MuseBlog

On Wednesday, November 8, observers in the Western Hemisphere and Pacific will be able to see the planet Mercury cross the face of the sun. Such “transits of Mercury” are fairly rare, so if you’ve got access to welding glasses or a telescope with a sun filter, it’s worth a look. (I’ll be using my NASA glasses left over from the transit of Venus in June 2004.) Your science teachers may be able to help.

You can find more details here.

More (added November 8–better late than never):

There are lots of links (including Webcasts) and information at NASA’s Sun-Earth Day site:
http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2007/events/mercurytransit.php

The Exploratorium in San Francisco offers a Webcast and information about how to build a viewer for the transit.

–Robert

This sounds like fun: If you send your name to NASA by November 4, they’ll record it on a microchip and launch it on board a spacecraft bound for the Asteroid Belt. Purely symbolic, of course, but not bad as symbolism goes.

Here’s the site:

http://www.dawn-mission.org/DawnCommunity/Sendname2asteroid/nameEntry.asp

Added 1 November: Meanwhile, the Planetary Society is offering a similar chance to fly your name to Mars:

http://planetary.org/home/

“For people who either love, have never seen, or don’t like snow.” By special request of Taiwan Hippo Fan.

By special request of agrrrfishi, who is working to save tigers.

The original “Muse Movie?” thread just hit 400 posts, a sure sign that it’s long past time to start a sequel. Here goes.

That’s National Novel Writing Month, a worldwide outbreak of madness that takes place in November–all November. Some of you plan to take part. Here’s a place to talk about it.

All kinds.

MuseBlog’s ever-popular continuing forum for topics that need careful handling and/or an extra dose of civility.

All Nuse, all the time. You can get the idea from the wildly popular MN 2006.1.

Ask fellow Musers what they think, feel, or prefer; get instant answers. You can see how it works on version 2006.3.

(New version requested by Emogrl.)

A forum for practicing archaic English, foreign languages, and other off-the-beaten-track forms of communication.

(Coy woodnesse means “quiet madness” in Middle English, the version of our language spoken about 600 years ago.)

Useful resources (additions welcome!):
The original Coy Woodnesse thread
Coy Woodnesse, v. 2006.1
Accents to paste in: à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ð ñ ò ó ô õ ö ù ú û ü ¿ ¡
“Chaucer’s Middle English” site at the University of California, Santa Barbara
Librarius has another Middle English glossary and a load of information about Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales

It’s on Friday or Saturday, depending on where you live.

Technically, autumn arrives in the Northern Hemisphere on Saturday, September 23, at 4:03 a.m. Universal Time (UT). That’s 5:03 in the morning British Summertime; three minutes after midnight U.S. Eastern Daylight Time; 11:03 p.m. on September 22 U.S. Central Daylight Time (=blog time); and 9:03 p.m. on September 22 on the American West Coast.

You’ll have to make adjustments if you’re in Arizona, which doesn’t observe Daylight Saving Time. And, of course, for New Zealand and the rest of the Southern Hemisphere, this is the spring equinox. Whew.

Many Musers have first-hand knowledge of this faith. Even so, let’s at least start the discussion by reviewing what Huston Smith says about it in his book The World’s Religions (known in earlier editions as The Religions of Man) before starting in on our personal experiences.

Continued from Part 3: Buddhism and Part 2: Hinduism.

We sense a groundswell of enthusiasm for this topic, so–why not?

While people finish the required reading for the World Religions: Judaism thread, here’s a place where MuseBloggers can talk about their own religions or other religions they’ve experienced. The Judaism thread will be closed until someone is ready to summarize the relevant chapter of Huston Smith’s book.

Continued from the MBers’ Religions thread that started in May.

A fresh thread for poems and songs of interest. Elassë~adael’s idea.

IAU names dwarf planet Eris

14-September-2006, Munich: The International Astronomical Union
announces the names (136199) Eris for the dwarf planet provisionally
named 2003 UB313 and Dysnomia for its moon.

The dwarf planet formerly known as 2003 UB313 received the official
designation (136199) Eris, or Eris in short, from the International
Astronomical Union on 13th September 2006. The name was accepted almost
unanimously by the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
(WGPSN) and the Committee for Small Body Nomenclature (CSBN).

Eris is the second dwarf planet in a sub category of objects of which
Pluto is the prototype.

The name Eris was proposed by one of the discoverers, Michael Brown
(Caltech, USA). (136199) Eris was discovered on 5th January 2005 by M.
E. Brown, C. A. Trujillo, and D. Rabinowitz at the Palomar Observatory.

Eris is a the Greek goddess of discord and strife. She stirs up jealousy
and envy to cause fighting and anger among men. At the wedding of Peleus
and Thetis, the parents of the Greek hero Achilles, all the gods with
the exception of Eris were invited, and, enraged at her exclusion, she
spitefully caused a quarrel among the goddesses that led to the Trojan war.

Eris is pronounced ee’-ris (see link 4).

Eris¹ moon, formerly known as S/2005 (2003 UB313) 1 and now known
technically as (136199) Eris I, has been named Dysnomia.

Dysnomia is the Daimon spirit of lawlessness. She is the daughter of
Eris, goddess of chaos and strife, and the counterpart to Eunomia who
puts an end to the anger of grievous strife.

The name Dysnomia was accepted unanimously by the members of the WGPSN.
The name was proposed by Mike Brown, a member of the discovery team.

The new designations have been approved by the IAU Division III
Organizing Committee and by the IAU Officers and have been announced in
IAU Circular 8747 13 September 2006.

1962-2006. The world is a little bit darker.

As always, a place for topics that need careful handling and/or an extra dose of civility.

Easing into the school year with a little help from your friends. But not too much help, please.

Robert writes:

I once read that men tend to like smooth ice cream, while women prefer ice cream with lumps and such in it (marshmallows, chocolate chunks, veins of caramel, etc.). That’s definitely true of me: except for mint chocolate chip (with very small chips), I like my ice cream smooth. How about you? The blog must know!

Feel free to broaden the discussion to peanut butter, if you like.

A discussion based on Huston Smith’s book The World’s Religions (known in earlier editions as The Religions of Man) and/or the vastly inferior Complete Idiot’s Guide to World Religions.

Continued from Part 2: Hinduism.

By popular request. It has been a while since Libraries, Books, and Bookstores and Books.

It’s hot. Well, no, it’s cold–extremely cold. But it’s in the news, and MBers are already talking about it. So here’s a place for anything more that needs to be said.