Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Dual tragedy at Notre Dame

By Brendan Loy

Two Notre Dame students died over the weekend in "separate and unrelated incidents" -- one of them at Dillon Hall, the other reportedly while "studying abroad in London." (Hat tip: Sergio.)

I have no idea whether the latter student was in the NDLS London program, or some other London program. All additional information is being withheld for now, including the students' names. Regardless, both deaths are obviously terrible tragedies, and my heart goes out to the families and friends of these students, whoever they may be.

UPDATE: The Observer reports:

One of the students, Connor McGrath, was a sophomore who moved to Siegfried Hall in January. He died Sunday morning or early afternoon, Siegfried rector Father John Conley told students gathered at the dorm's Mass Sunday night. ...

No name has been released in the second death, but a number of dorm rectors said the student was not an undergraduate.

The South Bend Tribune is quoting the St. Joseph County deputy coroner as saying that McGrath "may have had some health problems." There's no word at all on the what killed the London grad/law student.

If, as expected, the university releases more information later today, presumably it will be posted here.

UPDATE 2: The student who died in London has been identified as law student Timothy Aher. Details in a new post above.

NOTE: I've bumped this post's timestamp back to 11:17 PM, the original time it was posted. I had bumped it up to the top of the homepage because it was clearly the "top story" overnight and into the morning, but now that the new post supercedes it, I've restored its original timestamp.

Things that suck: UCLA, Duke, FSN

By Brendan Loy

Stupid freakin' blankety-blank Fox Sports Net South is showing the Nashville Predators game, even though the schedule on TVGuide.com says very clearly that we were supposed to get the Duke-Wake Forest game (which Duke lost!) followed by USC-UCLA (which is now underway). Harumph!!

I don't know if they'll take us out to the basketball game once the hockey game -- which is now in overtime -- ends. I hope so. But anyway, it's a tight game early between the Trojans and Bruins.

UPDATE: Yaaay! They're taking us out to the game in progress.

UPDATE 2: Thanks largely to poor ball-handling and rebounding, USC trails 35-29 with 16:55 left in the game.

UPDATE 3: USC is playing like crap. But so is UCLA, so the Trojans are still only down by 6 with under three minutes left.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

143 million pounds of beef is being recalled by a Calif. slaughterhouse being investigated for mistreating cattle.

Loyette says, "Beat the Bruins!"

By Brendan Loy

Fight on Trojans! Beat the Bruins!

(Onesie and blanket courtesy of Keri and Jake. "Fight on" socks courtesy of Papa & Nana.)

P.S. Of course, Mike Tran is hoping the Trojans lose tonight... which just proves that Mike Tran hates babies. :)

Freakin' baby-hating Bruins. Have they no decency? ;)

Shuttle-ISS sky show delayed to Monday

By Brendan Loy

According to Reuters, the scheduled undocking between the Space Shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station is now set for 4:26 AM EST on Monday. That's almost 24 hours later than the 6:35 AM Sunday undocking time that's stated in master flight plan.

This means the aforeblogged Sunday-night sky show will be far less spectacular than I had hoped. The Shuttle and ISS will both be visible, of course, but they'll be indistinguishable from one another to the naked eye, appearing as a single dot rather than two points of light trailing each other across the sky. They won't look much different than a standard ISS-only flyover, which, while still pretty cool, is a commonplace occurrence.

Monday night is a different story, though. Alas, here in Knoxville, the view won't be nearly as good as it would have been Sunday if the schedule had stayed in place (though it's really a moot point anyway, since it didn't look like the weather was going to cooperate), but it'll be a spectacular view in New Orleans, Los Angeles, and a bunch of other places. Here are Monday night's flyover tracks, courtesy of Heavens Above:

Again, for local details, go to Heavens Above.