Duke 61, Gonzaga 54. Dammit. December has NOT been a good sports month for me.

BEAT DUKE!!!

Thank you, that is all.

…home sweet home to me?

That’s me inside Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium this afternoon. Jay Johnson (of DrawingDead fame), my gracious host (along with his wife Ashley) for this visit to Knoxville, gave me a brief tour of UT’s campus (his law school alma mater) after my clerkship interview downtown, and when we walked past the stadium, we noticed that one gate was open, so we were able to walk inside and get a picture. Cool.

Interview went well, by the way. We’ll see. Hey, I could be an “Irish Trojan Vol”… ;)

Anyway, speaking of college football, an Andrew Sullivan reader handicaps the 2008 presidential race in college football terms. Barack Obama is Notre Dame; Hillary Clinton is USC. Heh. (Hat tip: Texasyank.)

P.S. Just to be clear: I will NEVER root for the Lady Vols women’s basketball team, at least not over UConn. Knoxville is a nice town, but Pat Summitt is still the devil-woman. Hehe.

P.P.S. Heh:

The seventh and final Harry Potter book will be called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. (Hat tip: Mark West.)

I suppose Harry Potter and the Death of Voldemort (or, alternatively, Harry Potter and the Death of Harry Potter) would have been giving too much away.

I wonder, though. The first book had different titles in the U.S. and Britain: Sorcerer’s Stone here, Philosopher’s Stone there. So do you think they’ll publish an alternate version of the seventh book, available only in the South: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollers? :)

But no harm done:

December 20 2006 - A woman going through security at Los Angeles International Airport put her month-old grandson into a plastic bin intended for carry-on items and slid it into an X-ray machine.

…A screener watching the machine’s monitor immediately noticed the outline of a baby and pulled the bin backward on the conveyor belt.

The infant was taken to Centinela Hospital, where doctors determined that he had not received a dangerous dose of radiation.

Officials, who declined to release the 56-year-old woman’s name, said she spoke Spanish and apparently did not understand English.

…Nico Melendez, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, which manages LAX screeners, said the agency doesn’t have enough workers to constantly stand at tables in front of the screeners to coach passengers on what should or should not be sent through X-ray machines.

…”There’s an obligation on the traveler to use some common sense,” said Larry Fetters, the TSA’s federal security director at LAX. “If they don’t understand, they should ask somebody. If they ask us, we are generally able to find someone who speaks that language and assist them.”

…”We’re trying to figure out what changes we can make, short of putting up signs saying, ‘Don’t put your baby through the X-ray machine,’ ” Melendez said. “We’re trying to determine how we can make this not happen again.”

[Comment: You can’t. The only real reason to stop “short of” posting those Signs is, they would Increase the incidence of Babyscanning pursuant to the No Peas Up The Nose principle. / But be Forward-leaning & Pro-active: focus on deterring people from checking their children through with the Non-carry-on baggage. :| ~the guestscreener :]

* * * * * * * * *
Radiation doses:

The baby that went through the airport luggage machine was exposed to less radiation than a passenger on a cross-country flight. Typical radiation exposures*:

Luggage screener: 1
Cross-country flight: 5
Chest X-ray: 10
Mammogram: 30

* Measured in millirems, which takes into account both the amount of exposure and the biological effect of the type of radiation in question.

Source: EPA

Scan the whole thing. :>

Penn State's coach turns 80 today. Somebody get that man some booze and a bunch of broads! :) Speaking of booze, here are some Tennessee whiskey barrels at the Nashville Airport. And speaking of
Tennessee, I hope they beat JoePa's boys. I picked the Vols.

The search for two climbers missing on Mount Hood, Oregon, is over, and is now a “recovery effort,” Sheriff Joe Wampler tells The Associated Press. Visit CNN for the latest.

I’m at Midway, waiting for my flight. Yawn… so sleepy.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures I took last night, while waiting at my spot along St. Mary’s Lake for the Space Shuttle and ISS to arrive:

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Heh. (Hat tip: Bruce McDonald.)

In addition to the post and the video, be sure to read the comments. Funny stuff.

Bowl season got off to a thrilling start Tuesday as TCU edged Northern Illinois 37-7 in the much-anticipated San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl. Yep, ’twas a real barn-burner out there in Whale’s Vagina country. [UPDATE, 3:26 AM: Bestill my heart, ESPN is now re-running the “instant classic” between the Frogs and the Dogs. So, if you missed it the first time, now’s your chance! I can barely contain my excitement.]

TCU’s win was predicted by all but 15 of the 118 contestants in the 2nd annual Irish Trojan bowl pick ‘em contest. As a result, there is now a 103-way tie for first place.

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Guess Brendan missed this one.

Just a law school blogging weather nerd…harumph.

Above is an image captured with my camcorder at 6:01:05 PM EST, using maximum (20x optical) zoom, showing the International Space Station and the nearby Space Shuttle, which had just undocked from the ISS 51 minutes earlier. I assume the larger blob is the ISS, the smaller one the Shuttle. Video to follow later.

Below is a 15-second exposure from my digital camera, taken between between 6:02:11 and 6:02:26, showing the Shuttle and ISS — indistinguishible from one another in this zoomed-out view — flying over the Basilica and the Golden Dome as seen from across St. Mary’s Lake on Notre Dame’s campus:

As you can see, the Dome is rather badly overexposed, but I kinda like it — I think it gives the photo a sort of mythic Notre Dame feel. :)

Here’s another still photo, this one much more zoomed in (approximately 7x rather than 1x) and thus showing two distinct lines, one for the ISS and one for the Shuttle:

The movement shown in the displayed close-up took place between 6:02:54 and maybe 6:02:57 or so. The obstructions are tree branches (specifically, branches of the tree at left in the photo of the Dome).

After the jump, another photo through tree branches of the Shuttle and ISS, visible as separate objects, fading away into invisibility as they reach the edge of the Earth’s shadow. [UPDATE: Also after the jump, a video!]

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The sky here in South Bend is crystal clear, so if that holds up (knock on wood), it should be perfect Shuttle-and-ISS-viewing weather tonight at 6pm!

Again, the Shuttle and the ISS will be visible from here between 5:59 PM and 6:04 PM — and it’ll be less than an hour after undocking, so they should be two separate dots in the sky, with a tiny space between them.

I’m really excited to see what the two spacecraft will look like flying side-by-side. I’ve never seen that before. I truly have no idea how distinct they’ll appear from this distance. Will the gap between them be visible? I don’t know, but I’m hoping for a photo where you can see two separate lines! :) The two objects are most likely to appear distinct when they’re closest (and thus nearest to the “top” of the sky), which is at 6:01:33 PM here in South Bend. At that time, you’ll want to be looking almost due southeast, about halfway between the horizon and straight up.

Seriously, though, don’t worry about those details… just go outside a couple minutes before 6:00 PM and look to the southern sky. At first, you won’t be sure what you’re looking at, and then, all of a sudden, you won’t be able to miss it/them. They’ll look like a distant airplane (or perhaps two distant airplanes, very close to one another), except moving in a strikingly straight line, at a strikingly steady speed, and never blinking. They’ll travel from right to left across the sky, so that within a couple of minutes, you’ll be looking at the eastern sky instead of the southern sky. Anyway, yeah, it/they are easy to spot, and it’s totally worth stepping outside for a few minutes to watch.

If you’re not in the South Bend area, but you’re in the eastern or central United States and you have a clear sky, you too can see the Shuttle and ISS tonight — but the details above don’t apply to you. Go to Heavens Above and enter your location to find out details.