Moon Madness

Terrible things will be happening!

[King_Fisher]

Aug 28, Full eclispe!..Mass hysteria, plagues, floods,typhoons and hurricanes!
Cats mating with dogs, pigs speaking latin. Bill Gates going bankrupt. Irag
suing for peace. Google's whole site crashing. Are these the last days?!

If any one has any dire predictions, have at it!...KF

[tim222]

Well, my website traffic has been down a little lately. At least now I can blame it on the Moon.

[Dabrowski]

Bill Gates going bankrupt? I thought you said dire?

Camel's humps will drop off, leaving them completely indistinguishable from Llamas.
Scientists will discover what went wrong with the duck-billed platyus.
All tides will receed simultaneously, confusing the hell out of the lesser toed chuswazzer.

[balam]

Alas, less than an hour left to the eclipse, as I post this...

So, August 27th has come & gone, again. Did you get the hoax email about there being "two moons" in the sky on the night of the 27th?

In 2003, on the August 27th, Mars made its closest approach to Earth for a couple of hundred years. It was quite large (25.11"), being "close," but its size pales in comparison to the Moon (currently about 1920").

Starting in a limited amount in 2004, but snowballing since, a hoax email has been going around that claims that Mars will appear "as large as the full Moon," giving Earth two "moons" on the night of August 27th. No mention of year, or if the two moons are visible on, say, the 26th or 28th. Like all successful hoaxes, this one is rooted in enough fact to appear to be true to the, uh, uninformed - to be polite - amongst us.

So this year I decided to have a little fun with the gullible: I "took a picture" of the eclipsing moon in the sky, along with the "full Moon-sized" Mars. There's a popular local landmark in the "photo," a reddish Moon, and - well, I'll be! - a rather large Mars. Like all successful hoaxes, there's plenty of "fact" in the photo.

Most of the photo recipients haven't gotten to work yet, so I'm still awaiting their silly replies... :)

[Essex_boy]

I read a recent report in teh Daily Telegraph, a respectable broadsheet newspaper, that the Metropolitan police noticed a spike in violent crime on a full moon.

Wouldnt surprise if there was a link, we arent quite the clever little ones we all make out.

[digitalghost]

We may not be all that clever, which would explain our propensity to attribute human actions to things like lunar influence.

Full Moon And Lunar Effects [skepdic.com]

If so many studies have failed to prove a significant correlation between the full moon and anything, why do so many people believe in these lunar myths? Kelly, Rotton, and Culver suspect four factors: media effects, folklore and tradition, misconceptions, and cognitive biases. A fifth factor should be considered, as well: communal reinforcement.

[tim222]

This morning I think I got about half as much spam as usual. That could be good or bad:

Good: Maybe the full moon affects spammers in a mysterious way that makes them less likely to spam.

But that's doubtful, so it's more likely to be...

Bad: Either a) The spammers were out late last night causing mischief and mayhem; or b) There's a problem with one or more of my email accounts.

[rocknbil]

For those of you *not* in China - the articles said it would be visible in China, but I was finishing up a project about 3:30 AM today. It was almost fully eclipsed, just a sliver of white (N.W. U.S.A. here.) Woke the wife up to come see it. Then we howled a bit and crashed. <yawn> :-)