Monday Open Thread

Welcome to your Monday open thread. Welcome to daylight savings time, which I still don’t understand the point of. All I know is that I resent the time jump. It messes up my day (I hate resetting the clocks, too). Did anyone miss any appointments because of forgotten alarm clocks?

This just makes me mad. Michele Bachmann is considering running for President of the United States. Or should I say President of the United States except Massachusetts?

“You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord.”

— Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), quoted by the Boston Herald, while speaking in New Hampshire.

She later admitted her error saying, “It was my mistake, Massachusetts is where they happened. New Hampshire is where they are still proud of it!”

Har har har, Republicans love America except parts of it. How is it o.k. for an elected official to talk this way? Why isn’t it scandalous, actually?

After the Sendai earthquake, there was some talk of a “supermoon” and that it was the cause of the earthquake. Bad Astronomer explains that the earthquake was not caused by the supermoon:

The idea of the Moon affecting us on Earth isn’t total nonsense, but it cannot be behind this earthquake, and almost certainly won’t have any actual, measurable effect on us on March 19, when the full Moon is at its closest.

So, how can I be so sure?

Here’s the deal. The Moon orbits the Earth in an ellipse, so sometimes it’s closer to us and sometimes farther away. At perigee (closest point) it can be as close as 354,000 km (220,000 miles). At apogee, it can be as far as 410,000 km (254,000 miles). Since the Moon orbits the Earth every month or so, it goes between these two extremes every two weeks. So if, say, it’s at apogee on the first of the month, it’ll be at perigee in the middle of the month, two weeks later.

The strength of gravity depends on distance, so the gravitational effects of the Moon on the Earth are strongest at perigee.

However, the Moon is nowhere near perigee right now!

The Moon was at apogee on March 6, and will be at perigee on March 19. When the earthquake in Japan hit last night, the Moon was about 400,000 km (240,000 miles) away. So not only was it not at its closest point, it was actually farther away than it usually is on average.

So again, this earthquake in Japan had nothing to do with the Moon.

If you hear others talking about the supermoon and how it caused the earthquake, now you can set them straight.