exchange for allowing it, but in the end, I think their vague threats to prevent a vote are mostly posturing. If the GOP had the stomach for this fight, they would have stalled the bill already. They could have done so by delaying the committee report out of Judiciary, or by refusing to schedule a Finance or Appropriations committee hearing, all of which were discussed and threatened and fretted over. But ultimately, the relevant GOP leaders have caved at all of those critical junctures over the last few days. And McNulty and Stephens haven’t even clearly stated an intent to stop the bill. I think the state GOP leadership has made a judgment that, with a majority of the House supporting the bill, and an even larger majority of the public supporting it, this isn’t a hill to die on.
Moreover, the worst thing they could do, politically, is to let the bill get to this point, get supporters’ hopes sky-high, and then kill it. The outrage then would be far worse than if they’d killed it earlier, like after the Judiciary vote. Now, public pressure might well force Hickenlooper’s hand into calling a special session, thus embarrassing the GOP leaders further, whereas that probably wouldn’t have been the case if they’d killed it last week. So they’ve missed their ideal window to kill this bill — which they surely realize as well. That leads me to believe they ultimately will not kill it.
But we’ll see. Supporters certainly aren’t resting easy yet. Above is a photo from a rally this morning on the State Capitol steps. More below. See these dangerous radicals, promoting the gay agenda? Don’t all you fellow heterosexuals feels like your marriages are threatened just looking at these pictures? EVERYBODY PANIC!!!
To proclaim our support for civil unions, Becky went out and bought a rainbow flag this afternoon, and put it up on our front-porch flagpole. It’s 2′ x 3′, not as big as our American flag or our USC flag, because that’s the biggest one they had. But it still makes the point:
Let’s do this, Colorado!!!
P.S. We had an interesting discussion on Facebook about this issue last week, including the whole civil unions vs. gay marriage / “perfect being the enemy of the good” problem. Mike Wiser was, as always, the voice of reason:
I think that’s a complicated point. On the one hand, progress is good, even if it’s only incremental. But there is part of me that worries that such an incremental progress might stall out well short of actual equality. Those of us who such measures will directly affect are a very small minority; our only progress from a legislative end will come from convincing the much larger majority. One of the most effective ways of convincing the larger majority has been the justified moral outrage of the abuses in the current system — hospital visitation rights, next of kin status for medical and parental responsibility purposes, etc. As these terrible things are removed, it becomes harder to motivate unaffected third parties to care about smaller but still daunting issues for some couples, like access to spousal social security payments or the ability to file taxes jointly or transfer property to a spouse without incurring substantial tax penalties and the like. So I simultaneously want the most awful things taken care of as soon as possible…and worry that taking care of just the most awful things first will mean that the more moderate problems may not be taken care of for years or even generations longer than they would be in an all or nothing approach. Someone is going to lose either way.
If I had to choose, I think I’d go with the civil unions for now. Actual political change tends to happen over the course of generations; it’s less common that individuals change their minds, and more common that they are replaced by a new generation of voters who see things differently.* The generation of our grandparents, as a whole, is extremely unaccepting of homosexuality. Our parents’ generation is better; our generation is better still; the generation below us is even further along. I eagerly await the day when most people realize that the arguments against same sex marriage are virtually verbatim the same arguments previously used against interracial marriage. I think I’ll probably live to see that, but I may well be in my 60s by the time it happens. If I do find the right man, I think I’d rather risk some years of economic penalties than risk not being allowed at his bedside if he gets sick and his family isn’t OK with me. The economic penalties are more concrete and certain, but less terrible if they do happen. But the game of “pick the way in which you’d prefer to be legally screwed” is hardly a fun one.
* The main way individuals happen to change their views on this one over the course of their own lifetime is from having friends or family members members who come out of the closet. This is one of the major reasons I want as many of the adult gays as possible to come out of the closet. It would also be helpful if more of the truly bisexual people came out of the closet, though I can understand why many choose not to due to the ridiculous social stigma attached.
UPDATE: Mitt Romney is coming to Colorado tomorrow, and at least one event, he will be taking questions from local media (which he didn’t do ahead of his caucus defeat in February). Do you think he wants to answer a bunch of questions from local reporters about how the state GOP leadership torpedoed a bill the night before that has majority support in both houses of the state legislature, and 75% public support in this critical swing state?
Despite Mitt’s professed opposition to civil unions, I’m thinking Team Romney is silently rooting for McNulty and Stephens to let this bill come to a vote tonight. (Or maybe not so silently? Who knows?)
In the wake of this weekend’s news that Utah State and San Jose State are probably leaving the WAC for the Mountain West, and Texas-San Antonio and Louisiana Tech are probably leaving for Conference USA, I have obtained exclusive footage of the conversation last night at WAC headquarters in Greenwood Village, Colorado:
In all seriousness, it’s really unclear how the WAC can go forward now. For all my jokes about the mythical “eighth football member,” it appears the WAC is now down to just three football members: Idaho, New Mexico State and Texas State. There don’t seem to be enough viable FBS football options in the western half of the country to make it possible to build from that “base” of 3 back to a respectable size, so it now appears inevitable — barring some eleventh-hour moves that keeps the above-mentioned USU/SJSU/UTSA/LTU quartet from fleeing — that the WAC is well and truly dead, at long last, as a football conference. If so, it seems plausible that NSMU and TSU could end up in the Sun Belt, while Idaho may be the first realignment victim forced to drop FBS football because it couldn’t find a league. The FCS Big Sky, the Vandals’ former home, may also be their future home.
If those three schools depart, that would leave the once-proud WAC with four schools, none of whom are actually members yet as of today: Denver, Seattle, UT-Arlington, and Boise State in everything but football. Could that possibly be the base for a viable basketball/Olympic sports league? Add, say, Utah Valley and Cal State-Bakersfield, and you’ve got…a really crappy conference, but one that’s still eligible for an auto bid to the NCAA Tournament, I think.
But as I see it, the WAC only stays together, even in that shell of a form, if the four remaining schools have absolutely no other viable options. Suppose the WCC rejects Denver and Seattle (again), the Big Sky rejects Boise’s Olympic sports (the Big West already has), UT-Arlington can’t find a home, the Big Sky and Sun Belt aren’t interested in non-football-playing WAC castaways, the Summit League closes its doors or is otherwise deemed a non-viable optios, etc. If those things all happen — and they very well might — the #ZombieWAC is probably going to stay alive, one way or another, no matter how awful it is. The alternative, that case, would be for Denver, Seattle, etc., to break away and form a new league… in which case they might as well just stay in the WAC.
But if the WCC takes DU and Seattle, and/or if Boise State finds a different home for its Olympic sports (or leaves the Big East and rejoins the Mountain West in all sports, in light of the death of AQ status)? BOOM. Game over.
Legendary Tennessee Lady Vols coach Pat Summitt is stepping down after 38 seasons, an NCAA-record 1,098 career victories, and an amazing 8 national titles. She will become a coach emeritus with the UT program, as Lady Vols associate head coach Holly Warlick takes over as the team’s new head coach.
Summitt was diagnosed eight months ago with early onset dementia, an apparent precursor to Alzheimer’s. She continued to coach Tennessee all season, albeit with Warlick playing an increased role. Although the Lady Vols lost to eventual national champion Baylor in the regional finals, Summitt accounted for the emotional highlight of the Final Four in Denver when she was among the coaches honored at halftime of the second semifinal. When her name was announced, four fan bases of other national programs — UConn, Notre Dame, Stanford and Baylor — gave her an enormous standing ovation. (I was there, and have audio that I’ll try post later. Below, a photo of Summitt waving and pointing as she and the other coaches walked off the court.)
Growing up in Connecticut as a UConn fanatic, I hated Pat Summitt as a kid, even jokingly calling her the “Devil-woman.” But as I grew older and matured, I started viewing her in much the same way as most USC fans viewed UCLA’s John Wooden: someone so legendary and so thoroughly admirable that you absolutely had to respect her, no matter your allegiances. Then, of course, I moved to Knoxville for a year, attended some Lady Vols games, and found myself — horror of horrors — starting to kind of like her. Now, in the wake of her diagnosis and now retirement, I’m simply sad for her, and for the game that will be poorer without her continuing as a head coach for another 38 years — as you got the sense she would have, if her health had allowed it.
Anyway, there isn’t much else to say except to thank Pat Summitt for everything she’s done for the game, and wish her well. Thanks, Pat.
UPDATE: Here’s the audio clip. Summitt’s face and name appear on the jumbotron around the 0:37 mark, and then she starts walking out onto the court.
My soon-to-be sister-in-law, Deanah Kim, is competing to be Safeway’s Culinary Kitchen Chef in an online contest. Her entry includes a recipe for “Seared Scallops over Celery Root ‘Farroto’ with Green Beans and Toasted Almonds.” Sounds yummy, even if I’m doubly allergic to it (mollusks and tree nuts!).
Anyway, to advance, Deanah needs your vote! And not just one vote — you can vote early and often, ACORN-style! So I prepared a little campaign graphic:
Between now and April 20, when the polls close, you can vote for Deanah up to 100 times. And you don’t even need to pretend you’re Eric Holder!
Just log into your Facebook account, “like” Safeway, and then vote for Deanah! (You don’t actually have to “Share” your vote as a status update every single time you vote. Just click cancel when the “Share” window comes up. Your vote will still count.)
