The Daily Dose/March 15, 2025
By Gaylon Kent – America’s Funniest Guy™
Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience.
CAPSULE LUNAR ECLIPSE REVIEW: Lost in the cacophony of our busy, go-go lives can be Mother Nature putting on a show, like it did early Friday morning with a lunar eclipse.
Those Who Remember The Past Are Destined To Repeat It: We love eclipses here at The Daily Dose and longtime readers of this crap will, no doubt, remember our classic review of the 2017 total solar eclipse. Seventy-eight seconds in a lifetime with billions of them, likely the only 78 seconds we’ll spend in that environment.
Back To The Future: We keep really odd hours right now, so we were up for the eclipse but had to scramble to get a minute’s viewing. It was worth it, with the moon appearing red for reasons which, thankfully, go well beyond the scope of this column.
Dry, Technical Matter: Lunar eclipses occur when the moon is not only behind Earth, but is in our shadow, and it has to be near where the moon crosses the ecliptic, points known as lunar nodes. If it’s not, Earth, moon and the sun will not be in proper alignment.
What The Hell’s The Eliptic: The word has assorted meanings, but for lunar eclipse purposes, it refers to when the moon crosses Earth’s orbit.
Oh, Jesus H: Both eclipse and ecliptic come from the old Greek word eklepein which means, in part, “…to fail to appear”.
The Bottom Line: As we noted in our 2017 solar eclipse review, eclipses look just as they have for billions of years: we see the same thing the Incas saw and that the Sumerians saw and that everyone has seen since time immemorial and you do not have to be Galileo to strongly suspect they will look the same for billions of years to come. This is as good a reason as any to go out of your way to see every eclipse you can. It’s a time when the 60 seconds in a minute and the 60 minutes in an hour mean nothing: you are as timeless as you are going to get.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody – Heading into the finale, Sparrow’s had a good week in the sack. Today’s Diary.
8.5 hours for the day and 47.0 hours for the week…
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On This Date
Extra, extra, read all about it.
In 2019 – A lone gunman kills 51 people and injures 89 more in separate shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The gunman, Brenton Tarrant, had published a manifesto online before the attack and live-streamed the first one on Facebook. He was arrested when his car was rammed by a police car while on his way to commit a third shooting and two weeks later he pled guilty to numerous murder and attempted murder charges. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole, the first such sentence ever passed down in New Zealand.
In 1970 – Bobby Orr of the Boston Bruins becomes the first NHL defenseman to have 100 points in a season in a 5-5 tie with the Detroit Red Wings. Orr had two goals and two assists, with the 100th point coming on a second-period shorthanded goal. Orr finished the season with 120 points and broke the record the following season with 139 points, a record for defensemen that still stands.
In 1980 – Willie Nelson is at #1 on Billboard’s country chart – then known as the Hot Country Singles chart – for the second and final consecutive week with My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys. It was the twelfth of 25 Top 10 country hits for Nelson and his fifth of twelve country #1s. The song also went #1 country in Canada, peaked at #44 on the Hot 100 and was Billboard’s 8th-biggest country song of the year.
Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
…let us raise our conceptions to the magnitude and the importance of the duties that devolve upon us.
Daniel Webster
Answer To The Last Trivia Questions
Knowledge is power.
In the Open Era, a player has won a major without losing set 52 times, eleven times by a man.
Today’s Stumper
Match wits with Gaylon. It’s not that hard.
Who holds the NHL record for most career points by a defenseman not named Boddy Orr or Paul Coffey? – Answer next time!
