Today was fairly unremarkable. I slept okay and got up at a normal time, so I think I’ve finally conquered the jetlag.
I did ethics classes. Following yesterday’s comment, I switched my “believable” prediction from an eclipse to a sunrise, but still some of the kids expressed doubts that such a thing could reasonably be predicted. I’m at a bit of a loss for coming up with something that I can ask the kids “is this a reasonable prediction” and just have them say yes.
I took Scully on a long walk, down to the harbour shore. On the way I got a sweet treat from the new cafe, which I think is now better than the old Grumpy Baker. They had a hazelnut slice which I got and it was delicious: a thick biscuit base, with a kind of hazelnut cream on top, topped by a thin layer of chocolate with crunchy hazelnut pieces in it.
I spent time this afternoon writing and rewriting a new Darths & Droids strip. I had a complete version before realising something which made me have to scrap the entire thing and start from scratch. That’s how it goes sometimes. And the scrapped version I thought was really good, but alas unusable. I might save it for later behind-the-scenes bonus material.
Sorry if this is the wrong place to comment, but there isn’t really a place on _Irregular Webcomic_ . For comic #2835 rerun’s annotation, I raised my hand, although I’m not a Geologist (in fact, I have a Ph.D. in Chemistry). But I had the privledge to hear Gene Shoemaker speak at Yale University, and if you deny that he was an “important Geologist”, I will sternly point you at his wikipedia page and also try to make you feel guilty, because he died in a car crash in Australia.
There’s a forum for comments on comics, but here is fine too. I definitely know about Gene Shoemaker, but I bet most people don’t.
In that case, I must nitpick: Darwin was also a geologist. For one, he described the mechanism of formation of atolls. Granted, he was much, much better known as a biologist.
If the issue with sunrise/eclipse prediction is how precise it feels (a specific time down to the minute), what about phases of the moon, like when it’ll be a full or new moon (which, broadly speaking, is a wider range of days)?
Or (maybe this is too vague) how recipes predict how long to bake something?
You’re an astrophysicist. You can read an ephemeris.
Actually predict the sunset time for each student. Should take about two minutes of research per class. I’m not a scientist like yourself, but I’m a big believer in presenting evidence.