“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas


Monday, August 21, 2017

Eclipse-apalooza dud


So count me among the underwhelmed of those who observed the eclipse. At 93% coverage, I expected to perceive a fairly dramatic darkening and maybe a few nocturnal critters roaming around, and although it did get noticeably cooler during the moon's transit, we estimated only about 10%-15% less light outside.
Maybe that's because our pupils had dilated slightly and our brains were compensating, but I think it would have to get far darker in the first place, to dilate human pupils significantly.
On the positive side, it was cool to see the sun's crescent flip sides as the moon passed in front of it. You really got the feeling of lunar movement and that was very cool to experience.
All I can say is I hope it was life-affirming for those who drove into the path of totality because for 93% I regretted postponing lunch for an hour.

2 comments:

David said...

98% at my house. Interesting I suppose but anticlimactic. I expected it to be much darker. If you were uninformed or non-observant, you wouldn't know anything was going on. Or maybe your neighbors would tip you off by gazing at the sky with cardboard glasses.

Ed said...

Yeah, like 200 of us spent 90 minutes on the top floor of our parking deck and when it was over we were looking around at each other like, "That's it"?

I'll probably drive to catch the next one in the path of totality, otherwise I could have been getting some work done.