As I mentioned before, I’m planning to move my blog to either Blogspot or Typepad (mapping the subdomain blog.brendanloy.com to the Blogspot/Typepad servers) so that I can drastically reduce the amount of traffic to my WestHost account and thus downgrade from a $260/month dedicated server to a $15/month shared server. I’m hoping to get this done by Wednesday, and I’m in the process of setting it up now.

Because this plan involves permanently severing the blog’s archives into “old blog” and “new blog,” I’m thinking of naming the new blog something other than “The Irish Trojan’s Blog.” It sort of makes sense to do this anyway, because although I’ll always be an Irish Trojan, that appellation is a less significant part of my identity now that I’m no longer a student at either ‘SC or ND. Anyway, my current tentative choice for a new name is “Ably Nerd On,” which is an anagram of “Brendan Loy” first noted here by Jay Johnson, courtesy of the Internet Anagram Server. I think it’s a pretty good name for the blog, as it’s a rather good description of what I do here in cyberspace — or at least, it’s a good description if you’re willing to treat “nerd” as a verb meaning “to be nerdy.” :) However, Becky hates it. So I’m wondering what others think. To wit, a poll.

Please note, this is a non-binding poll. I’m the dictator of my own blog, and as such, I may choose the name even if everyone hates it. :) However, I would like to know what people think. I’m also curious if y’all have any alternative suggestions for a new name. Feel free to leave those in comments.

UPDATE: Okay, so, everybody hates it. Inspired in part by the overwhelming negative poll results, I’m abandoning the idea. (Hey, even a dictator has to avoid being so unpopular that the people revolt!)

I’m thinking I may just call the new blog “Irish Trojan in Tennessee,” thus maintaining the earlier “branding” while still indicating that something has changed. But I continue to be open for suggestions.

P.S. While “Ably Nerd On” is an anagram for Brendan Loy, the anagrams for my full name — Brendan Loomer Loy — include “Blarneyed Lo Moron.” Heh! Maybe I should use that instead! ;) Or perhaps “Ambled Ornery Loon”… or “Blander More Loony”…

Last week, I blogged about the total eclipse of the sun that will sweep across America in ten years. Well, it may be a lot less dramatic and a lot more common, but in just over 24 hours, we’ll be treated to a total eclipse of the moon!

The partial eclipse begins Tuesday morning at 4:51 AM Eastern time (that’s 1:51 Pacific), and totality starts at 5:52 EDT (2:52 PDT). West of the Rockies, the entire eclipse is visible. In the rest of the country, the moon sets at some point during the eclipse — the further east you are, the less of the eclipse you get to see. But everybody in the U.S. gets to see at least part of it. Here’s a map.

Here in Knoxville, we get to see most of the “good part,” when the moon is completely inside the Earth’s umbra, though the sky will be getting lighter toward the end. Totality, as I said, begins at 5:52 AM EDT, and mid-totality is at 6:37. Sunrise is at 7:04, and the moon sets at 7:09. (The closeness in time of sunrise and moonset is no coincidence. In order for an eclipse to occur, the Sun and Moon must be directly opposite each other from the Earth’s perspective, and the timing of their rendezvous with their respective horizons shows that that’s the case.)

The Smoky Mountain Astronomical Society is having an eclipse party at Blount County Library starting at 4:00 AM (seven minutes after the beginning of the subtle penumbral phase, and 51 minutes before first contact with the umbra). I’m planning to go — and as an added bonus, I’m hoping to see my first Iridum flare at 6:11 AM, directly in between the Big Dipper’s “pointer stars” and Polaris. After the jump, a map of where the flare should appear in the northern sky:

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Becky and I recently unpacked several of our boxes of books from South Bend — yeah, the unpacking process has taken a while :) — and filled up our bookshelf. I’m particularly proud of the “nerd shelf”:

Speaking of which, I recently re-read Half-Blood Prince, which I hadn’t read since the day it came out. I had forgotten a lot of its plot, so several things from Deathly Hallows suddenly make a lot more sense now. :) But I’m more perplexed than ever about one thing. So I have a question — but it’s after the jump, because it reveals a major Deathly Hallows spoiler. (I hear there are still at least 3 or 4 people out there who haven’t read it yet.) So… Warning: spoilers after the jump, and in comments.

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Rumors of my abduction by Unitarian Universalists notwithstanding :), I’m safe and sound in Knoxville after two days of local-area-touring, bluegrass-music-listening, Katrina-presentation-giving, Smoky-Mountain-admiring, Gatlinburg-window-shopping-and-redneck-watching fun with Becky and Adrienne. Here are a couple of pictures from yesterday:

Adrienne heads back to L.A. tomorrow, after which I’ll have a couple of days to work on some logistical matters — including the blog’s big move from a dedicated server to Blogspot — before we head to Buffalo for the baby shower. And then on Tuesday, my job starts! I can’t believe the summer’s already just about over! (On the bright side, college football is almost here. Woohoo!)

We're with Adrienne (who is visiting from L.A. this weekend) at the Bluegrass in the Smokies festival in Sevierville. Fun!

We’re getting into the climatological heart of the Atlantic hurricane season, when you’d expect the tropics to be teeming with activity if, as virtually everyone has predicted, this is going to end up being an above-average year for hurricanes. Tropical activity historically increases throughout late August and early September, peaking on September 10:

At the moment, however, it’s eerily quiet. Dean was the third-strongest landfalling Atlantic-basin hurricane in recorded history, but now it’s like the calm after the storm. The last six consecutive Tropical Weather Outlooks have said the exact same thing:

FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC…CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO…

TROPICAL CYCLONE FORMATION IS NOT EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS.

It’s still not a “slow season” yet, but if this keeps up for the next couple weeks, it will be.

P.S. Alan Sullivan “continue[s] to expect a subnormal season.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Jeff Masters offers a wrap-up of Dean’s aftermath.

Breaking news from Cuba: Generalissimo Francisco Franco Fidel Castro is still alive. Or so says the Cuban government, but rumors are rampant in Miami that he’s knock, knock, knockin’ on Hell’s door.

UPDATE: PerezHilton.com, that renowned source of international news and geopolitical analysis, says Castro is dead. More here. (Hat tip: A&A.)

Pajamas Media has a roundup of links, which will doubtless grow as more information is known. (However, one of their links, supposedly to a Miami Herald story about the Castro death rumors, instead currently points to a Space.com article titled, “Huge Hole Found in the Universe.” Wait… so Fidel Castro got sucked into a black hole???)

P.S. Glenn Reynolds blames “star-devouring space monsters” for the mysterious hole in the universe. Star-devouring, and Castro-devouring!

The second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is approaching, and on Sunday — two years to the day since my oft-quoted “New Orleans in peril” and “get the hell out” posts — I’ll be giving a talk, or hosting a forum, or whatever you want to call it, on the hurricane at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church at 10:05 AM, part of their weekly “Sunday forum” series. I was asked to do this by Edward Lollis, chairman of the church’s forum committee, who is a fan of my blog and wanted to do something for the storm’s anniversary. Anyway, here is what the church’s official newsletter has to say about Sunday’s event:

Forum at 10:05 AM— “Hurricane Katrina: What Went Right and What Went Wrong”: When Hurricane Katrina roared ashore two years ago today, its human toll would have been far less had Mayor Nagin and the Louisiana media heeded the warnings of Brendan Loy, a 23-year old law student in South Bend, Indiana. Immediately after the storm, Loy’s predictions were acclaimed by the New York Times and Washington Post, and his web log (blog) became one of the most frequently linked-to websites of all times. Loy recently graduated from the University of Notre Dame and moved to Knoxville. He will tell us how he scooped the nation in 2005 and how the mainstream media and government continue to fail the people of New Orleans.

I’ll try my best to live up to that billing. To be honest, I’m still working out exactly what I’m going to say. :) I suspect I’ll be somewhat heavy on the 2005 stuff and somewhat lighter on the “continue to fail” part, as I haven’t followed subsequent events in New Orleans as closely as I’d like. But I think I’ll still have some reasonably valuable things to say, if I don’t get totally bogged down in the minutiae and run out of time! Whatever I say, I’ll definitely have to issue my standard clarification/correction about the whole “predictions” thing — I didn’t “predict” it, I just sounded the alarm, as I always say. Anyway, the church is at 2931 Kingston Pike here in Knoxville, if anyone wants to come on down.

Hurricane Dean’s death toll stands at 20:

No deaths have been reported in Mexico, even though the storm hit the Yucatan as a Category 5 behemoth with 165 mph winds and was still a powerful Category 2 hurricane when it arrived here. The death toll in the Caribbean, though, rose Wednesday to 20 with the discovery of seven bodies in Haiti, where 3,000 were killed during Tropical Storm Jeanne in 2004. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Dean was expected to dissipate over Mexico’s central mountains by early Thursday.

Meanwhile, the considerably less sexy weather story of the week — heavy rain in the Midwest and Great Plains states, some of it caused by the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin — is proving to be more deadly than the third-strongest hurricane ever to make landfall:

More than 1,000 people were flooded out of their homes Thursday after heavy rain that swamped communities across the Midwest sent Ohio’s rivers spilling over their banks, the governor said. The storm’s death toll also rose when three people were electrocuted by lightning at a bus stop.

“This is a major, major disaster,” Gov. Ted Strickland told CBS’s “The Early Show” Thursday. …

With the flooding and more storms moving through, the death toll across the Upper Midwest and from the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin that swept Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri over the past week also rose to at least 26.

Hurricane Dean re-emerged over water in the Bay of Campeche shortly before 5:00 PM EDT yesterday, and is now heading toward central Mexico. Its winds are 80 mph, and according to the 11:00 PM discussion, “DEAN IS FORECAST TO RESTRENGTHEN BEFORE LANDFALL BUT IS RUNNING OUT OF TIME TO BECOME A MAJOR HURRICANE.” Landfall is expected to occur sometime this afternoon.

I feel like I keep saying this, but: I’m afraid I won’t be able to blog much, if anything, about Dean today. I’m back from the seminar in Nashville, but Becky and I have a ton of work to get done around the house, and other miscellaneous tasks to accomplish, in the next two days, and I think I’m going to have to pretty much go on a blog-hiatus to get everything done.

A major theme of the blog in the last week has been forecast uncertainty. Where, we wondered repeatedly, would Hurricane Dean go? How strong would it get? Which computer prediction should we trust? Needless to say, forecasting the future is a tricky business, even with the most advanced computer models. But there are some things that are a bit easier to model. For instance, I can make a forecast for ten years from today, and guarantee you with near-absolute certainty that it will come true:

On August 21, 2017, at precisely 10:15 AM and 50 seconds PDT, something will make landfall on the coast of Oregon, just north of the town of Newport. It will proceed across the country on an ESE to southeasterly course, crossing the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, Kansas City and St. Louis in Missouri, Nashville and West Knoxville in Tennessee — including our current apartment — and Charleston in South Carolina, before finally touching down in the Atlantic Ocean and leaving dry land behind at 2:49:07 PM EDT off Cape Romain, SC.

What is this “something” I speak of? Not a hurricane, nor any other kind of weather system, but the shadow of the Moon!

That’s right: ten years from today, the continental United States will experience its first total solar eclipse in the lifetime of many of this blog’s readers. Not since 1979 has this most amazing of astronomical events been visible from anywhere in the Lower 48. (Some of you may remember seeing a solar eclipse in 1994, but that one was annular, not total.)

Here is a cool narration of the journey that the Moon’s umbra — i.e., its inner shadow, the small area where the Sun is completely obscured — will take across the country, from coast to coast. And here are a bunch of maps. You can also view the maps on Google Maps or Google Earth.

The eclipse can be viewed from a much wider area — all of North America, in fact, and part of South America — as a partial eclipse. But only in that narrow strip with the eclipse be total. And that makes all the difference in the world. Partial eclipses are awesome, but total eclipse are about a thousand times more awesome, because with a total eclipse, day truly turns to night during the totality phase — and you can actually look directly at the sun, since none of the photosphere (the part whose rays can damage your retinas) is visible. (You must NEVER look directly at the Sun during a partial or annular eclipse, or the partial phase of a total eclipse, no matter how small the sliver of visible photosphere is. Only during totality is direct viewing safe!)

Here’s a broader map showing the penumbral path (where the eclipse is partial) as well as the umbral path. And below it is an animated GIF showing the same thing; the small, fast-moving black dot represents the umbral shadow (i.e., the path of totality). Both images are courtesy of eclipse.org.uk.

As regular readers know, the eclipse has long been on my countdown sidebar at left — 3,653 days and counting! :) Ten years is a long time, but I’m already actively looking forward to this event. You have to understand: total eclipses are unlike anything else in astronomy, or the human experience for that matter. People who’ve seen one (or more) consistently describe them as life-changing experiences.

I’m fully committed to being somewhere along the path of totality on August 21, 2017, regardless of where Becky, the kid(s) and I are living at that point. I’ll apply for time off work years in advance if I have to. :) And we won’t be alone: a few months ago, I told some of the SHA girls about the eclipse, and we made a pact that, wherever we’re living in 2017, we will get together to watch the eclipse. If Becky and I still in Knoxville, we’ll probably get together here, but if not, I’m thinking maybe Grand Teton, since the weather probably stands a pretty good chance of being good there. Of course, wherever we pick, I’ll be obsessively checking the weather in the days before the eclipse, ready to resort to Plan B and Plan C in either direction along the path of totality if necessary. :)

Interestingly enough, although 2017 is the first eclipse in a long time, it won’t be the last for a long time. There will be another total eclipse on April 8, 2024, trekking diagonally across the country in essentially the opposite direction, from southwest to northeast. Among other places, that one goes right through Buffalo. And if you happen to live in the Carbondale, Illinois region (home of the Salukis!), you get the unique experience of having two total solar eclipses in seven years! Here’s a map of the overlapping paths of totality:

Anyway… I don’t know if I’ll still have a blog in ten years, but if I do, I promise to provide complete blog coverage of the eclipse. :)

P.S. I say “near-absolute certainty” because there are various hypothetically possible events, each of which has a negligible but nonzero probability of occurring, that could disrupt the eclipse. For example: the Sun could go nova. It’d be several billion years early, but hey, it coudl happen. Or a large, heretofore undetected asteroid could impact either the Earth or the Moon and the impacted body’s orbit. Or some larger galactic event could mess up both orbits. Or we could all be sucked into a black hole. Or Frank J. could succeed in his efforts to Nuke the Moon. :)

P.P.S. West Town Mall, which is just up the road from where Becky and I live, will quite literally be the northern border of the path of totality:

Of course, one doesn’t want to watch the eclipse from the very edge of the path of totality, because the eclipse is only total for a few seconds there — not even enough time to take off your protective glasses! Instead, you want to head for someplace along the “center line,” where totality will last for more than two minutes. Like for instance, the Sweetwater, TN area…

…or better yet, as I mentioned, Grand Teton:

I’m back in Knoxville… just in time to watch another Space Station flyover, this time with the Moon and Jupiter nearby:

Alas, you can’t see Jupiter, which was quite close to the Moon, because of the damn cloud. ;) The ISS is the little line at at top right — you can see it better in the larger view, and even better in the close-up after the jump:

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The Space Shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to land today at 12:32 PM EDT. Live updates here and here.

UPDATE, 11:44 AM EDT: The Shuttle is re-entering as we speak. I’ve bumped this post to the top of the page.

Bears: the biggest threat to America Serbia.

P.S. Of course, the man’s death is very sad. But personally, I think if it’s your time to go, you might as well go in a way that’ll make it into international “news of the weird” type stories.

I just wonder if his epitaph will quote zoo director Vuk Bojovic: “Only an idiot would jump into the bear cage.”