Cleaning out the Inbox

       I keep attempting to catch up with the inbox and try to write about my most recent trip but I keep running in place!  

Pluto's "heart" (now named Sputnik Planitia)  was most likely caused by a giant impact but the interesting unanswered question is this- Could the item that slammed into Pluto still be on the planet covered under its nitrogen ice? 

Sky and Telescope discuss the matter here. 

Washingtonian writes of the closing of the Crystal City Underground mall which will occur in October.

Dubbed the DC Area's strangest mall since its opening in 1976, Crystal City is literally underground (technically street level) in Arlington, Virginia, and catered to office workers and commuters going through Crystal City to get somewhere elsewhere.

The Athletic writes about the conditions at the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium which were anything but pristine.

The article discusses the paper-thin clubhouse walls that fans could see the players through, the tiny clubhouse that wasn't capable of holding the entire team after September callups, the awful post-game food spread, and the only batting cage in the entire facility.

Three Down Nation notes that CTV (Canadian Television) will return to televising the CFL later in the season (the CFL season has currently started) on Saturdays along with playoff action.

CTV is the largest Canadian network and last televised the Canadian Football League in 1986 when it shared the league's television rights with CBC.

KETV writes of the discovery of a pet donkey, who had been missing for five years in California, has been discovered by a video taken by a hunter in the area.

Diesel ran away from his owners near Sacramento in 2019 and hadn't been seen since until spotted on a video but the catch?

It appears Diesel is the leader of a pack of elk, which is a surprise to me until you discover that donkeys often protect livestock and it would make sense that a wild donkey could fill the role of protector with a pack of any animal.

Fox Business wraps this edition with word of Build-A-Bear and their recent offering of West Virginia's Mothman having sold out almost instantly and is currently unavailable.

The Mothman was the topic of the 2002 film "The Mothman Prophecies" and was visited by me and my friends on a 2017 Road Trip. 

Cleaning out the inbox

The inbox is more than full,so it's overdue for dumping.

We blast out of the gate with a cool post from TSN (the ESPN of Canada) with BarDown and the cartoons that he does based on each of the CFL teams.
These are awesome and I wish that they'd get more exposure along with the CFL getting "BarDown" a few bucks to use these officially.
They remind me of the stuff used in the 60's and 70's and that's a good thing...

SI.com writes about the forgotten dynasty of the USFL-the Philadelphia/Baltimore Stars,who won two of the leagues three titles and lost the first by just 24-22 to the Michigan Panthers.
Considering the issues of the time in Baltimore,one unknown question in football history is this-had the USFL forced a better result in their court battle vs the NFL and if the Stars had pulled out that first title,would it be possible that the Stars could have entered the NFL in Baltimore?
If that happens,there is not a Browns move to Baltimore and all the resulting spinoff that happened from that.
Fun to consider.

Nigel Collins of ESPN (and a long time boxing scribe) scribbles about the only fight in the United States by Middleweight champion Carlos Monzon in 1975 vs Tony Licata.
Most observers rank Monzon as one of the top five middleweights and one in particular ranks him at number one.
Here's a hint-you read his writings all the time.

Ryan Clingman of the Wrestling Observer writes of the 25th anniversary of one of the greatest wrestling matches ever,which led to the greatest run of business in Japanese history with Mitsuharu Misawa breaking through with an upset of Jumbo Tsuruta.
It's a very detailed article that praises both men for the upturn in the business of All Japan Pro Wrestling and traces to both men's connection to the beginning of Pro Wrestling NOAH....

Hardball Times hits one back through the grill with a look at minor league food at various ballparks.
It's funny,I almost never eat food at my home three parks,but when I go to new parks,I usually try a thing or two.
None of the parks that I visit a lot tries anything different for the most part,so I try for new experiences....

The Cleveland Plain Dealer takes an interesting look at some of the various players that the Cavaliers could be interested in with the Brendan Haywood trade chip before August 1 when it would expire.
The players and positions vary,but gives plenty of food for thought for possible new Cavaliers..

The New York Times writes about the trip to Pluto and the resulting end of planetary exploration.
It's not as much about New Horizons as much as the various probes sent out through the years and hopes of finding even just a speck of life on the trail....

That cleans things out for a while.
One quick note before I go,I haven't forgotten about the podcast.
It is just that I have had a planned guest have to back out twice in the last few days.
There is one coming soon-I promise!!!

Out on the New Horizon and onto the next topic

Bob Lind sang a song in 1966 called "Elusive Butterfly and in the chorus was a line "out on the new horizon".
That line came to mind as in two hours,New Horizons will buzz by Pluto and will leave us far richer in the experience along with knowledge that will have in living in a world that will never been the same again.

That may sound like hyperbole',but if you are into space science or general knowledge about the solar system,the world will never be the same.
All the things that we thought we knew about Pluto will be turned upside down and the data that comes in the next few hours will be studied for years and years as unproved theory is replaced by reams of information that come from this flyby.

It's funny the amount of information that this little flyby that will bring for a few fleeting days to the general public.
Projects like New Horizons turn the public for a few moments onto science and then move onto a another topic,usually one that isn't quite so informative.
It's the low attention span and constant amount of things to choose from in the news that keep important things from being funded.

It would be nice that today's mission would mean more than just information about a planet that we have never seen in such detail before,but it likely won't be a big deal to more than a small group of people with interest in space science.
After all,out on the new horizon for most people is just another note on the side of their Facebook page

Neptune,Pluto and Ryan

With the excitement around the New Horizons probe arriving at Pluto on Tuesday ( and trust me I'll be watching all night) as the last unexplored planet greets our first visitor, I have reflected a bit on the last premiere trip to a planet and it's more than you would think -even for a space geek like me...

I'm sure that I'll be writing plenty about New Horizons and what we find at Pluto, but this is more about Neptune.
Yes, Neptune, which was the last stop of the outer solar system of Voyager two's tour of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, which saw those planets visited for the first time (or second in the cases of Jupiter and Saturn) and saw dazzling pictures of detail never before seen-just like we will see from Pluto.

Neptune's debutante ball was in 1989 and in a different television world than today.
Yes, we were in the cable age and there were plenty of channels compared to 1979, but the numbers paled compared to 26 years later.
There was no NASA channel to cover Voyager like you have today, but there was our standard for learning in good ol' PBS, which showed a basic broadcast of data coming in called "Neptune-up all night".
Nothing elaborate, but covering something no one else was, which even today is often the case with PBS, grabbing a niche' that no one else is using and being satisfied with a group of people that want a little more from their television than just entertainment.
The data would come in chunks and you would see the screen fill in pieces as they came in and were then sifted through the produce a picture through what Voyager had to offer, which was 1970s technology in its purest form (Voyager 2 took 12 years to reach Neptune) and needed refinement before you could really understand what you were seeing.
The discovery of the "Great Dark Spot" and the richness of the methane coloring of Neptune (Uranus was far visually duller) led to a beautiful finished product, but the picture that you see above from Voyager was not what you were seeing on PBS, which was essentially black and white with a few specks of color around the edges of the screen.

Most of the really interesting discoveries about Neptune would come much later when there was more time to determine what the data told them, but what I remember about that night was even less about the first trip to a new planet than that I shared it with my son.
I stayed up late even then and even though I knew that Ryan wouldn't be able to process what he was watching, I propped him beside me on the couch and shared the experience with him.
It was more for me than for him as he was likely to never remember it, but I remember it like so many people had their young children in front of the TV when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon.
It just was a young father sharing a night with his son and I remember just holding Ryan in my arms after he dozed off with his night finished, as the night rolled on.

It wasn't about what I learned or about what Ryan learned, it was about developing bonds and making connections, not really about Neptune.
Tomorrow night, New Horizons will fly by Pluto in our last visit to an unknown planet for quite a long time and I'll be watching from the road office on NASA Tv or maybe on the internet.
I'm a different person than I was then, older, heavier, and hopefully wiser.
The little boy that I held in my arms is now a man that is seven years older than I was on that day that I am quite proud of, but it's more than just pride.
It's about looking back at a time that I didn't have much, but I had a great wife and put lots of energy into hopefully making my son a good person.
Somehow, I think I'll be reflecting more on Neptune and the memories of a night long ago than that night flying by Pluto with a smile on my face.

The plan is for some more Pluto talk on the night New Horizons flies by...