Good morning.

The month ends with mostly sunny skies and a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 7:05 AM and sunset 4:22 PM. The moon is a waning crescent with only 7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1874, Winston Churchill is born. He passed away ninety years later.

November 30, 3340 BC may hold a record in stone of the earliest written observation of an eclipse:

The possibility of an eclipse was first discovered in 1999 by Mr. Griffin and posted to his web site in 2000. Subsequent improvements in astronomical software has indicated that this eclipse obscured nearly 100% of the solar disc and was visible in the late afternoon just before sunset.

The Irish Neolithics used a 4044.5 day lunar eclipse cycle which is broken up into 365 days x 11 years + 29.5 days (synodic lunar month). This is also similar to a Tritos/Nova Lunation combination of one Tritos cycle of 3986.63 days and two nova lunations of 29.53 days each, yielding a total of 4045.69 days.

The Irish Neolithic astronomer priests at this site recorded events on 3 stones relating to the eclipse as seen from that location. This is the only eclipse that fits these petroglyphs out of 92 solar eclipses tracked by the discoverer.

Good morning.

We’ll have a mostly sunny Friday with a high of thirty.

As it has for so many years, Whitewater’s Christmas Parade will travel along Main Street toward the downtown of the city beginning at 6 PM.

NASA recently released a video of Comet ISON traveling toward the sun, using images recorded from 11.20 to 11.25.13:

Did Comet ISON survive its orbit around the sun? At first, it didn’t seem so:

The comet, known as ISON, was discovered last year when it was still far beyond Jupiter, raising the prospect of a spectacular naked-eye object by the time it graced Earth’s skies in December.

Comet ISON passed just 730,000 miles (1.2 million km) from the surface of the sun at 1:37 p.m. EST/1837 GMT on Thursday. Astronomers used a fleet of solar telescopes to look for the comet after its slingshot around the sun, but to no avail.

“I’m not seeing anything that emerged from the behind the solar disk. That could be the nail in the coffin,” astrophysicist Karl Battams, with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, said during a live broadcast on NASA TV.”

But the icy object’s obituary may have been a premature one:

“Now, in the latest LASCO C3 images, we are seeing something beginning to gradually brighten up again,” said astrophysicist Karl Battams, of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, in a NASA Comet ISON Observing Campaign (CIOC) blog update. “One could almost be forgiven for thinking that there’s a comet in the images!”

Has Comet ISON succumbed to its fiery encounter, breaking up, leaving only a few pieces of ex-comet behind? Or has it really risen from the dead, re-brightening and set to dazzle our night skies as it swings back out into deep space? It’s too early to tell, but it’s also too early to write ISON off.

“We have a whole new set of unknowns, and this ridiculous, crazy, dynamic and unpredictable object continues to amaze, astound and confuse us to no end,” said Battems.

The more optimistic view comes in video from NASA and the ESA, in which a part of the comet appears to be brightening again after its closest approach to the sun:

Puzzability‘s Thanksgiving-week series concludes today:

This Week’s Game — November 25-29

With Thanks

It’s all about the stuffing this week. For each day, we started with a word or phrase, added the six letters in the word THANKS, and rearranged all the letters to get a new word or phrase. Both pieces are described in each day’s clue, with the shorter one first.

Example:

Rosary component; what you might go to hell in

Answer:

Bead; handbasket

What to Submit:

Submit both pieces, with the shorter one first (as “Bead; handbasket” in the example), for your answer.

Friday, November 29

Maneuver that a sign on the back of a truck warns you of; authors of The Elements of Style

Good morning and Happy Thanksgiving.

We will have a mostly cloudy day with a high of twenty-eight. Sunrise is 7:03 AM and sunset 4:23 PM. The moon is a waning crescent with twenty-two percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On 11.28.1520, Magellan reaches the Pacific:

After sailing through the dangerous straits below South America that now bear his name, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan enters the Pacific Ocean with three ships, becoming the first European explorer to reach the Pacific from the Atlantic.

On September 20, 1519, Magellan set sail from Spain in an effort to find a western sea route to the rich Spice Islands of Indonesia. In command of five ships and 270 men, Magellan sailed to West Africa and then to Brazil, where he searched the South American coast for a strait that would take him to the Pacific. He searched the Rio de la Plata, a large estuary south of Brazil, for a way through; failing, he continued south along the coast of Patagonia. At the end of March 1520, the expedition set up winter quarters at Port St. Julian. On Easter day at midnight, the Spanish captains mutinied against their Portuguese captain, but Magellan crushed the revolt, executing one of the captains and leaving another ashore when his ship left St. Julian in August.

On October 21, he finally discovered the strait he had been seeking. The Strait of Magellan, as it became known, is located near the tip of South America, separating Tierra del Fuego and the continental mainland. Only three ships entered the passage; one had been wrecked and another deserted. It took 38 days to navigate the treacherous strait, and when ocean was sighted at the other end Magellan wept with joy. His fleet accomplished the westward crossing of the ocean in 99 days, crossing waters so strangely calm that the ocean was named “Pacific,” from the Latin word pacificus, meaning “tranquil.” By the end, the men were out of food and chewed the leather parts of their gear to keep themselves alive. On March 6, 1521, the expedition landed at the island of Guam….

For the Badgers, an undefeated season on 11.28.1901:

1901 – UW Football Undefeated
On this date the University of Wisconsin defeated the University of Chicago, 35-0, to finish its first undefeated football season in school history with a 9-0 record. [Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

Here’s Puzzability‘s daily puzzle:

This Week’s Game — November 25-29

With Thanks

It’s all about the stuffing this week. For each day, we started with a word or phrase, added the six letters in the word THANKS, and rearranged all the letters to get a new word or phrase. Both pieces are described in each day’s clue, with the shorter one first.

Example:

Rosary component; what you might go to hell in

Answer:

Bead; handbasket

What to Submit:

Submit both pieces, with the shorter one first (as “Bead; handbasket” in the example), for your answer.

Thursday, November 28

Noted Roman orator; Boston Market staple

Good morning.

Wednesday will be mostly sunny with a high of twenty-four, but wind chill values between zero and five degrees.

Downtown Whitewater’s board meets today at 8 AM.

On this day in 1965, a request for an increase:

The Pentagon informs President Johnson that if General Westmoreland is to conduct the major sweep operations necessary to destroy enemy forces during the coming year, U.S. troop strength should be increased from 120,000 to 400,000 men.

On this day in 1882, a first performance:

1882 – Ringling Brothers’ First Performance
On this date the Ringling brothers of Baraboo, Wisconsin performed their first show to an audience in Mazomanie. The brothers called their show the “Ringling Brothers Classic Comic Concert Company.” The show was barely a success, bringing in 59 paid admissions – just enough money to meet their hotel expenses. However, the brothers continued to tour and raised over $300 in three months, performing in Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas. After extensive investment and practice, the brothers launched their first circus in Baraboo on May 19, 1884. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes, p.476-492]

Puzzability‘s Thanksgiving series continues:

This Week’s Game — November 25-29

With Thanks

It’s all about the stuffing this week. For each day, we started with a word or phrase, added the six letters in the word THANKS, and rearranged all the letters to get a new word or phrase. Both pieces are described in each day’s clue, with the shorter one first.

Example:

Rosary component; what you might go to hell in

Answer:

Bead; handbasket

What to Submit:

Submit both pieces, with the shorter one first (as “Bead; handbasket” in the example), for your answer.

Wednesday, November 27

Alter, as a photo; star of Two and a Half Men since 2011

Good morning.

For Tuesday, Whitewater will have scattered snow showers in the afternoon, with a high of thirty-one falling to twenty-four by late afternoon.

About yesterday’s snow, I’d say we were under one inch (the National Weather Service station for Milwaukee/Sullivan official record is .7 inches for their location. Admittedly, we might have had more than that, but I think still we were under an inch.)

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM today.

On this day in 1931, a cloverleaf makes the cover:

The first cloverleaf interchange to be built in the United States, at the junction of NJ Rt. 25 (now U.S. Rt. 1) and NJ Rt. 4 (now NJ Rt. 35) in Woodbridge, New Jersey, is featured on the cover of this week’s issue of the Engineering News-Record. (By contrast, a piece on the under-construction Hoover Dam was relegated to the journal’s back pages.)

With their four circular ramps, cloverleaf interchanges were designed to let motorists merge from one road to another without braking. They worked well enough—and became so ubiquitous as a result—that writer Lewis Mumford once declared that “our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.” But many of the older cloverleaves were not built to handle the volume and speed of traffic they now receive, and many have been demolished and rebuilt.

There’s a documentary video that includes information on this cloverleaf:

This Week’s Game — November 25-29

With Thanks

It’s all about the stuffing this week. For each day, we started with a word or phrase, added the six letters in the word THANKS, and rearranged all the letters to get a new word or phrase. Both pieces are described in each day’s clue, with the shorter one first.

Example:

Rosary component; what you might go to hell in

Answer:

Bead; handbasket

What to Submit:

Submit both pieces, with the shorter one first (as “Bead; handbasket” in the example), for your answer.

Tuesday, November 26

Place associated with balm in the Bible; David Byrne’s group