Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Thanks, Jacoby

By Brendan Loy

Thanks to Jacoby Ellsbury's stolen base tonight, Taco Bell will be giving away free tacos on my birthday. Heh.

Anyway, it's 2-1 Sox in the sixth.

Meanwhile, Boston College is staging a late rally after trailing Virginia Tech 10-0 for most of the game. It's 10-7 Hokies with 36 seconds left, and the Eagles are deep in Tech territory.

UPDATE: Touchdown Boston College!! Holy crap!! I think Matt Ryan just won the Heisman... and BC has broken the #2 curse! (Dammit.)

UPDATE 2: ...aaaaand Matt Ryan barfs on live TV.

UPDATE 3: "Ryan for Heismann!" Heh.

Okay, back to the World Series...

UPDATE 4: JACK BAUER IS ON HIS OWN!!!!!

UPDATE 5: Sox win!! 2-1, final. It's a 2-0 series lead for Boston, heading out to Denver.

Ann Coulter comes to USC

By Brendan Loy

Shockingly, she criticized liberals.

Cultural imperialism, or just plain dumb?

By JLR

So I can't figure it out: is NFL commish Roger Goodell a cultural imperialist, or is he just missing the point?  Says Goodell:

Our goal is to translate America's obsession to the world's passion," he told reporters on Friday, two days before the Miami Dolphins face the New York Giants at a sold-out Wembley Stadium. "This Sunday is clearly just the beginning."

This is after the NFL's expansion league, NFL Europa (formerly known as NFL Europe) folded in June. With an average attendance of just over 20,000 per game in 2007 and only 6 teams, this translates into about 60,000 people per week who were actually interested in going to these events ... for the entire continent of Europe.  And the lowest attendance was held by the Amsterdam Admirals--the only team outside of Germany.  Maybe if Goodell had arranged for this game on Sunday between Miami and New York to take place in Germany, I wouldn't feel this way... But why continue to try to get the rest of Europe to go along with this sport?

Maybe they could have sold out the stadium 10 times over, but extended American Football experiments in Europe have failed.  And I don't know why Goodell seems to think that this is the best way to keep cramming American football down the throats of the rest of the world.

Free fallin'

By Brendan Loy

The Blue-Gray Sky has an awesome aerial photo of the Army parachuters beginning their jump down to Notre Dame Stadium before Saturday's game against USC. Definitely check it out.

Comet goes boom

By Sean Sullivan

Something happened yesterday on Comet Holmes, an obscure comet fainter than Pluto.  Until yesterday.  From Space Weather:

Whatever is happening to Comet 17P/Holmes, it's weird. "I've never seen anything like it! It almost looks like a planet," says Eric Allen ...The comet has no tail, a remarkable golden color, and yesterday it shocked astronomers with a spectacular eruption, brightening almost a million-fold from 17th to 2.5th magnitude in a matter of hours.

To put that in perspective, this is similar to the brightness of stars in the Big Dipper or Orion's Belt, easily visible to the unaided eye from within major light-polluted cities.

Unlike the traditional notion of a comet's appearance, this comet has no visible tail.  It's just a small bright sphere, even in a telescope.  To the eye, it's more starlike in appearance than cometlike.

For a recent event, this makes sense, because a comet's tail is formed by  loose material with low mass and high surface area being blown away from the sun by the pressure of sunlight.  Whatever broke free from Comet Holmes hasn't had time to get affected by sunlight to form a tail.

The comet is favorably placed for observers in the northern hemisphere.  It's in the constellation Perseus, which is up all night at this time of year.  Here's a star map from Space Weather.  I don't know if the comet will stay bright or fade quickly, but it's worth watching to see what happens next.

In other celestial news, the space shuttle was launched Tuesday.  The orbital alignment isn't favorable for visual observers in the United States, but there are a few passes that can be seen at southern latitudes (e.g. Florida, southern California).  Predictions can be made at Heavens Above.   I think there may be some better visual passes near the very end of the mission.