Eclipse mania had everyone picking a spot in the path of totality and going there on Monday. We were north of Bingham in Moscow a little ways up a ski slope on Baker Mountain. The road trip adventure of it, the corona, the red solar storms bursting out, the shared experience, the science of it. Memorable.

The other mania we shared with millions was the NCAA women's basketball tournament. In the final game, the plucky Iowa team with one truly great player went up against a South Carolina team with a bench depth of five Iowas.

Here is the question I'm trying to formulate for talking to people about the election: What is your short-term tactic and long-term voting strategy that will lead to achieving the results you want to see in this country? (alternate form: which geezer y'all leaning toward) I have friends on the left who are dead set against Biden, but I don't see how voting against him achieves any long term goals. What it achieves is their sense of political purity about themselves. But there is no purity in politics. Your vote is a chess move, not a valentine, as they say. In Louisiana I voted against the crooked Edwards when it was safe to do so, but when he ran against Duke the Nazi I voted for him. Strategy, people! Also, they think that Biden cannot be pushed to the left, but I think he already has been. In a second term he might achieve some of my goals: protect reproductive rights, fix immigration, get rid of the filibuster, expand the supreme court, get dark money out of elections, expand medicare, save Ukraine. Our democracy is wildly imperfect and forever tainted by the relics of slavery, but it's worth saving and worth getting a chance to improve it.

At latitude 45 the earth spins on its axis at about 725 miles per hour. The earth revolves around the sun at about 67,000 mph. The universe is expanding at the speed of about 160,000 mph. We do not directly experience this motion. (What else is real that we do not experience?)

We have no idea of the actual size of the universe; it may be infinite. We cannot comprehend the distances involved. Most of the universe is empty space. Within the universe we are tiny creatures on a spinning planet, in a solar system, in a galaxy, in a cluster of galaxies.

Our human bodies are systems of organs made of complicated cells which have complicated parts within them made of molecules which are combinations of elements which are all the ways atoms can combine. Elements are made of atoms and atoms have parts which are electrical and some have mass. Mass and electricity appear to be interchangeable. Most of the atom is empty space.

In studying the smallest scale (subatomic) and the largest scale (astrophysics) human understanding is limited and those areas of scientific study are the most challenging. Science is a methodology for studying the world and also the collective knowledge of human brains. The human brain is also an object of study where understanding is limited. We don't know exactly what and why we are or where we are headed.

It could be some kind of space plasma or nebula or neurons but no, it is a delicious pomegranate mimosa at Opa.